Complex Words in English PDF DOWNLOAD

Complex Words in English PDF download

This book was first planned as a second edition of An Introduction to Modern English Word-formation (1973). In the event, nothing of that work has remained, aside from a handful of examples which I was unwilling to relinquish. The earlier book coalesced rather fortuitously, it now seems to me, around an initial interest in some of the more eccentric kinds of word creation, specifically blends. My aim in this one has been to give a much more inclusive account of word formation in English.

In the intervening period, morphology has made considerable advances in status and scope, and there have been some varied and innovative approaches to the description of complex words. In investigating the different kinds of word-making, more and less systematic, I have gained much from the descriptive studies which have appeared in the last twenty-five years or so.

An appreciable number of examples in my first book were elucidated and vouched for by the phrases and sentences in which I found them. Such illustrations in context are a more prominent feature of this book, thanks largely to the new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and its Compact Disc version. Its resources have been an essential counterbalance to my intuitions about likely, unlikely and impossible complex words.

I am very grateful to Bas Aarts and Jill House for their advice on parts of the book, and to Randolph Quirk for helpful comments on all of it.

Complex Words in English

Complex Words in English PDF

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