Лекции по лексикологии английского языка. Гусева Г.В. - 32 стр.

UptoLike

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1) Complexes of the “give up” type are highly productive. The first

component is a simple verb. The status of the second one is disputable:

an adverb, a postpositive, etc. The units are often polysemantic and

idiomatic: come off (to take place), fall out (to quarrel). They are more

colloquial than thier synonyms of Romance origin: give up (abandon).

2) Complexes of the “ stone wall ” type are very productive in bookish

style: office management, steel production. The second element is a

noun. The status of the first one is disputable: an adjective, a noun, a

noun-stem. The units are motivated and correlate with prepositional

phrases. his life story – the story of his life. their spelling is inconsistent:

haircut, crime report, arm-chair.

3) Complexes of the “mother-in-law” type are phrases that are used as one

word. they are mostly occasional units coined in speech: Some people are

do-it-nowers, others do-it-some-other-timers. These complexes are

usually hyphenated in writing and are pronounced with one heavy stress

like many compound words.

VI. Shortening

Shortenings (or contracted words) are produced in two different ways. The

first is to make a new word from a syllable of the original word. The letter may

lose its beginning (phone from telephone, fence from defence), its ending (hols

from holidays) or both the beginning and ending (flu from influenza).

The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters

of a word group: U.N.O., B.B.C., M.P. This type is called initial shortenings

(acronyms). They are found not only among formal words but also among

colloquialisms and slang: g.f. (girl-friend).

Here are some more examples of informal shortenings. movie (moving-

picture), specs (spectacles), I.O.Y. (I owe you), metrop (metropoly), posish

(position).