The Principles of Economy in Word-Formation in Functional Styles of English

Abstract

The article is devoted to studying the principles of the language economy of modern English word-forming. The most productive ways of word-formation are highlighted, illustrating the tendency of the language to compress nominative units. In the system of English word-formation, the most effective ways to save speech are affixal word formation, word composition, and conversion. Due to the considerable potential of these methods of word formation, the vocabulary of the English language has such qualities as the richness of vocabulary, functionality, and economy. The main aim of the study is to consider the principles of word-formation in the modern English language through word-forming models represented by the concepts of length and depth of the generating word. The authors of the article explore the mechanism of the principle of the economy through the consideration of the ideas of “mental energy”, “word-forming energy”, and “pronouncing energy”. There are issues that attempt to answer; how does the principle of economy work in the English language – its word formation? What are the significant models of word formation in modern English? The findings indicate that there are active processes in the word-formation of the English language, which can cause the formation of new words without changing the length and depth of the generating term expanding the possibilities of word composition and conversion.

Keywords: abbreviation, acronyms, economy, English language, functional styles, mental energy, morpheme, phoneme, principle, pronouncing energy, speech economy, word-formation, word-forming energy