1. What is a functional shift?
A functional shift involves the conversation of one part of speech to another without the
addition of a suffix.
e.g. a phone (n) -> to phone (v)
The only possible concrete change in a function shift; a change in stress.
2. What are some of the common functional shifts? Give examples.
V>N: (a) run, drive, walk, cout, look, call.
- You should run faster to pass the PE exams.
- The 1000m run competition had celebrated last years.
N>V: (to) head, telephone, contact, ship, mall, sign.
- The contact of my firm is…
- You can contact me by email…
Adj>V: (to) better, empty, idle, lower.
- I have to do it better by myself.
- I will try hard to better his record.
Prt >V: (to) down, up, out, off.
- The employees of this firm downed tools.
- I will go down to the sea.
*Prt=Particle : such as prepositions, adverbs, and some conjunctions.
3. What is commonization? Give examples.
- A special kind of functional shift: commonization
- A proper noun is converted into a common word
- A proper noun, naming a real or fictional person or place, tribe, noun, verb, or adjective, often
with no phonological change
N: cashmere, china, sandwich, valentine, Braille, spa
V:welsh, boycott, hector
A:zany, frank, bantam
4. What are compounds?
A compound the combination of 2 or more free roots (plus associated affixes).
Compounds may be written as a single word or as 2 words, hyphenated or not;
e.g: icecream,..
Often the semantics of compounds are not simple a sum of the meaning of the parts; that is if we
know the meaning of the 2 roots.
5. Give examples of some syntactic patterns of compound verbs,
compound nouns, and compound adjectives.
Compound verbs:
N+V->V babysit, head-hunt, skydrive, housekeep, proofhead
A+V->V tree-associate, double-book
Prt+V->V outdo, overcook, underrate
V+V->V blow-dry, sleep-walk
A+N>V strong-arm, blacklist, mainstream.
Compound adjs:
N+A>A headstrong, colorblind, duty-tree
A+A>A bittersweet, icy-cold, red-hot.
N+N>A seaside, coffee-table.
A+N>A blue-colar
V+Prt>A take-away, see-through
N+V+-ing>A meat-eating, heart-breaking
A+V+-ing>A easygoing, good-looking
N+V+-en>A manmade, hand-woven, handmade
A+v+-en>A widespread, far-fetched
A+N+-en>A cold-blooded, thick-skinned, old-fashioned.
6. What are blends? Give examples.
- A blend involves 2 processes of word formation: compounding and “cliping”.
- 2 free words are combined and blended, usually by clipping off the end of the first word and the
beg
e.g. Mo(tor) + (ho)tel -> motel
Br(eakfast) + (l)unch-> brunch.
7. What are back formations? Give examples.
In back formation, simple words are created based on derivational and inflectional patterns
existing in English.
e.g. A common derivational pattern in which the agentive suffix –er is added to a verb to produce
a noun: ‘sing’ +er -> singer, ‘work’+er-> worker.
>> from the comon pattern above verbs can be turned from the nouns by removing an agentive
suffix e.g. babysitter- -er > baby-sit, typewritter - -er> typewrite.
8. What are the three types of shortening? Give examples.
(1) Clipping
- A clipping is the result of deliberately dropping part of a word, usually either the end or the
beginning, or less often both, while retaining the same meaning and same word class.
(1.1) dropping the end of the word:
E.g: ad/ advert < advertisement rehab < rehabilitation fan < fanatic fax < facsimile mitt < mitten
(1.2) dropping the beginning of the word:
E.g: burger < hamburger cello < violoncello venture < adventure phone < telephone
(1.3) dropping the beginning and the end of the word:
E.g: fridge < refrigerator flu < influenza shrink < head-shrinker
(2) Acronyms: an extreme form of clipping In an acronym (từ viết tắt), the initial letters (chữ cái
đầu tiên) of words in a phrase are pronounced as a word.
(3) Initialism: an extreme form of clipping In an initialism, the initial letters of words in a phrase
are pronounced as letters .
E.g; r.s.v.p., a.m., p.m., B.C., A.D.
