Armenian Folia Anglistika Methodology

Enriching Learners’ Vocabulary

by Means of
Derivative Word-Building Patterns

E nglish vocabulary has increased greatly in more than

1500 years of development. It has been estimated
that the present English vocabulary consists of more than one
million words, including slang and dialectal expressions,
scientific and technical terms, many of which only came into
use after the middle of the 20th century. Thus, the English
language has one of the most extensive vocabularies in the
world. However, the average native speaker uses around only
five thousand words in everyday speech.
Extensive, constant borrowings from major languages,
especially from Latin, Greek, French, the Scandinavian
Lili Karapetyan
languages, and from numerous minor languages, account for
the great number of words in the English vocabulary. In addition, certain processes have
led to the creation of many new words, as well as to the establishment of patterns for
further extension. Among these processes are affixation, compounding and conversion,
which are the three main types of word-formation characteristic of the English
language. Since there are few established rules of compounding and conversion,
it would be reasonable to focus on affixation, which is probably the most
important of the above mentioned processes and appears to have added the largest
number of words to the English vocabulary.
Suffixes continue to be productive in the formation of many new words in English.
For example, -iac has been added to the word brain to create the new word
brainiac (someone who spends a lot of time studying and thinking about
complicated ideas, but who is often unable to communicate with people in
ordinary social situations). A large number of new words have also been created
through the addition of the suffix -ization, as in dollarization (a situation in which
countries outside the US want to use the dollar rather than their own country’s
currency) or globalization (the process by which countries all over the world
become connected, especially because large companies are doing business in many
different countries).
Prefixes have become more widespread recently. Cyber- is a good example of
prefix which has been used to create a range of new words (originally meaning
“computer”, now often meaning “to do with the Internet”) cybercrime, cyberfraud,
cyberland. Dozens of new words formed by prefixes relate to size, both large and
very small , such as micro-, super- and multi-, as in microbrewery (a small company
that makes only small quantities of beer), microengineering, supersize, multi-tasking.

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The vast majority of the new words entering the language are made up out of
existing components.
In the context of learning English as a foreign language, a good syllabus
could do a lot to heighten learners’ awareness of high-frequency patterns of
affixation in English. To teach learners strategies, to help them cope with the
language that is new to them, R. Gairns and S. Redman (2001) suggest a variety
of different classroom activities which focus on different aspects of word-building.
They point out that the time and effort devoted to this area in the classroom
will depend on the teaching situation, the needs and goals of learners.
It must also be mentioned that learners’ ideas of the word-building possibilities
of the target language are strictly influenced by their native language. For speakers
of Latin-based languages, certain prefixes and suffixes in the English language will
be similar to those of their mother tongue and, therefore, will present little
difficulty. Meanwhile Armenian speakers will have difficulties in learning these
affixes since Armenian and English have different morphological systems.
Learners also need to be autonomous and independent and to make conscious
efforts to learn vocabulary outside the classroom because the exposure to the target
language is limited in class. So, explicit vocabulary teaching is necessary for
learners to be able to guess the meaning of some unknown words without a
dictionary and also to make up some potential words - words which do not exist
but which could conceivably become part of the language.
This aim can be achieved through word-building patterns, by which we understand
a ‘fixed structure which has a generalized word-building meaning and can be
filled with various material’ (Ñòåïàíîâà, 1968). And by word-building meaning we
understand the meaning of the derived word, which is inferred from the meanings of the
structural components of the pattern.
Inference to a great extent depends on the correspondence of the structures of the
foreign language to those of learners’ native tongue. If the structural and semantic
relations existing between the affix and the base coincide, or if a regular correspondence
can be established between them, the degree of inference of the words built on that
pattern becomes considerably high.
According to this principle, such word-building patterns as “un- + Adj”
(unpleasant), “N + -less” (useless) ,“ Adj + -ness” (darkness), “Adj + -y’’ (cloudy), etc.
can be selected for teaching purposes, while patterns like “N + -esque” (arabesque),
“Adj + -some’’ (wholesome) and the like cannot as in the first case the semantic relations
between the elements are clear, while in the latter case they are not.
The clearer the word-building pattern, the freer the formation of new words
analogous to it will be.
Derivative word-building patterns will help to develop language learners’ receptive
and reproductive skills. With receptive skills learners will be able to make informed
guesses about the meaning of unknown units; in terms of reproductive skills a
knowledge of some productive word-building patterns will widen learners’ creative
abilities, which can also be treated as a communicative strategy.

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Armenian Folia Anglistika Methodology

For teaching purposes we give preference to developing receptive skills for

learning word-building patterns since the possibilities of word-creation are limited
in every language. In this respect, learners need to acquire receptive skills to
enable them to understand the meanings of unknown words while reading texts.
In fact, studies show that skilled readers fill in sentence blanks with the morphologically
correct words, regardless of whether the word choices are real or nonsense words. They
are able to respond to the components of the patterns themselves and not just to familiar
words. Not only does this strategy help learners read more words quickly, it also helps
them distinguish between true morphological relationships (such as, ‘space/spacial’)
and false ones (like ‘tail/tailor’), which, in turn, speeds reading efficiency.
The ability to infer the meaning of a derived word leads to the extension
of learners’ potential vocabulary and the development of grounded linguistic guess-
work.
As Bright and McGregor (1970: 31) point out: “Perhaps the most important
thing of all is to remember that the ability to infer in this way is a skill that
can only be acquired by practice. Every time we tell a pupil what a word means,
we are robbing him of a chance to practise that skill”.
Nation, however, argues that using affixation and roots alone as a means of
guessing is unreliable, and states that, if it is used as an initial step in the guessing
process, this guess at the meaning is more likely to lead to twisting the interpretation of
the context than allowing interpretation of the context to modify the guess at the
meaning. In other words, when learners make an incorrect guess based on word form,
they try to interpret the context to support the incorrect guess. Indeed, the same
derivative word can have different meanings, and it is the context that determines the
right meaning. Thus, in the sentences
1. He has foxy lips. 2. He is a foxy guy. 3. He has foxy hair.
the adjective foxy has quite different meanings 1. similar to an animal, 2. similar to a
man possessing some qualities of that animal, 3. a definite colour - reddish-brown .
As has already been stated above, word-building patterns can be looked upon as a
resource in the language, something the learners should be allowed to experiment with
and use strategically. Isolating a small group of highly productive word-building
patterns, we might observe, for example, whether they can encourage learners to create
new words. Some of their creations will probably be words that already exist in the
language, others will be non-established words. This latter group need not be ignored,
but can be explored for literary value or simply for filling ‘gaps’ in the language.
Creative word-formation can also be seen as a communicative strategy, for supplying
formations when the right word cannot be found.
Thus, the better a foreign language learner masters the word-building structures of
the language, the wider his possibilities of assimilating the vocabulary are.

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Methodology Armenian Folia Anglistika

References:

1. Ñòåïàíîâà Ì.Ä. Ìåòîäû Ñèíõðîííîãî Àíàëèçà Ëåêñèêè. Ì., 1968.

2. Bright J.A., McGregor G.P. Teaching English as a Second Language. London,
1970.
3. Nation P. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001.
4. Gairns R., Redman S. Working with Words (A Guide to Teaching and Learning
Vocabulary). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
5. McCarthy M. Vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

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