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  • Complex words in English by Valerie Adams
  • Alan S. Kaye
Complex words in English. By Valerie Adams. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd., 2001. Pp. viii, 173.

This well-organized book fits nicely into the outstanding English Language Series edited by the former President of the British Academy, Lord Randolph Quirk, which has given us such classics as M. A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan’s Cohesion in English (1976) and Sidney Greenbaum’s Good English and the grammarian (1988). The author states in the preface that she planned this to be the second edition of her An introduction to modern English word-formation (1973); however, outside of borrowing a few examples from that earlier work, this is an entirely new study.

Conveniently organized into a dozen chapters, all the basics concerning English morphology are covered—everything from prefixes, suffixes, particles, and noun, adjective, and verb compounds, to phonaesthemes, diminutives, back-formations, and blends. The examples are copious and the bibliography is first-rate: comprehensive and up to date (155–62). In addition to her use of modern treatises, it is gratifying to see the work of the preceding generations of linguists still relevant (scholars such as Otto Jespersen and Henry Sweet are quoted).

I shall first take up the fascinating matter of binomials (2–3). Granted some binomials are reversible, and some are not, for example fun and games is irreversible. However, the author’s assertion that gold and silver and knife and fork, although they occur in this preferred word order, could also occur with the reverse, is not borne out by the facts, at least in certain contexts. Let us now examine this contention by considering ‘A civilized person eats with a knife and fork’. It is most awkward (at least in my native English variety) to say *‘A civilized person eats with a fork and knife’. Similarly, the order ‘silver and gold’ would be extremely odd in ‘Paper money is worthless today. What people want is gold and silver’.

Turning to the suffix -ize, we note verbs such as Arabize, Balkanize, etc. (24). I believe it is important to point out that many speakers of English use doublets, that is, verbs with the Greek-derived -ic suffix before the -ize: for example Arabicize and Iranicize. It is true that Iranize and Iranicize, Semiticize and Semitize, Islamicize and Islamize, etc., are all synonymous (respectively) in most contexts for me; however, from Rome we can derive Romanize, and not *Romanicize, and from Hebrew we obtain Hebraicize, and so on (there is no *Romanic, but neither is there a form *Iranic—see above). From America and Mexico we obtain only Americanize and Mexicanize. The morphological processes work differently with proper names than they do with verbs such as bastardize, itemize, etc. [End Page 799]

In her discussion of re- we are told that this prefix means ‘back’, as in repossess or rezip (44). I think the meaning here is clearly ‘again’. To rezip the zipper (or zip fastener) means to do it again.

Turning to the discussion of un-, she correctly states that uncool ‘is the opposite of cool only as a general term of approval’ (47). However, then she asserts that ‘the positive form of uncouth is not in use’ (47). The American Heritage College Dictionary, 3rd edn. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993:319) cites couth as a back-formation from uncouth, and it is quite common in American English, although I cannot speak for all dialects spoken worldwide.

One of the diminutive suffixes discussed is the French-derived -let, as in booklet and starlet (56). One word I have always used in my linguistic classes to illustrate ‘words nobody knows’ is kinglet, which in addition to designating a type of bird (which some speakers know) is supposed to mean ‘king of a small or unimportant country’ (The American Heritage College Dictionary, 3rd edn., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993:748). Can one speak of *Abdallah, the kinglet of Jordan? Incidentally, I have yet to meet the native speaker of English who truthfully claims to use kinglet in this diminutive sense.

This book can certainly be recommended for courses dealing with English morphology, and those doing research in this field will...

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