CHAPTER FOUR Word Building

Morphemes Words are not the smallest units of a language, they may consist of smaller parts that have a meaning of their own. These parts are called morphemes. They are divided into: 1- Free morpheme; can be found either on it’s own (e.g. brush) or in a combination with other morpheme. So, free morphemes can be combined to form compound morphemes, e.g. high-light, house-keeping (p.26).

2- Bound morpheme; never occurs on it’s own (e.g. ‘bio’ in biography, ‘er’ in teacher, ‘dis’ in disagree, etc.). This process is called Derivation. It is the process of adding a bound morpheme to a stem to produce a derived word, e.g. build+er=builder; dis+agree=disagree. Bound morphemes that added to the stems are called affixes. Affixes can be prefixes which come before the stem, like un, be, miss; or suffixes which come after the stem, like ness, ly, ship (p.27)

Derivational affixes can create new words, e.g. in a restaurant: A $15 cakeage fee applies to all bring-your- own cakes. In a toilet: this service is hygienized automatically at every use. some derivational affixes keep the word classes of the attached words. It’s the case of prefixes, e.g. both acceptable/unacceptable are adjectives, connect/disconnect are verbs (they keep the word class but change the meaning) Few prefixes change word class: friend (N), befriend (V); war (N), post-war (Adj)

Suffixes involve a change of word class. ‘ness’ that changes adjectives into nouns: happy (adjective)-happiness (noun) Amend (verb)-amendment (noun) Wise (adjective)-wisdom (noun) Thought (noun)-thoughtful (adjective), p.28 Suffixes don’t always change the word class. Identify which suffixes are class-changing and which are class-meaning from the following list: (p.28)

Lexeme: A basic lexical unit of a language; a word in all its related forms, e.g. trap, traps, trapped, trapping are all forms of the same lexeme ‘trap’ (p.29) Inflection: In grammar, inflection is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, person, number, e.g. He plays tennis. Inflectional affixes do not change word class, and in English they are always suffixes (p.31) Then, inflection marks the grammatical function of a word, without creating a new lexeme.

Some of these affixes have alternative forms: 1- The past participle affix may be ‘en’ as in driven, or ‘ed’ as in waited. BUT, with many verbs, it can take other forms, as in ‘dealt’, ‘understood’. 2- The past tense affix is usually ‘ed’. BUT, there are many exceptions like ‘began’, ‘went’. 3- The plural affix is usually ‘s’. BUT, it too has other forms, as in ‘children’.

Alternative forms can occur with any kind of morpheme rather than with inflectional affixes; Five/ fifteen, long/ length. Alternative forms of the same morpheme are known as allomorphs. So, ‘fifteen’ is an allomorph of ‘five’, ‘length’ of ‘long’.

CHAPTER FIVE Words that Go Together

Collocation In any given context, there are some words which have a high probability of occurrence, and other words which have an extremely low probability, e.g. ‘escape’ collocate (match) with ‘clutches’ in ‘She could not escape from his clutches’ (p. 32)

Even words with incongruous (not in harmony) senses may collocate; collocation can sometimes arise when speakers are trying to produce colourful language. For instance you can describe someone as being as useful as a ‘chocolate teapot’; or faster than ‘greased lightning’. On the other hand, words with congruous senses do not necessarily collocate (see table 5.1, p. 33)

The internet made it easier to investigate collocation than before, e.g. when you google ‘tough times’ you can get about 2.7 million hits, compared with 10.5 million hits for ‘hard times’. But, when you use the internet to investigate language, you need to consider the context as well as just statistic.

Web search on phrases is more fruitful than searching for single words since single words may give irrelevant meaning, e.g. when ‘knotty’ means full of ‘knots’, it collocates with words like ‘wood, furniture, panelling’. But when it means difficult or complicated, it collocates with words like ‘problem, issue, topic, solve’ P. 34

Idioms An idiom refers to an instance where the words of the utterance do not give their literal meanings. It differs from collocation in two main respects: 1- The meaning of an idiom is not predictable from the meaning of the words it contains, e.g. ‘ take someone to the cleanser’ means to cheat someone of all their money (p. 36) 2- Idiom’s form is relatively fixed, i.e. you can not change the grammar of them as with other expressions, p. 36

CHAPTER SIX Lexical Variation

Style Style depends on the situation in which the language is being used. The ability to choose the appropriate lexis of language in different situations is important part of learning to use a language. The style we learn first tends to be informal which we use in casual settings with family and friends.

But we need the formal style in highly structured situations, particularly when communication is one-way, e. g. president's speech, speech at a memorial service. Writing needs to be more formal than speech in that we should be more conscious about the misunderstanding, and to plan carefully what we say. Speech: there’s less time to plan, and the speakers would check easily that the listeners follow them.

Colloquial (very informal language) can be applied to any casual language, whether it is spoken, or written in the style of speech such as a text or a tweet. Formal lexis came from Latin origin, e.g. ‘obtain, consequently’. Informal lexis derive from Old English (Anglo- Saxon), e. g. slang, and swear-words. Informal language tends to be less precise than formal language, p. 40

jargon Any professional fields has its own specialised lexis (jargon) which may be seen by others who are not from the same field as difficult and confusing (see p. 41 for some examples) Geographical location also affect our lexical choice, e.g. ‘gradely’-Standard English word ‘good’, used in the north of England. ‘bairns’-Standard English ‘children’ used in Scotland. ‘Sanger’-Standard English ‘sandwich’ used in Australia. ‘Fender’-British English ‘bumper’ used in USA.

Dialect Dialect is a language variety that characterised a particular group of speakers. It has grammatical features, and vocabulary that distinguish it from other dialects. It may also have a particular accent. Accent is different from dialect in that accent deals with pronunciation only. Many English speakers have a regional accent, but they may use standard English grammar and vocabulary rather than their local dialect.

Standard British English is a dialect of English. Geographically, it originates from the area between London, Oxford and Cambridge. It became the language of the court, the universities, media, books and newspapers, radio and TV. Other English-speaking countries have their own standard variety, e.g. Standard American English, Standard Canadian English, standard Indian English, etc.

Language change; some words change their meaning, new words enter the language, and old words die out, e.g. ‘mouse’ (rat, of the computer). So, each generation speaks differently from the previous one. Young people mark out their own style, and establish their own identity. Society itself is changing; with new ideas, discoveries and, inventions. English language has spread across the world, establishing itself in many countries as a first or a second language.