Word-formation Patterns Research Articles

Specificity of Translating Icononyms into Diverse Structural Languages (English, French, and Tatar)

This study examines proper names functioning as titles of iconographic works (such as ‘Pokrov Bogomateri’ (the Protection of the Mother of God), ‘Voskreseniye Khristovo’ (the Resurrection of Christ), ‘Soshestviye vo ad’ (the Descent into Hell) etc.) in the context of exploring their translation into English, French, and Tatar. A comparative analysis of artionyms (icononyms) is conducted. The sources for this research include catalogs of ancient Russian painting, particularly those from the collection of the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan (Kazan). The paper discusses the challenges involved in translating terms such as ‘umileniye’ (compassion), ‘pokrov’ (protection), and ‘успение’ (dormition) etc. On one hand, doctrinal discrepancies are noted in the target languages, which are attributed to extralinguistic factors (differences in approaches to key Christian doctrines among Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Catholicism, as well as the absence of cultural elements from the source language in the target language). On the other hand, semantic inconsistencies are identified, which can be explained by attempts at generalization or, conversely, specification of the content of terms aimed at facilitating recipient comprehension. One of the most frequent translational transformations observed is calquing, with identified differences in word formation patterns explained by the distinct typological models of the languages being compared (synthetic, analytic, agglutinative).

Word formation patterns in the perception domain: a typological study of cross-modal semantic associations

Abstract The lexicalization of perception verbs has been of widespread interest as a route into understanding the relationship between language and cognition. A recent study finds global biases in colexification patterns, suggesting recurrent conceptual associations between sensory meanings across languages. In this paper, drawing on a balanced sample of 100 languages, we examine cross-modal semantic associations in word formation. Confirming earlier proposals, we find derived verbs are lower on a proposed Sense Modality Hierarchy (sight > hearing > touch > taste, smell) than the source perception verbs on which they are based. We propose these findings can be explained by verb frequency asymmetries and the general tendency for sources of derivations to be more frequent than their targets. Moreover, it appears certain pairings (e.g., hear–smell) are recurrently associated via word formation, but others are typologically rare. Intriguingly, the typological patterning partially diverges from the patterning reported for colexification in the same domain. We suggest that while colexification is driven by conceptual resemblance between sensory meanings, cross-modal word formations tend to arise from grammaticalization processes of lexical specification, where additional material (e.g., a sensory noun) is collocated to a polysemous verb in order to disambiguate it in context. Together, these processes can account for the typological similarities and divergences between the two phenomena. More generally, this study highlights the need to consider conceptual, communicative and diachronic factors together in the mapping between words and meanings.

PROPER NAME AS AN EMOTIVE LEXICAL UNIT UNDER BILINGUALISM IN A MULTIETHNIC LINGUISTIC ENVIRONMENT IN THE LIGHT OF LANGUAGE POSITIVITY THEORY

The article deals with the linguistic category of emotivity. Informal forms of proper names are very re-levant onomastic material for the interpretation and substantiation of the theory of language positivity, since the word-building formants involved in their making, even outside the context and consituation, are able to convey the fi ne nuances of positive human emotions. The purpose of this research is to prove that anthroponymic emotives are both means of explication and implication, manifestation and concealment of emotions. To achieve the goal, a sur-vey of respondents was conducted. The questions used a sample of the most popular, rare and average frequency names in Bashkortostan for 2022, including female names like Amina, Octavia and Valeria, and male names such as Amin, Justin and Vladimir. A number of questions asked about the proper names of informants and their attitudes towards the use of diminutive forms. The analysis of responses showed that most respondents perceived these forms positively. The main scope of these names was limited to communication with loved ones. The frequency of use of informal vocatives in 57.1% of responses was determined by the situation. Participants in the survey off ered 24–80 variants for diminutive forms, which according to respondents implied a subjective positive evaluation. Among the diminutive suffi xes of anthroponyms, the most positive emotional connotation is carried by suffi xes such as -ochkand -ik. Linguistic and cultural analysis has allowed us to identify value dominants and stereotypes of communica-tive behavior among linguistic personalities. The extralinguistic interpretation of diminutive proper names provides a reason to regard onomastic units (anthroponyms) as positively connotated emotives. Based on the results of the research, we can conclude that the ethnically specifi c feature of speech in bilingual conditions, using the onomastics of the Republic of Bashkortostan as an example, is the tradition of person naming that has developed in the native language as well as the use of Russian word-formation patterns.

Teaching Implication of Meaning Construction at Morphological Level of Affixation in a Complex Indonesian Verb Formation

A tension exists between rationalists and empiricists regarding the nature of knowledge: innate then activated/discovered (rationalists) or constructed then invented (empiricists). The assumption is that, to a certain extent, basic knowledge seems to be innate in our mind and develops through experience by thinking processes to construct meanings. This meaning construction (thinking), mainly using language, is to make sense of and interpret the world. Meanings should be the primary motivation underlying linguistic constructions at all levels. This paper investigates meaning constructions at the lexical level of affixation by focusing on semantic behaviours of verbs in a complex word formation as an attempt: 1) to find out the semantic patterns of verb-based complex word formation, 2) to reveal if there is an iconic relationship of a sign (signifier) and its meaning (signified), and 3) to suggest for its teaching. Using semantic classes of verbs, based on situation types in deriving complex words, this study attempts to find out semantic patterns of such complex word formation and the possibility of revealing its iconicity. Using Antconc software, this study scrutinized linguistic expressions involving related verbs of state, event, and action in a corpus to reveal meaning construction at that level. The findings show several semantic patterns of verb-based complex word formation and an indication of the iconicity of signs. The paper also offers suggestions for teaching affixation

Agensbildungen im Altfriesischen

Abstract In Germanic, the presence of various devices to express ‘agent’ implies that this was a fundamentally important cognitive category. These devices are mainly morphological, and we find various competing agentive word formation patterns. This article provides a corpus-based analysis of the morphological agentive word formation patterns in Old Frisian. These range from suffixal derivation with different suffixes such as Gmc *-(j)an- and the loan suffix Gmc *-ā̆rja-, to compounds with suffixoids such as -mon or -māster. The corpus for the analysis is gathered from the Altfriesische Handwörterbuch by Hofmann and Popkema (2008) and, as such, it offers an insight into the whole corpus of Old Frisian agent nouns.

Soziolinguistische Aspekte des kolumbianischen Spanisch: Der Parlache

Abstract This article deals with the sociolinguistic phenomenon of parlache in Colombian Spanish, which has developed from an argot into a sociolect. It has found its way into the general language and has become an integral part of the vocabulary of Colombians. The Parlache was originated in the marginal and peripheral sectors of the city of Medellín (Antioquia region), where it spread mainly among marginalised and therefore criminal youth from the slums. In contrast to many other slangs, jargots or argots, the parlache has meanwhile evolved from a so-called “anti-language” to a widespread idiom, especially among young people. But it has also conquered the media and found its way into literature, theatre and music, and is used and propagated, for example, by the well-known Colombian singer Juanes. The article traces the emergence of parlache since the 1980 s, analyses its main word formation patterns and provides some lexical examples. Furthermore, it will shed light on the reasons for the popularisation of this sociolect, which include, among others, the enormous linguistic wit and creativity of the speakers. Despite its peculiarities, the phenomenon is hardly known outside Colombia, and there are only a few works on it in the German-speaking world. Therefore, in conclusion, the need for further research is also pointed out, since a further popularisation, especially by the German-speaking countries, is expected.

New and actualised words with the <i>war</i> component in modern media discourse

Since the late 1990s, a number of new and actualised words and set expressions with the component war in their structure have appeared in the Russian-language mass media. For instance, we can give such linguistic units as examples: proksi-voyna/proksivoyna/proxy-voyna / English proxy war; kvazivoyna / English quasi war; kibervoyna / English cyber war; myatezhevoyna/myatezh-voyna / English insurgency; nedovoyna / English sub-war; para-war/para-voyna; poluvoyna / English semi-war; postvoyna / English post-war; gibridnaya v. / English hybrid war; setevaya v. / English network war; mentalnaya v. / English mental war; oposredovannaya v. / English proxy war; v. po dogovorennosti / English war by arrangement/proxy war; v. chuzhimi rukami / English proxy war, and others. The process is due to significant changes in the theory and practice of modern warfare and is primarily influenced by the English language. As a result, the basic meaning of war, i. e. ‘an armed struggle between states, nations, or social classes; military action’, has undergone some semantic widening. The article describes in detail the new English borrowing proxy war, as well as a few other new loanwords and derivatives formed from the word war and actualised lexemes with this component. The novelty of the study consists in the presentation of lexemes relevant in media discourse. They contain the word war in their composition, are related to the topic of modern interstate conflicts, and are not codified in dictionaries. The relevance is determined, on the one hand, by the high demand for these naming units in Russian-language mass media, and on the other hand, by the lack of their systematic linguistic description. The article aims to identify the range of words (containing the component war in their structure) significant for the Russian-language military and political discourse of the first twenty years of the 21st century. The other goals are to determine the mechanism of their appearance in the Russian language and characterise the semantic and stylistic features of these units. The paper draws conclusions about the role of English borrowing and actualisation in this process. Lexemes with the evaluative prefixes nedo-/sub-, polu-/ semi- and the initial components kvazi/quasi..., polu/half...) actualised in the modern extra-linguistic and linguistic context are members of the relevant word-formation patterns. The new anglicism proksi-voyna/proxy war is the semantic centre of this group. It indirectly, through the initial component proksi-/proxy-... in the meaning ‘relating to a proxy war, participating in its conduct’, influences the expansion of the vocabulary group associated with the new modern stage of interstate conflicts. Individual naming units have semantic doublets in the form of compound names. They also semantically converge with vocabulary outside this group. Changes in the semantics of the word war occur due to the loss of some features (an obligatory armed conflict, the absence of the conflict initiator on the enemy’s territory since the goal is to bring the enemy under control rather than to eliminate them, and so on) and the emergence of new ones (the use of new technical means, techniques, etc. of putting pressure on the enemy). The research material was obtained from the Integrum database, Google and Yandex resources. The study used classification in conjunction with descriptive, comparative, and componential analysis.

Some Aspects of the Development of Anthroponyms in the Kyrgyz Language

This study examines proper names, which contain cultural information and reflect national and aesthetic attitudes. This fact is associated with various periods of the social and cultural life of any nation and is characterized by stereotypes about the functioning of society, reflecting events in the political or spiritual life of the country. The authors of this work made an attempt to show the principles of anthropocentrism in the Kyrgyz linguistic picture of the world. The reasons for the “longevity” of anthroponymy and its close connection with ancient national traditions, which are characterized by stability, resilience and the traditional patriarchal consciousness of the Kyrgyz, manifested in respect for their ancestors and their names, are analyzed. It has been proven that anthroponymy provides rich and unique materials for the study of historical patterns of Kyrgyz word formation and Kyrgyz ethnic history. The study of proper names from the point of view of synchronization and diachrony allows us to move from the description of certain patterns to a broad study of anthropological issues.

Regulation of Gender Correct Communication in an Academic Environment – Recommendations and Methodological Documents and their Application

The text examines gender-correct communication in the context of the recommendations of the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic and of Czech universities on the use of gender-neutral language in academic settings. Individual recommendations for the use of preferred words and constructions in order to emphasize the role of women in public and academic life, to express respect for persons with non-binary gender, and to reduce the masculinization of language are considered. The text also presents a contrasting view of the language situation in the Czech Republic and Bul-garia and the specifics of the sociolinguistic situation in the two countries. The potential possibility of linguistic realization of the principles of gender inclusive language in Czech and Bulgarian is observed, and differences are found, although both languages have the same word-formation patterns and are genetically related Slavic languages.

Deanthroponymic Names of Ural Minerals: Word-Formation Patterns

The study investigates the nomenclature of Ural minerals derived from anthroponyms. The data was sourced from printed and electronic publications on geology and mineralogy. The aim of the research is to analyze the primary word-formation patterns evident in the lexemes of the compiled corpus, discern deviations from traditional word-formation patterns, and ascertain their underlying causes. The deanthroponymic model emerges as the predominant one for mineral nomenclature, constituting 38% of the total number of names analyzed. The second most prevalent model is based on toponyms (22%). Models wherein mineral names are derived from indications of their geochemical composition or properties exhibit significantly lower frequency compared to the two aforementioned models. The most prevalent method of forming deanthroponymic mineral names (mineralonyms) entails incorporating the surname of a notable figure associated with mineralogy, followed by the addition of the formant -it (less frequently, -lit) or -in. Departures from this model manifest in two ways. Firstly, atypical formants such as -an, -zit, -oit, and -anit are utilized, which may be categorized as phonetic-graphic variants or instances of contamination of productive formants. Secondly, deviations occur in the base of the mineralonym, whereby the generating unit is not solely the surname but rather its constituent parts (in cases where the surname is multi-component), as well as the inclusion of the first name, first name and surname, or the root part of the surname translated into Latin. It can be posited that in the use of formally atypical models and approaches to mineralonym creation, the subjective aesthetic considerations of the nominator play a pivotal role, driven by the desire to craft a harmonious and user-friendly term. Additionally, the evident intention is to mitigate homonymy and other instances of ambiguity that are incompatible with a coherent terminological system and hinder the unequivocal association of the name with the denoted object.

Зоонимы арабо-персидского происхождения в башкирском языке и его диалектах

Introduction. The article attempts a first analysis of animal names of Arab-Persian origin in standard Bashkir and its dialects in their relation to other Turkic languages. Goals. The study aims to identify and systematize this lexical/thematic group of borrowings to Bashkir and its dialects, identify word-formation patterns of such borrowings, reveal how and when these lexemes appeared in Turkic languages. Materials and methods. The work explores a variety of available dictionaries to provide a most complete selection of animal names of Arab-Persian origin in standard Bashkir and its dialects. The employed research methods include the lexical/semantic and descriptive ones, those of structural, comparative and diachronic analysis, as well as the etymological method. Results. The paper introduces a comparative analysis of the mentioned zoonyms against ones traced in other Turkic (sometimes even Altaic at large) languages, provides insights into their etymologies, and determines approximate chronological boundaries of when the loanwords occurred in the Turkic languages. Our lexical/thematic classification efforts have yielded a number of name groups, such as ‘mammals’, ‘birds’, ‘fish’, ‘insects’ and others. Special attention is paid to Arab-Persian lexemes expressing common animal names. The following word-formation patterns for the examined zoonyms have been identified: 1) borrowings in the form of ready-made root stems be divided into subgroups, such as exotic names, culturally significant words, and medical terms; 2) composite combinations clustering within two subgroups, such as attributive constructions with ezāfe particles and ones without the latter (incl. compounding). So the study attests to the share of names borrowed to the Turkic languages via books are used only in standard Bashkir or considered outdated to be found only in classical Bashkir literary texts. However, the share of animal names introduced orally can be traced exclusively in dialects and have correspondences of Bashkir origin in the standard language.

Démonette-2, a derivational database for French with broad lexical coverage and fine-grained morphological descriptions

Morphological databases play an important role in linguistic research today. While several exist for the study of inflectional morphology in French, there is still a lack of resources for derivational morphology. This article presents Démonette-2, a new release of the French derivational morphology database Démonette. Developed in the context of the Démonext project, this database provides a framework in which it is possible to integrate various existing derivational resources. Démonette is characterized by its relational nature, which makes it possible to describe an extensive set of word formation patterns, including suffixation, prefixation, and a variety of non-canonical derivational processes such as conversion and parasynthetic formations. It reconciles broad coverage and fine-grained descriptions and is suitable for different audiences: morphologists working in different theoretical frameworks, teachers, speech therapists, NLP specialists, etc. The article presents in detail the structure and content of Démonette, its evolution since the first version, and its query interface.

Typology of Substantives Motivating Denominal Verbs

The article addresses substantives, from which denominal verbs are derived. The research focuses on derivational patterns of denominal verbs. The phenomenon under analysis has been approached in a variety of comparative, contrastive, and typological studies. While most of the works deal with denominal
 verbs structure and semantics, the dependence of the verbs meaning on their motivating substantives’ semantics remains understudied, which makes the present research relevant.
 The research objective is to identify correlations between the denominal verb meaning and its motivating substantive, and to infer the verb meaning on the basis of the motivating substantive semantics.
 The analysis of a number of substanive lexical features such as concrete / abstract / animate / inanimate, nomination by profession, instrument, time interval, etc., enables to suggest the nature of denominal verb and the motivating substantive meaning dependence.
 The conclusion can be made that the meaning of denominal verbs is likely to depend on the semantics of the motivating substantives. The probabilistic nature of this dependence is due to both extralinguistic factors, which influence the choice of a
 nomination feature (i.e. an action associated with a motivating substantive), and linguistic causes, among which are a set of word-formation patterns, their productivity, availability of potential derivatives’ synonyms and homonyms.

X-Wörter im Deutschen: Ein Wortbildungsmuster zur diskursiven Vermeidung von Begriffen

Abstract In this paper, we investigate the German word formation pattern X-Wort within the theoretical framework of discourse morphology. For this purpose, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic analyses are combined on the basis of the German reference corpus. It is shown that the word formation pattern is productive and extremely frequent. However, the meaning of the word formation product is not always clear, since only two X-Wörter (N-Wort and F-Wort) can be considered lexicalized. Instead of word meanings acquired through the formation, a common function of the X-Wörter can be identified: they are used in metalinguistic discourses to avoid and mask certain terms. In this context, X-Wörter differ with respect to the motivation of avoidance: (i) racist terms, (ii) vulgar terms, and (iii) politically and superstitiously explosive words are avoided and masked. Thus, X-Wörter are part of euphemistic language. As such, their use can also be enregistered, and acquire a social-symbolic function, which indicates moral-ethical ideas of the speaker or writer. Consequently, we describe the word formation pattern as a form-meaning/function-pair whose morphological structure perfectly fits its communicative needs to avoid and mask specific words in discourses.

Coexpression and synexpression patterns across languages: comparative concepts and possible explanations.

Meanings and linguistic shapes (or forms) do not always map onto each other in a unique way, and linguists have used all kinds of different terms for such situations: Ambiguity, polysemy, syncretism, lexicalization, semantic maps; portmanteau, cumulative exponence, feature bundling, underspecification, and so on. In the domain of lexical comparison, the term colexification has become generally established in recent years, and in the present paper, I extend this word-formation pattern in a regular way (cogrammification, coexpression; syllexification, syngrammification, synexpression). These novel terms allow us to chart the range of relevant phenomena in a systematic way across the grammar-lexicon continuum, and to ask whether highly general explanations of coexpression and synexpression patterns are possible. While there is no new proposal for explaining coexpression here, I will suggest that frequency of occurrence plays a crucial role in explaining synexpression patterns.

Specific botanical epithets meaning likeness

The topic of the present article is a linguistic analysis of specific botanical epithets meaning likeness, mainly those expressed by adjectives or participles. The types of adjectives and the different word-formation patterns are examined through which is represented similarity of the plant as a whole or its singular parts with the characteristics of another plant species or object. The article is based on the "Conspectus of the Bulgarian vascular flora", Sofia, 2012. Besides the particular epithet, are considered the binomial names that contain it. Each Latin name is followed by its standard meaning in English or a literal translation of the Latin lexemes when the standard meaning is missing.

Medical Terminology and the Reading of Medical English Texts

The study aims to explicit the importance of medical terminology in reading medical English texts and learn to understand a medical term by word-formation pattern and apply this into reading. By referring to various works and papers about medical terminology and reading medical English texts, their relationship was found. Upon this, word-formation pattern was used to decompound the word parts of medical terms, and the study was concluded with the application of this pattern in reading medical English texts. The study shows that characteristics of medical terminology can help a lot in understanding the complexity of medical terminology. Word-formation pattern enables readers to recognize prefixes, roots, and affixes of medical terminology and decomposed long and discouraging words. Word-formation pattern was useful in the understanding of both medical terminology and medical English texts. It could highly improve learners’ efficiency in remembering medical terms and in reading medical English texts.

Acquisition and processing of word formation in German

AbstractCognitive processing strategies can explain general word-formation preferences that influence the structures and their developments. They are based on simplicity, transparency, iconicity, salience, and frequency. We present and discuss evidence from our data on first language acquisition for how these cognitively based general preferences can explain the course of development of word formation and how they interact or compete. The analysis is based on the development of distributions of word formations in longitudinal data and panel data of child speech and their input from high and low socio-economic status families. In order to evaluate the productivity of a word-formation pattern in child speech, we applied the mini-paradigm criterion. Age-of-acquisition effects will be presented according to our own processing studies and to literature.

Deviant expansion of neoanthroponyms in the speech of social media users

The article analyzes modern ways of creating occasional anthroponyms in political media discourse as linguistic triggers of the slang level, aimed at modeling a certain type of perception of reality by the recipient, laid down and provided by the creator-speaking. The cause-and-effect relationships of going beyond the limits of the usus in the derivation of units in the historically conservative layer of anthroponyms are traced. There is a tendency towards active use of actual occasional and exotic word-formation patterns for derivation of derivatives. The orientation of derivational shifts towards the creation of pronounced invective lexemes and phrasemes in the context of the direct dependence of the degree of deviation on the expected communicative effect is stated. The exceptional significance for the described processes of action of structural-semantic analogies and associations with structurally similar lexemes from the normative dictionary is indicated. The processes of actualization of cognitive-affective triggers in recipients due to the connotative variability of non[1]derivatives have been investigated and described. The impossibility of establishing denotations of occasional derivatives in the case of their contextual isolation from a specific speech act is emphasized. Attention is drawn to the multiplicity of combinations of psycholinguistic meanings of derivatives and the blurring of their lexical semantics. The place of occasional derivatives-anthroponyms in modern political media discourse as deliberately used depressurizers of precedent statements is considered. The prospects for the development of the psycholinguistic aspect of occasional derivational processes for various communicative situations and spheres of human activity have been determined for the purpose of a comprehensive and more thorough study and description of the speech manifestation not only of an individual linguistic personality, but also of native speakers in general.

Analysis of Word Formation Process in Register Used by English and Indonesian Football Commentary

This study examines the use of register and word-formation in football commentary, focusing on Indonesian and English commentators. With European countries being the center of the football industry, studying the commentary from these languages can provide insights for other countries, including Indonesia. The aim of this research is to identify the application of register and classify word-formation patterns in Indonesian and English football commentary. Linguistic theories from experts such as George Yule, Katamba, O’Grady and Guzman, and Stockwell and Minkova are utilized. A descriptive qualitative research method is employed, analyzing video documentation of matches using Simak Bebas Libat Cakap (SLBC) to collect data. The findings reveal 78 word formations in both Indonesian and English commentary, with compounding and coinage being the most frequent processes. The word-formation analysis found compounding, coinage, borrowing, derivation, reduplication, and abbreviation. Differences and similarities are observed in terms of word usage, word-formation patterns, and the background factors influencing them.