Modes of Modern English Vocabulary Development

Creation refers to the formation of new words by using the existing materials, namely roots, affixes and other elements. In modern times, this is the most important way of vocabulary expansion. There is a variety of means to produce words. The most productive are affixation, composition and conversion. Let's focus on one of them: composition.

According to the research, words produced through composition constitute 28% to 30% of all the new words. It is also called compounding which is a way to join two words to make a new special meaning. The result is called "compound." When a word which is needed does not exist, all one has to do is choose a free words and hyphenate them. That's how a compound is created. This is the common practice of journalists. This is probably accounts for the high productivity of compounds.

Noun compounds occur in several fields. There are new words relating to science and technology like biological clock, lunar module; Changes in politics and economy supply such words as hot line, Watergate and siege economics; Identity crisis, encounter group and fast food are the reflection of social life.

Referring to the Adjective compounds, three patterns play an important role in the formation of new words: ⑴、n.+ v.-ing: law-abiding; ⑵、n. + a.: bitter-sweet; ⑶、n. + v.-ed: hard-won.

Verb compounds are not as common as the other two classes. The limited number of verbs are created either through conversion or backformation. Words like blue-print, cold-shoulder are directly converted from their noun compounds, while back-formed verb compounds are formed mainly by dropping the suffixes:-er, -ion, etc.. For example, mass-produce is from mass production, and ghost-write is from ghost-writer.

What we talked about so far is restricted to two-stem compounds. There are many compounds which contain more than two stems. In mass media we may often come across expressions like a middle-of-the-road politician, ahead-of-schedule general election.

 semantic change

Broadly speaking, semantic change refers to the alteration of the meaning of existing words, as well as the addition of new meaning to established words. Many people consider that Shakespeare's plays are particularly difficult to understand. Because many words used in his time had different senses from what they have now in contemporary dictionaries. Take Hamlet for example. "fond" designates "foolish" as in "I'll wipe away all trivial fond records." Examples like these are numerous.

Extension has played an important part in semantic change. Extension of meaning, also known as generalization, is a process in which a word achieves a more general meaning.