Exercises and Tasks

Exercise 1. Examine the following definition of "word" from different dictionaries and comment on them.

· Collins English Dictionary (1992):

one of the units of speech or writing that native speakers of a language usually regard as the smallest meaningful element of the language, although linguists would analyse these further into morphemes.

· Illustrated Oxford Dictionary (1998):

a sound or combination of sounds forming a meaningful element of speech, usually shown with a space on either side of it when written or printed.

· Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary (1996):

a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that can stand as a complete utterance or can be separated from the elements that accompany it in an utterance by other such units. Words are composed of one or more morphemes with relative freedom to enter into syntactic construction, and are either the smallest units susceptible of independent use or consist of two or three such units combined under certain linking conditions, as with the loss of primary accent which distinguishes 'blackbird from 'black 'bird.

Exercise 2. Comment on structural types of words. Arrange the following words into:

a) simple,

b) derived,

c) compounds,

d) derivational compounds.

Railway, child, childish, bald-headed, toy, mute, deaf, deaf-mute, act. actor, longlegged, dark, darkness, friend, friendship, everything, boyishness, open-hearted, daytime, narrow-minded, whatever, big, biggish, space, spaceman, old, old-timer, teenager, ill, ill-mannered, double, fame, famous, norm, normal, sunrise, timesaving, sharp, sharpen, hand, handful, handy, moon, honey-mooner, week-end, bare, leg, bare-legged, three-coloured, film, film-star, mistress, breakdown, overgrow, light-blue.

Exercise 3. Arrange the following words into three groups: those having:

a) free stems;

b) bound stems;

c) semi-bound stems.

Public, voyage, boyish, disarrange, manly, freedom, vital, waiter, experience, businesslike, annual, speechless, careful, policeman, well-known, half-done, personal, difference, patience, untrue, longish, length, likely, terrorist, unselfish, tremendous, famous, weekly.

Exercise 4. Comment on simple stems and derived stems. Arrange the following words into two groups:

a) those having simple stems,

b) those having derived stems.

Hearty, heartily, organise, organised, consciously, boyish, boyishness, enslave, enslavery,

effortless, boxer, princess, quickly, familiarity, brutality, singer, steadiness, courageous,

worker, boiled, appearance.

Exercise 5. Give allomorphs of the negative prefix in-. Form adjectives using these allomorphs.

Regular, polite, rational, mortal, movable, legal, proper, mobility, literate, logical, mature,

measurable, patience, perfect, personal, relevant, responsible.