ords like hand-out, stand-by, lay-by, teach-in, shut-down are all converted from phrasal verbs.
7 - Unlike verbs, not all adjectives which are converted can achieve a full noun status. Some are completely converted, thus known as full conversion, others are only partially converted, hence partial conversion.
Words fully converted. A noun fully converted from an adjective has all the characteristics of nouns. It can take an indefinite article or - (e)s to indicate singular or plural number.
Words partially converted. Nouns partially converted from adjectives do not possess all the qualities a noun does. They must be used together with definite articles.
8 - Blending is the formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word. Words formed in this way are called blends or pormanteau words.
The overwhelming majority of blends are nouns; very few are verbs and adjectives are even fewer. Blends are mostly used in writing related to science and technology, and to newspapers and magazines.
9 - Another common way of making a word is to shorten a longer word by cutting a part off the original and using what remains instead. This is called clipping.
10 - Acronymy is the process of forming new words by joining the initial letters of names of social and political organizations or special noun phrases and technical terms. Words formed in this way are called initialisms or acronyms, depending on the pronunciation of the words.
Initialisms are words pronounced letter by letter.
Letters represent full words: VOA - Voice of America
Letters represent constituents in a compound or just parts of a word: TV - television
Acronyms are words formed from initial letters but pronounced as a normal word. Some acronyms are formed with the initial letter of the first word plus the whole of the second, N-bomb nuclear bomb
11 - Back-formation is considered to be the opposite process of suffixation. Words created through back-formation are mostly verbs.
12 - Modern English has a large number of words which come from proper nouns. They include names of people, names of places, names of books and trade names.
Chapter 5
1 - Reference is the relationship between language and the world.
2 - Meaning and concept are closely connected but not identical. They are both related directly to referents and are notions of the words but belong to different categories.
Concept, which is beyond language, is the result of human cognition, reflecting the objective world in the human mind. It is universal to all men alike regardless of culture, race, language and so on whereas meaning belongs to language, so is restricted to language use.
Therefore, a concept can have as many referring expressions as there are languages in the world. Even in the same language, the same concept can be expressed in different words.
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