Root morphemes of greek-latin origin in the process of contamination

Abstract

In the article the author analyzes unique iterative fragments in the complex of contaminated words of the French language, which have a stable character and regularly repeat in the words of different denotative attributions. In the role of iterative fragments the word-forming root morphemes of Greek-Latin origin, word-formants, isolated from the fragments of full-valued words, which are merged as a result of deliberate or spontaneous truncation in the process of contamination, are also used in the contamination. An important factor, as the author notes, is that Greek-Latin formants, being involved in the process of contamination, act as one of the components in combination with another component-a fragment of a truncated full-valued word, and become components of the original compound word, the meaning of which they represent. Observations and significant conclusions are contained in V.M. Leichik's article called «About a non-researched way of word composition in modern French» (1966)which investigates historical roots of French words composing and describes contamination in diachronic aspect in old and middle French. Thus, the appearance of contaminated units is associated with the need to strengthen the semantics of words that exist in the language, give the neoplasms a peculiar, ambiguous charge of semantic capacity, replenish the language with stylistically brightly colored words that express a whole range of connotative signs.