Lecture 6
Word-structure and Word-formation
Plan:
1.Morphemes: meaning and classification. Morphemic types of words.
2.Segmentation of words into morphemes. Types of word segmentability.
3.Derivative structure. Derivational analysis.
4.Major types of word-formation: affixation, conversion, word-composition.
5.Secondary types of word-formation.
List of Literature:
1. Антрушина, Г.Б.Лексикология английского языка: учебник для студ. пед. ин-тов по спец. № 2103 "Иностр. яз." / Г.Б. Антрушина, О.В. Афанасьева, Н.Н. Морозова; под ред. Г.Б. Антрушиной. – М.: Высш. школа, 1985. – С. 58–64, 66–72, 79–92.
2. Воробей, А.Н. Глоссарий лингвистических терминов / А.Н. Воробей, Е.Г. Карапетова. – Барановичи: УО "БарГУ", 2004. – 108 с.
3. Дубенец, Э.М.Современный английский язык. Лексикология: пособие для студ. гуманит. вузов / Э.М. Дубенец. – М. / СПб.: ГЛОССА / КАРО, 2004. – С. 5–6, 19–22, 26, 37–45, 48–50, 58–70.
4. Лексикология английского языка: учебник для ин-тов и фак-тов иностр. яз. / Р.З. Гинзбург [и др.]; под общ. ред. Р.З. Гинзбург. – 2-е изд., испр. и доп. – М.: Высш. школа, 1979. – С. 89–95, 108–121, 123–125, 127–133, 138–141.
5. Лещева, Л.М. Слова в английском языке. Курс лексикологии современного английского языка: учебник для студ. фак-в и отдел. английского языка (на англ. яз.) / Л.М. Лещева. – Минск: Академия управления при Президенте Республики Беларусь, 2001. – С. 60–94.
List of Terms:
morpheme
root morpheme
free morpheme
bound morpheme
semi-bound morpheme
morphemic analysis
degree of derivation
productivity
word-formation
affixation
prefixation
suffixation
conversion
word-composition
shortening (contraction)
abbreviation
clipping
sound-imitation
reduplication
back-formation (reversion)
sound and stress interchange
blends
semantic extension
word-creation
Saul Bellow ’s Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March.
Saul Bellow (1915 –2005) was an acclaimed Canadian-born American writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1988.
Bellow is best known for writing novels that investigate isolation, spiritual dissociation, and the possibilities of human awakening, echoing his Jewish heritage. While on a Guggenheim fellowship in Paris, he wrote most of his best-known novel, The Adventures of Augie March.
He was born Solomon (nicknamed 'Sollie') Bellow in Lachine, Quebec (now part of Montreal), shortly after his parents had emigrated from St. Petersburg, Russia. The family moved to the slums of Chicago, the city where he received the schooling that was to form the backdrop to many of his novels, when he was nine; Bellow's father worked there as an onion importer. His lifelong love for the Bible began at four when he learned Hebrew. A period of illness in his youth both taught him self-reliance (he was a very fit man despite his bookishness) and provided an opportunity to satisfy Bellow's hunger for reading: reportedly he decided to be a writer when he first read Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. John Podhoretz, a student at the University of Chicago, said that Bellow and Allan Bloom, a close friend of Bellow, 'inhaled books and ideas the way the rest of us breathe air'.
In the 1930's, Bellow was part of the Chicago branch of the WPA Writer's Project, which included Chicago literary luminaries as Richard Wright and Nelson Algren. Most of the writers were radical. If they were not members of the Communist Party, they were sympathetic to communism.
Bellow taught at the University of Minnesota, New York University, Princeton, the University of Chicago, Bard College and Boston University, where he co-taught a class with James Wood ('modestly absenting himself' when it was time to discuss Seize the Day). In order to take up his appointment at Boston, Bellow moved in 1993 from Chicago to Brookline, Massachusetts, where he died on April 5, 2005, at age 89. He is buried at the Jewish cemetery Shir he harim of Brattleboro, Vermont.
Bellow began his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago but left after two years to complete his degree not in English, but in anthropology at Northwestern University. It has been suggested that the study of anthropology had an interesting influence on his literary style.
He was married five times.
Before Bellow started his career as a writer he wrote book reviews for ten dollars apiece. His early works earned him the reputation as one of the foremost novelists of the 20th century, and by his death he was regarded by some as the greatest living novelist in English. He was the first novelist to win the National Book Award three times. His friend and protégé Philip Roth has said of him, "The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists—William Faulkner and Saul Bellow. Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the 20th century."
Bellow's detractors considered his work conventional and old-fashioned, as if the author was trying to revive the 19th century European novel. The characters in his later novels did not ring true, his critics said. Herzog, Henderson, and the other "larger than life" characters in his later novels seemed to be fashioned from the author's philosophical obsessions, not from real life. His characters were seen as vehicles for his philosophical brooding or opportunities to display his erudition.
Major works: The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Seize the Day (1956), Henderson the Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964), Humboldt's Gift (1975), won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize.
The picaresque novel (Spanish: "picaresca", from "pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") is a popular subgenre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. This style of novel originated in Spain and flourished in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries and continues to influence modern literature.
A bildungsroman [bɪldʊŋs.roman], German: "novel of personal development") is a novel which traces the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character from (usually) childhood to maturity.
The Adventures of Augie March (1953) centers on the eponymous character who grows up during the Great Depression. This picaresque novel is an example of bildungsroman, tracing the development of an individual through a series of encounters, occupations and relationships from boyhood to manhood.
Bellow, via great artistry, garners sympathy for an individual always on the make and always willing to be used.
Although the picaresque style is among the oldest form of novel, Bellow's concerns are fundamentally modern. With an intricate plot and allusive style, he explores contrasting themes of alimentation and belonging, poverty and wealth, love and loss. The novel's concerns are both particular and universalistic. Its protagonist may be said to represent the modern Everyman – an individual struggling to make sense of, and succeed in, an alienating world. The novel is also specific to the American literary canon in that it celebrates the capacity of the individual to progress in society by virtue of nothing more than his own "luck and pluck". This idea is stated explicitly in the opening and most famous lines of the novel, in which the narrator defines himself as an American. This was an important act of self-definition for the autor and narrator, both immigrants to America. It also establishes the dual meaning of "America" in the novel: that is, the physical and political "America", as well as the more figurative "American" as a state-of-mind: “I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles”.
This celebration of the individual determines Bellow's presentation of fate in the novel. Unlike other picaresque novels, such as Fielding's Tom Jones, the plot of Augie March is never pre-determined. Things simply happen to Augie, one after another, with no evident story arc or hint as to where his adventures are leading. This contributes to the sense that Augie, as the Everyman, is lost in a chaotic world, but it also enhances the sense that the Everyman, as an autonomous creation, is in control of his own fate. By turns, Bellow exposes the alienating forces of the American city, while revealing the great opportunities that it offers.
Herzog (1964) was a major reason Bellow won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature. In a nod to the epistolary novels of early British literature, letters from the protagonist constitute much of the text in Herzog.
Herzog is a novel set in post-war America and is about the midlife crisis of a Jewish man named Moses E. Herzog. He is just emerging from his second divorce, this one particularly acrimonious. He has two children, one by each wife, who are growing up without him present. His career as a writer and as an academic has stalled. He is currently in a relationship with a vibrant woman, Ramona, but finds himself running away from commitment.
Herzog's second marriage, to the demanding, manipulative Madeleine, has recently ended in a humiliating fashion. Madeleine convinced Moses to move her and their daughter Junie to Chicago, and to arrange for their best friends, Valentine and Phoebe Gersbach, to move as well, securing a solid job for Valentine. However, the plans were all a ruse, as Madeleine and Valentine were carrying on an affair behind Moses's back, and shortly after arriving in Chicago, Madeline throws Herzog out, securing a restraining order (of sorts) against him, and attempting to have him committed to an asylum.
Herzog spends much of his time writing letters he never sends. These letters are aimed at friends, family members, and famous figures. The recipients may be dead, and Herzog has often never met these people. The one common thread is that Herzog is always expressing disappointment, either his own in the failings of others or their words, or apologizing for the way he has disappointed others.
The novel opens with Herzog in his house in Ludleyville, a town in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. He is contemplating returning to New York to see Ramona, but instead flees to Martha's Vineyard to visit some friends. He arrives at their house, but writes a note - this one an actual note - saying that he has to leave: "Not able to stand kindness at this time. Feeling, heart, everything in strange condition. Unfinished business."
He heads to New York to start trying to finish that business, including regaining custody of his daughter, Junie. After spending a night with Ramona, he heads to the courthouse to meet his lawyer to discuss his plans, and ends up witnessing a series of tragicomic court hearings, including one where a woman is charged with beating her three-year-old to death by flinging him against a wall. Moses, already distraught after receiving a letter from Junie's babysitter about an incident where Valentine locked Junie in the car while he and Madeleine argued inside the house, heads to Chicago. He goes to an aunt's house and picks up an antique pistol with two bullets in it, forming a vague plan of killing Madeleine and Valentine and running off with Junie.
The plan goes awry when he sees Valentine giving Junie a bath and realizes that Junie is in no danger. The next day, after taking his daughter to the aquarium, Herzog is in an auto accident and ends up charged with possession of a loaded weapon. His brother, the coldly rational Will, picks him up and tries to get him back on his feet. Herzog heads to Ludleyville, where his brother meets him and tries to convince him to check himself into an institution. But Herzog, who had previously considered doing just that, is now coming to terms with his life. Ramona comes up to join him for a night - much to Will's surprise - and Herzog begins making plans to fix up the house, which, like his life, needs repair but is still structurally sound. Herzog closes by saying that he doesn't need to write any more letters.
Through the flashbacks that litter the novel, other critical details of Herzog's life come to light, including his marriage to the stable Daisy and the existence of their son, Marco; the life of Herzog's father, a failure at every job he tried; and Herzog's sexual molestation by a stranger on a street in Chicago.