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330 CHAPTER 18 161 Word formation The many words which make up the vocabulary of BCS are related to one another through a complex interweaving of roots, prefixes, and suffixes. The process by which these segments are combined with one another is usually called derivation, referring to the fact that new words are derived in this way from existing words (or pieces of words). Grammarians make a distinction between word forms related by derivation and those related by inflection: the latter term refers exclusively to the forms of a conjugational or declensional paradigm. Although derivational relationships are not so precise as to allow one either to predict the composition of any one word, or to derive the meaning of a word unambiguously from its derivational components, there are a number of easily recognizable patterns. The more familiar one is with these patterns, the faster one is able to build vocabulary. The key to recognizing these patterns is to be aware of the different components of a word. There are only a few words in BCS which are not divisible into components ; all the others are most easily analyzed in terms of these basic components. This chapter will first define the components of a word, and will then demonstrate how verbs, nouns, and adjectives are created from each other by way of these components. The first division to note is that which characterizes all nouns, verbs, and adjectives: each is composed of a stem and an ending. The ending is that portion of the word which carries the grammatical information – person and number for verbs, and case, number, and gender for nouns and adjectives. As its name indicates, this component occurs at the end of the word. Some word forms, such as the Nsg. of most masculine nouns, all Nsg. masculine short form adjectives, or the singular imperative forms of certain verbs, have what is called a zero ending (labeled -Ø). In these words, the form appears to consist of the stem alone. For most grammarians, however, any word form which belongs to a regular declensional or conjugational paradigm necessarily consists of a stem and an ending: if no ending is evident, then the space for that ending is simply left blank (that is, it is occupied by the component called zero). Although such reasoning may seem circuitous , its result is in the end very useful. For instance, the accentuation of certain paradigmatic types can be explained quite elegantly by placing an accent mark over a segment which is not manifested in any obvious way (for explication and examples, see [166]). The stem is then further divisible. Every stem always has a root: this is the portion of the word that carries the basic dictionary, or lexical, meaning. Although it is possible for the root to stand alone, it is usually the case that additional segments are added, or affixed, to the root. Such segments add different shades of meaning to the basic root. There are two kinds of affixes, differentiated by the position they take with respect to the root. An affix placed before the root is called a prefix, while an affix placed after it is called a suffix. Some words contain only a prefix, some contain only a suffix, some contain one of each, and some contain more than one of each. CHAPTER 18 331 In this diagram of the formation of a word, the obligatory elements appear in upper case, and the optional elements in lower case letters. The sample “word” is given with two prefixes and two suffixes, but such a model is not the most common one. The important point is that any one word can have none, one, or more than one affix, and that the entire combination of the root and its affixes – that is everything except the ending – is usually reckoned together as the stem of the word. Each of the elements in the lower half of the chart is what linguists call a morpheme. This is a technical term denoting the smallest possible combination of sounds which can be associated with a meaning of some sort. Discussions of derivation frequently divide words up into their component morphemes. This is done not only to help one see the structure of the word and the ways in which the meanings of individual morphemes combine to give the word its overall meaning , but also because such divisions help one understand better the relationship between sound and spelling. Anyone learning BCS cannot fail to notice the...

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