Ways of word formation in Russian

Русский язык - явление бесконечное, динамичное.He instantly reacts to what is happening around. New words constantly form in the language, the old concepts go away, and then they can return to the language, having a new meaning. This happened, for example, with the word cab. It left the language together with the disappearance of thisprofession. 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 way. It 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 the significant minimal unit of language that 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-suffixal ways of word-formation, as the name suggests, form a new word by simultaneously attaching the prefix and postfix to the basis. (Window - window sill, write - sign, fall - autumnal). The most common are verbs (walk), nounssnow - 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 - heat, scold - abuse). But other options are also possible (Broad - wide, black - mobile).
• Addition. Words can be formed by adding whole words (a sofa bed, a pay phone), the foundations of the word (salary, gym), with the help of connecting vowels (steelmaker, tracker), from the initial letters (MSU, STSI, Theater of Youth, Moscow Art Theater).

There are other ways of word formation.

2. Lexico-semantic.In this case, one known word is split 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, different meanings of multi-valued words are removed or their connection is lost. (Boxer - sportsman and dog, ether - gas and the term of telecasting, braid - tool, river spit, female hairdo, sponge - class of invertebrates, foam product).

3. Morphological-syntactic, in which the word "changes" part of the speech. (ATanna (adj.) room - bathroom (n.), ice cream, cake).

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

All listed ways of word formationare 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 borrowingfrom other languages. This phenomenon, on the one hand, has nothing to do with word formation. On the other hand, new words are often derived from words that have been borrowed with the help of these word formation methods (especially in colloquial speech). So there were computer (from the computer), a flash card (from a flash card).

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