Ways of word formation in Russian

The Russian language is an infinite phenomenon, dynamic. He instantly reacts to what is happening around. In the language new words are constantly formed, the old concepts go away, and then they can return to the language, having a new meaning. This happened, for example, with the word cabman . It left the language together with the disappearance of this profession. However, in perestroika times, when the private taxi began to develop, the word returned to spoken language. Today in many cities they call illegal taxi drivers.

How are words formed in Russian? Ways of word formation are different. In Russian there are four main ways, each of which has its own gradations and features.

1. The most productive not only in Russian, but also in all Slavic languages is the morphological method. He means creating new words with the help of morphemes. Within it are several types of word formation with the help of morphemes. Morphoma is also called a significant minimal unit of language, which is part of a word that has its own meaning. From this point of view, the morphological way of word formation is divided into:

• Binding when the affix precedes the root. ( Always - forever, pretty - pretty, go - leave, light - dawn ).
• The suffix. Affix stands after the root, but joins its base. ( Work - working, writing - writing, weaver - weaving, good - pretty ).
• The prefix-suffixes of word-formation, as the name suggests, form a new word by simultaneously joining the prefix and postfix basis to the basis. ( Window - window sill, write - sign, autumn - autumnal ). Most often, verbs are formed in this way ( walking - diverge ), nouns ( snow - snowdrop ).
• The non-suffix way of word formation is that the word "dumps" the ending and the suffix. Most often this is how verbal nouns are formed. ( Heat - heating, scolding - swearing ). But other variants are also possible ( Broad - wide, black - mobile ).
• Addition. Words can be formed by adding the whole words ( bed-sofa, automatic telephone ), the foundations of the word ( salary, gym ), with the help of connecting vowels ( steelworker, pathfinder ), from the initial letters ( MSU, STSI , TYUZ, MKhAT ).

There are other ways of word formation.

2. Lexico-semantic. In this case, one known word splits into homonyms (different in meaning, but similar in pronunciation or spelling of a word). This method is a vivid confirmation of the dynamic nature of language as a phenomenon. The semantics of the word changes, because over time, the different meanings of multi-valued words become distant or their connection is lost. (A boxer is an athlete and a dog, ether is a gas and the term is a television broadcast, a braid is a tool, a river braid, a female hairdo, a sponge is a class of invertebrates, a piece of foam ).

3. Morphological-syntactic, in which the word "changes" part of the speech. (In Anna (adj.) Room - bathroom (n.), Ice cream, cake) .

4. Lexical-syntactic, allowing to form a new word by merging the two "old" ( frost-resistant, now, momentary ).

All the listed ways of word formation are characteristic for the Russian and Slavic languages, they serve as a tool for replenishing the vocabulary. However, not only the newly formed words supplement the lexicon.

It is worth mentioning such a phenomenon as borrowing from other languages. This phenomenon, on the one hand, has nothing to do with word formation. On the other hand, new words are derived from borrowed words with the help of these word formation methods (especially in colloquial speech). So there was a computer (from a computer), a flash drive (from a flash card).

Word formation, like all other layers of the language, is clearly normalized. The norms are fixed in dictionaries, textbooks, codes of rules.