PRODUCTIVE WORD-BUILDING PATTERNS IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE INTERNET DISCOURSE

Abstract

The paper defines and characterizes the productive word-building patterns after which new words in the Englishlanguage Internet discourse are formed. Innovations in modern English reflect the development and adaptation of the language to new functioning conditions, which change under the influence of external factors. The study of word-building patterns, after which these new words are formed, is of great interest for the study of new vocabulary as a means of reflecting changes in modern linguistic culture, for compiling and updating explanatory, bilingual, multilingual dictionaries, etc. The observation of the English-language Internet discourse shows that words both with affixes and without affixes are widely used in it. Productive, in addition to prefixes (cyber-, giga-, nano-, micro-) and suffixes (-er, -ist, –ism, -ing), are word-building elements – prefixoids and suffixoids of Greek and Latin origin (audio-, bio-, tele-), as well as English elements of the abbreviation type (e-, i-). A significant number of derivatives of the Internet are created with the help of affixes and affixoids (affixal elements), the meaning of which is related to the information and communication field: dot-/ -dot, e-, i-, -com, -net, cyber-, -ware, etc. The Englishlanguage Internet discourse is constantly replenished with compound words, abbreviations, and words formed by blending, telescoping, and analogy. Internet discourse is characterized by specific vocabulary units – a special layer of words that appeared under the influence of computerization and internetization of social and public life and entered the general system of the English language, correlating in a way with the elements of its lexico-phraseological and grammatical levels. First of all, these are semantic neologisms, internal borrowings (for example, from the slang of computer scientists and programmers); terms fixed in general use that serve the basis for new derivatives. The analyzed lexical units, formed and distributed in Internet discourse, testify to the pragmatic conditioning of their appearance. The study of productive word-building patterns helps to predict trends in the development of the English word-building system, as well as to understand the meaning of new words.