COMBINING FORMS.

ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY

It has already been mentioned in the beginning of this chapter that there exist linguistic forms which in
modern languages are used as bound forms although in Greek and Latin from which they are borrowed they
functioned as independent words.
The question at once arises whether being bound forms, they should be treated like affixes and be
referred to the set of derivatives, or whether they are nearer to the elements of compounds, because in
languages from which they come they had the status of words. In fact we have a fuzzy set whose elements
overlap with the set of affixes on the one hand and with that of words on the other. Different
lexicographers have treated them differently but now it is almost universally recognised that they constitute
a specific type of linguistic units.
Combining forms are particularly frequent in the specialised vocabularies of arts and sciences. They
have long become familiar in the international scientific terminology. Many of them attain widespread
currency in everyday language.
To illustrate the basic meaning and productivity of these forms we give below a short list of Greek
words most frequently used in producing combining forms together with words containing them.
Astron ‘star’ — astronomy, autos ‘self’ — automatic; bios ‘life’ — biology, electron ‘amber’ —
electronics;1 ge ‘earth’ — geology, graph-ein ‘to write’ — typography, hydor ‘water’ —hydroelectric;
logos ‘speech’ — physiology, oikos ‘house’, ‘habitat’ — 1) economics, 2) ecological system’, philein
‘love’ —philology, phone ‘sound’, ‘voice’ — telephone;

1
Electricity was first observed in amber. 104
photos ‘light’ — photograph; skopein ‘to view’ — microscope; tēle ‘far’ — telescope.
It is obvious from the above list that combining forms mostly occur together with other combining
forms and not with native roots. Lexicological analysis meets with difficulties here if we try to separate
diachronic and synchronic approach and distinguish between the words that came into English as
borrowings and those coined on this model on the English soil. From the synchronic point of view, which
coincides with that of an educated English speaking person, it is immaterial whether the morphological
motivation one recognises in the word аиtopilot originated in modern times or is due to its remote
ancestry in Latin and Greek. One possible criterion is that the word in question could not have existed in
Greek or Latin for the simple reason that the thing it names was invented, discovered or developed only
much later.
Almost all of the above examples are international words, each entering a considerable word-family.
A few of these word-families we shall now describe though briefly, in order to give an idea of the rich
possibilities this source of word-building provides.
Auto- comes from the Greek word autos ‘self’ and like bio-, eco-, hydro- and many others is mostly
used initially. One of the first English words containing this element was automaton borrowed from late
Latin in the 16th century. OED dates the corresponding adjective automatic as appearing in 1586.
The word autograph belonging to this word-family is a good example of how combining forms
originate. It was borrowed from French in the 17th century. Its etymology is: Fr autograph<late Latin
autographum <Gr autographos ‘that which is written in one’s own handwriting’. Hence in the 19th
century the verb — ‘to write with one’s own hand’, ‘to give an autograph’. Thus the word
autograph provides one of the patterns so well established in English that they are freely segmented
providing material for new combinations.
In English as well as in Russian and other languages word coining with the form auto- is especially
intense in the 19th century and goes on in the 20th. Cf. autobiography, autodiagnosis, autonomy,
autogenic (training).
There are also many technical terms beginning with auto- and denoting devices, machines and
systems, the chief basis of nomination being ‘self-acting’, ‘automatic’. E. g. autopilot, autoloader, auto-
starter or auto-changer ‘apparatus on a record-player for changing the records’.
The word automobile was coined not in the English but in the French language and borrowed from
French. The word itself is more often used in America, in Britain they prefer its synonym motor-car or
simply car, it proved productive in giving a new homonym — a free-standing word auto, a clipping of
the word automobile. This in its turn produces such compounds as: autobus, autocross ‘an automobile
competition’, auto-drome. It is thus possible for a combining form to be homonymous to words. One
might also consider such pairs as auto- and auto or -graph and graph as doublets (see § 13.3) because of
their common origin The Greek word bios ‘life’, long known to us in the internationalism biography,
helps to name many branches of learning dealing with living organisms: bio-astronautics, biochemistry,
bio-ecology, biology, bionics, biophysics. Of these bio-astronautics, bio-ecology and bionics are the
newest, and therefore need explanation. Bio-astronautics (note also the combining forms astro- and
-naut-) is the study of man’s physical capabilities and needs, and the means of meeting those in outer
space. Bio-ecology is also an interesting example because the third combining form is so often used in
naming branches of study. Cf. geology, lexicology, philology, phonology. The form eco- is also very
interesting. This is again a case of doublets. One of these is found in economics, economist, economise,
etc. The other, connoting environment, receives now the meaning of ‘dealing with ecology’. The general
concern over the growing pollution of the environment gave rise to many new words with this element:
eco-climate, eco-activist, eco-type, eco-catastrophe, eco-development ‘development which balances
economic and ecological factors’. Bionics is a new science, its name is formed by bio-+-onics. Now
-onics is not a combining form properly speaking but what the Barnhart Dictionary of New English calls
a b s t r a c t e d f o r m which is defined as the use of a part of the word in what seems to be the
meaning it contributes. The term here is well motivated, because bionics is the study of how man and
other living beings perform certain tasks and solve certain problems, and the application of the findings
to the design of computers and other electronic equipment.
The combining form geo- not only produced many scientific terms in the 19th century but had been
productive much earlier: geodesy and geography come down from the 16th century, geometry was known
in the 14th century and geology in the 18th.
In describing words containing the forms auto-, bio-, and geo- we have already come across the form
graph meaning ‘something written’. One can also quote some other familiar examples: hydrography,
phonograph, photograph, telegraph.
Words beginning with hydro- are also quite familiar to everybody: hydrodynamic, hydroelectric,
hydromechanic, hydroponic, hydrotherapeutic.

HYBRIDS

Words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages are called
h y b r i d s . English contains thousands of hybrid words, the vast majority of which show various
combinations of morphemes coming from Latin, French and Greek and those of native origin.
Thus, readable has an English root and a suffix that is derived from the Latin -abilis and borrowed
through French. Moreover, it is not an isolated case, but rather an established pattern that could be
represented as English stem+-able. Cf. answerable, eatable, likable, usable. Its variant with the native
negative prefix un- is also worthy of note: un-+English stem+-able. The examples for this are:
unanswerable, unbearable, unforeseeable, unsayable, unbelievable. An even more

frequent pattern is un-+Romanic stem + -able, which is also a hybrid: unallowable, uncontrollable,
unmoveable, unquestionable, unreasonable and many others. A curious example is the word
unmistakable, the ultimate constituents of which are: un-(Engl)+mis-(Engl)+-tak-(Scand) +-able (Fr).
The very high valency of the suffix -able [эbl] seems to be accounted for by the presence of the
homographic adjective able [eibl ] with the same meaning.
The suffix of personal nouns -ist derived from the Greek agent suffix -istes forms part of many
hybrids. Sometimes (like in artist, dentist) it was borrowed as a hybrid already (Fr dentiste<Lat dens,
dentis ‘a tooth’ + -ist). In other cases the mixing process took place on English soil, as in fatalist (from
Lat fatalis) or violinist (from It violino, diminutive of viola), or tobacconist ‘dealer in tobacco’ (an
irregular formation from Sp tabaco).
When a borrowed word becomes firmly established in English this creates the possibility of using it as
a stem combined with a native affix. The phenomenon may be illustrated by the following series of
adjectives with the native suffix -less: blameless, cheerless, colourless, countless, doubtless, faceless,
joyless, noiseless, pitiless, senseless. These are built on the pattern that had been established in the
English language and even in Old English long before the corresponding French loans were taken up.
Prof. B.A. Ilyish mentions the following adjectives formed from noun and verbal stems: slæpleas
‘sleepless’; zeliefleas ‘unbelieving’; arleas ‘dishonest’; recceleas ‘reckless’. It goes without saying that
there are many adjectives in which -less is combined with native stems: endless, harmless, hopeless,
speechless, thankless.
The same phenomenon occurs in prefixation and inflection. The noun bicycle has a Latin prefix (bi-),
a Greek root (cycle<kyklos ‘a wheel’), and it takes an English inflection in the plural: bicycles. There are
also many hybrid compounds, such as blackguard (Engl+Fr) or schoolboy (Gr+Engl); сf. aircraft in
which the first element came into English through Latin and French about 1600 but is ultimately derived
from the Greek word aēr, whereas the second element is Common Germanic.
Observation of the English vocabulary, which is probably richer in hybrids than that of any other
European language, shows a great variety of patterns. In some cases it is the borrowed affixes that are
used with native stems, or vice versa. A word can simultaneously contain borrowed and native affixes.

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