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'I'm delighted to see this classic textbook updated and improved to bring Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy's learned but easily approachable text to new generations of students. Carstairs-McCarthy has a knack for making theory comprehensible and for providing apt examples to illustrate his points. ' Laurie Bauer, University of Wellington What exactly are words? Are they the things that get listed in dictionaries, or are they the basic units of sentence structure? Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy explores the implications of these different approaches to words in English. He explains the various ways in which words are related to one another, and shows how the history of the English language has affected word structure. Topics include: words, sentences and dictionaries; a word and its parts (roots and affixes); a word and its forms (inflection); a word and its relatives (derivation); compound words; word structure; productivity; and the historical sources of English word formation. Key Features - Presupposes no linguistic training - Aimed at students of English (literature or language) and also provides a sound basis for further linguistic study - Contains ample exercise material, with answers and discussion, which can serve as models for further exercises Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Cover design & illustration: River Design, Edinburgh
List of contents
1. Introduction
2. Words, sentences and dictionaries
3. A word and its parts: roots, affixes and their shapes
4. A word and its forms: inflection
5. A word and its relatives: derivation
6. Compound words, blends and phrasal words
7. A word and its structure
8. Productivity
9. The historical sources of English word formation
10. Conclusion: words in English and in languages generally
Discussion of the exercises; Glossary; References
About the author
Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy is a professor at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand where he teaches linguistics. He studied at Oxford, MIT, and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he gained his PhD. His previous books are
Allomorphy in Inflexion, Current Morphology and
The Origins of Complex Language.
