German Youth Language: Word-Formation Types of Suffix Nouns and Their Semantic Relations

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of word-formation types in modern German youth slang and a description of their systemic paradigmatic relations. The research material was a large group of suffix nouns, presented in the dictionaries of youth slang, as well as on youth literature sites. The suffix nouns formed by the word-formation type “producing basis + suffix” are analyzed in the article. The deep connections of motivating and motivated units are revealed, which reflect the logic of the connections of objects of reality in the linguistic consciousness, and the implementation of these relations in word-formation types is also traced. As a result of the analysis of word-formation meanings in the group of German nouns, which are youth slangisms constructed according to the “base + suffix” model, 4 main word-formation types were identified. The analysis proves that the thematic associations of the same word-formation type are in a variety of paradigmatic relationships, which at the lexical level are manifested in the form of synonymy, hypo- and hyperonymy, antonymy and polysemy. The word-formation types of suffix nouns studied in this work allowed to conclude that the intra-type and inter-type semantic relations are manifested most variably in the lexical-semantic field “Human designation”.

Keywords

• german youth slang
• word-formation type
• derivative
• derivational meaning
• productivity
• systemic paradigmatic relationships
• intra-type and inter-type semantic relations