Morphemic Repetition. Extension of Morphemic Valency

The basic unit of this level being a morpheme we shall concentrate on examining the ways of foregrounding a morpheme so that the latter, apart from its internet meaning, becomes vehicle of additional information - logical, emotive, expressive.

One important way of promoting a morpheme is its repetition. Both root and affixational morphemes can be emphasized through repetition. Especially vividly it is observed in the repetition of affixational morphemes which normally carry the main weight of the structural and not of the denotational significance. When repeated, they come into the focus of attention and stress either their logical meaning (e.g. that of contrast, negation, absence of quality as in prefixes a-, anti-, mis-; or of smallness as in suffixes -ling and -ette); their emotive and evaluative meaning, as in suffixes forming degrees of comparison; or else they add to the rhythmical effect and text unity.

The second, even more effective way of using a morpheme for the creation of additional information is extension of its normative valency which results in the formation of new words. They are not neologisms in the true sense for they are created for special communicative situations only, and are not used beyond these occasions. This is why they are called occasional words and are characterized by freshness, originality, lucidity of their inner form and morphemic structure.

Very often occasional words are the result of morphemic repetition. Cf.: "I am an undersecretary in an underbureau." The stress on the insignificance of the occupation of I. Shaw's heroine brings forth both-the repetition of the prefix under- and the appearance, due to it, of the occasional word "underbureau".

In case of repetition a morpheme gains much independence and bears major responsibility for the creation of additional information and stylistic effect. In case of occasional coinages an individual morpheme is only instrumental in bringing forth the impact of their combination, i.e. of new individual lexical unit.

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