Word formation in speech activity

Let us turn to another section of traditional linguistics - the theory of word formation. Like other aspects of language learning, we will consider word formation from the point of view of the human factor. And here we are faced with the questions: In what cases and by what laws do people create new words? How do the already created lexemes (derived words) function in the speakers' linguistic consciousness? etc.

Imagine a situation: a person is confronted with an object whose purpose he knows, but is completely

name is known. By the way, people who are far from linguistics — simple housewives — find themselves in this position. Recall an important thing in the household: a kind of rubber pear, the purpose of which is to clean baths and sinks. This subject is called "plunger". However, for some reason, the hostess prefer to use their own nominations. Chisel, punching, purging, tyrkalka, shurovalka, sucker, pear - as soon as they do not call the plunger in everyday communication. The same can be said about objects called hard-to-remember names “clamp” and “heater”. In everyday speech, they are easily replaced by the words "clip" and "heater".

The well-known domestic psycholinguist Leonid Volkovich Sakharny conducted an experiment in the 60s in a distant Siberian village, which allowed to shed light on the nature of the creation of people speaking new words. Elderly villagers took part in the trial. They were asked the following questions.

1. Who lives in the North?

2. Who lives in the East?

3. Who lives in the Pamirs?

The subjects answered the first question without delay: nomads, reindeer herders, Ostyaks, Chukchi, etc. live in the North. The inhabitants of Siberia, naturally, knew the names of the professions and nationalities of their neighbors.

The elderly could not give a similar answer to the second question: the TV had not yet penetrated to the deaf Siberian villages, and therefore the old residents of the East simply did not know the residents of the East. However, the very word "east" was well known to the subjects. Therefore, in response, they most often composed a new word - “Oriental”.

Finally, the third question put the experiment participants at a deadlock: the Siberian old-timers never heard the word "Pamir" and, naturally, did not know what it meant. Therefore, they, as a rule, refused to answer at all.

The results of the experiment, as well as the reasoning preceding its presentation, allow us to draw the following conclusion. A new word in speech activity arises when the speaker understands the purpose of the Object or the essence of the phenomenon, but does not have a ready-made synonym for their detailed description.

Having found out the conditions under which a native speaker creates new words, we left unanswered the question of which attribute, which characteristic of the named object forms the basis of the created lexeme. Recall, for example, all the same plunger. In one case, it was called a scrubber, and in the other, a sucker. What is the logic?

This side of word formation is demonstrated by another experiment of the same L. V. Saharny, which this time was carried out by him with three-year-old children. In two groups of kindergarten, the scientist asked the children almost the same question. He asked some kids: “Who sits on a horse ?” Here, the word “horses” stood out with a logical accent. In another group, the question was slightly changed: “Who sits on a horse?” In this case, the word “sits” stood out.

In the first group, among the most varied answers, there were also new words: a horseman, a horseman, etc. In the second, a sidnik, a sidilchik, and so forth. What is the reason for such discord?

The experiment allows us to draw another conclusion. For the formation of speech neologism, the speaker acts by analogy, using the word-formation model, which in his speech and in the speech of other native speakers is the most productive, frequency. At the same time, creating a new word, he puts in its basis the actual, important, significant, from his point of view, sign of the named object or phenomenon .

Derived words, of course, fall into the speaker's vocabulary not only as a result of his individual word creation. Most often they are included in the vocabulary in the finished form of the speech of the people around him. But is it always, using this or that derivative token, we remember its origin? Speaking of "bakery", people are clearly aware that we are talking about something related to bread, with bread. And what about, for example, the word "pavement"? Do we remember, saying it, the origin of the word "pave"? In what cases does the speaker refer to what is called the motivating semantics in science?

To answer this question, L. V. Saharnyi did another experiment. It is a variant of the associative experiment we have already described — a directed associative experiment. As words, incentives were taken four educated on one type of nomination: matinee, diary, evening-

nick night light. The experiments were conducted in two social and age groups: among high school students and students of the evening department of the university. The task was that the subjects, in response to the word stimulus, would lead to any word that came to mind that was formed using the same suffix nickname. If reaction words are related to the concept of “time of day”, it means that the associations of the subjects are directed to the root of the stimulus word, which means that the speakers remember and take into account derivative semantics, the origin of the derived word. If, on the contrary, associations are not related to the concept of “time of day”, then the derivative, motivating semantics of the speaker is not taken into account.

Experiments with students showed the following. The word matinee was associated in children mainly with the words holiday, songwriter, picnic, birthday, etc. The word diary is with lexemes, textbook, pupil, schoolchild, etc. Only the words vespers and night light caused a nomination with the meaning “time of day "(Matinee, diary).

A somewhat different picture was observed in the responses of the students. The word matinee in the overwhelming majority also entailed words with the meaning “fun” - songwriter, picnic, bachelorette party, etc. But the stimulus diary caused associations with the meaning “part of the day.” Similar associations caused the words evening light and night light.

The results of the experiments are quite understandable from the position of common sense. For schoolchildren, the word “diary” has nothing to do with the concept of “day.” This is a notebook in which the student must write down his homework and where the teacher puts him marks. At the same students (especially the evening department) school memories are gradually erased. And in the foreground is the original nomination "day" - the word from which the diary originated.

JI experiment. V. Sugar makes it possible to make another important conclusion. When using derived words, a native speaker does not remember their derivative, motivational meaning in the case when these words have strong semantic connections with a specific context. In the same cases when the derived word does not have stable contextual connections, the motivating semantics inherent in the internal form of the word come to the fore .

Appeal to derivative semantics occurs in speech practice when the speakers are faced with a new, previously unknown word. Often, the meaning of the lexeme is derived from the motivating semantics, from the inner form. Thus, the adjective ball bearing or machine-building does not need an additional “translation”. However, sometimes an individual encounters words (usually borrowed from other languages), the origin of which is not clear to him. In such cases, the native speaker (especially when he does not have a sufficient level of education) sometimes rework the word in his own way, seeking to “clarify” the derived semantics of the lexeme, to make its internal form “transparent”. Such a phenomenon is called “folk etymology”. It is usually observed in the speech of children or poorly educated elderly people. Instead of “fan” in such cases, they say a verifier (what is spinning), instead of “polyclinic” - semi-clinic (half of the clinic), instead of “boulevard” - gulvar (from the verb “walk”), instead of “jacket” -spindjak ( that on the back), instead of "sneakers" - belles (from beautiful), instead of "impressive" - ​​impulsive (from "belly"), etc.

The language of word formation is widely used in fiction and especially in poetry. Let us recall at least the lines of the poem by I. Severianin “In glittering darkness”

In tuxedos, chic obroborennye, high society boobies

In the prince's drawing room they squeezed, their faces stupid.

I smiled tightly, remembered sarcasm of gunpowder;

The boredom was blown up unexpectedly by a neopoiet motif ...

However, primacy in poetic word-making in Russian literature rightfully belongs to the futurist (he called himself a special, by his own invented word — a Will) by Velimir Khlebnikov. Here are just some of the words created by him: divine, Bruchoverians, timecaps, jolly, volgorussy, yesterday, hari, sadstnyak, dahari, igropol, like snibuds. beautiful, lyubes, dreamers, mogatyr, mental, reluctant, tender-mouthed, not-emai, deniers, prowlers, early beasts, laughter, destiny, creators, mufflers, whimpers, linguistics, etc.

“Word-making,” wrote the poet, “is the enemy of the book-petrification of the language and, relying on the fact that in the village, near rivers and forests, the language is still being created, every moment creating words that

die, then get the right to immortality, brings this right into the life of the letters. (...) If a modern person inhabits the impoverished waters of rivers with clouds of fish, then linguistics gives the right to inhabit a new life, with extinct or non-existent words, the depleted waves of the tongue. We believe that they will play again with life, as in the first days of creation. ”

Khlebnikov has an interesting experience of the poem, built primarily from the neologisms of one root. To them we end this subsection.

Curse laughter

Oh, laugh, laugh!

Oh, laugh, laugh!

That laugh with laughter, that laugh condescendingly.

Oh, laugh laughingly!

Oh, laugh outrageous - laughter usmeynyh laughing laughter!

Oh, scurry laugh, laughter of supernatural laughter!

Smeyevo

Usmey, osmey, mixes, mixes,

Laughs, laughter.

Oh, laugh, laugh!

Oh, laugh, laugh!