Main word formation processes - Word и Excel - помощь в работе с программами

The ‘Word Formation Process’ is regarded as the branch of Morphology, and it has a significant role in expanding the vocabulary that helps us communicate very smoothly. The main objectives of the word-formation process are to form new words with the same root by deploying different rules or processes.

In other words, we can say that the word-formation process is a process in which new words are formed by modifying the existing terms or completely changing those words.

Let us see the fundamental word-formation processes in linguistics:

Derivation

‘Derivation’ is a significant word-formation process that attaches derivation affixes to the main form to create a new word. Affixes (prefixes or suffixes) are regarded as bound morphemes.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful syntactical or grammar unit of a language that cannot be divided without changing its meaning. In contrast to the free morpheme, a bound morpheme doesn’t have any independent meaning, and it needs the help of a free morpheme to form a new word.

Let us see some examples of derivation in the below table:

Base Forms	New Words
Appear	Disappear
Justice	Injustice
Lighten	Enlighten
Friend	Friendship
Happy	Happiness

Back Formation

‘Back-Formation’ is a word-formation process that eliminates the actual derivational affix from the main form to create a new word. However, Back-Formation is contrary to derivation in terms of forming new words. Let us see some examples of Back-Formation in the below table:

Base Forms	Back Formation
Insertion	Insert
Donation	Donate
Precession	Process
Obsessive	Obsess
Resurrection	Resurrect

Conversion

In conversion, a word of one grammatical form converts into another without changing spelling or pronunciation. For example, the term ‘Google’ originated as a noun before the verb.

A few years ago, we only used the term as a noun (search it on Google), but now we say ‘Google it. Let us see some examples of conversion in the below table:

Noun	To Verb
Access	– to access
Google	– to google
Email	– to email
Name	– to name
Host	– to host
Verb	To Noun
To hope	Hope
To cover	Cover
To increase	Increase
To attack	Attack

Compounding

‘Compounding’ is a word-formation process that allows words to combine to make a new word. Compounding words can be formed as two words joined with a hyphen. Let us see some examples in the below table:

Words	Compounding Words
Class+room	Classroom
Note+book	Notebook
Break+up	Breakup
Brother+in+law	Brother in law
High+light	Highlight

Clipping

‘Clipping’ is another essential word-formation process that reduces or shortens a word without changing the exact meaning. In contrast to the back-formation process, it reserves the original meaning.

Clipping is divided into four types. They are:

Back Clipping
Fore Clipping
Middle Clipping
Complex Clipping

Every Clipping has different roles in words when they are assigned. Back Clipping removes the end part of a word; Fore Clipping removes the beginning part of a word; Middle Clipping reserves the middle position. Finally, Complex Clipping removes multiple pieces from multiple words.

Let us see some examples in the below table:

Words	Clippings
Advertisement	Ad
Photograph	Photo
Telephone	Phone
Influenza	Flue
Cabletelegram	Cablegram

Blending

In the ‘Blending’ word-formation method, the parts of two or more words combine to form a new word. Let us see some examples in the below table:

Words	Blendings
Breakfast+lunch	Brunch
Biographical+picture	Biopic
Motor+hotel	Motel
Spanish+English	Spanglish
Telephone+marathon	Telethon

Abbreviation

‘Abbreviation’ is another famous and widely used word-formation method used to shorten a word or phrase. In the modern era, ‘Abbreviation is becoming more popular. Nowadays, people used to use it everywhere. Let us see some examples in the below table:

Words/Phrases	Abbreviation
Junior	Jr.
Mister	Mr.
Mistress	Miss.
Doctor	Dr.
Department	Dept.
Bachelor of Arts	B.A.
Master of Arts	M.A.
Master of Business Administration	MBA

Acronyms

An Acronym is a popular word-formation process in which an initialism is pronounced as a word. It forms from the first letter of each word in a phrase, and the newly formed letters create a new word that helps us speedy communication. For example, ‘PIN’ is an initialism for Personal Identification Number used as the word ‘pin.’

However, let us see some other famous examples of acronyms in the below table for a better understanding:

Acronyms	Words/Phrases
HIV	Human Immunodeficiency Virus
AIDS	Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
NASA	National Aeronautics and Space Administration
ASAP	As Soon As Possible
AWOL	Absent Without Leave

Borrowing

‘Borrowing’ is another word-formation process in which a word from one language is borrowed directly into another language. Let us see some English words which are borrowed from another language:

Algebra	Arabic
Cherub	Hebrew
Murder	French
Pizza	Italian
Tamale	Spanish

Conclusion

Now we know that Word-Formation Processes are the methods by which words are formed by deploying different types of rules. We can create new words by following the above word-formation methods.

We need to do one thing: we have to follow the fundamental rules or processes of word formation.

Azizul Hakim is the founder & CEO of englishfinders.com. He is a passionate writer, English instructor, and content creator. He has completed his graduation and post-graduation in English language and literature.

Источник

Words in English public website

Ling 216
Rice University
Prof. S. Kemmer

Types of Word Formation Processes

Compounding
Compounding forms a word out of two or more root morphemes. The words
are called compounds or compound words.

In Linguistics, compounds can be either native or borrowed.

Native English roots are
typically free morphemes, so that means native compounds are made out of
independent words that can occur by themselves. Examples:

mailman (composed of free root mail and free root man)
mail carrier
dog house
fireplace
fireplug (a regional word for ‘fire hydrant’)
fire hydrant
dry run
cupcake
cup holder
email
e-ticket
pick-up truck
talking-to

Some compounds have a preposition as one of the component words as in the
last 2 examples.

In Greek and Latin, in contrast to English, roots do not typically stand
alone. So compounds are composed of bound roots. Compounds formed in
English from borrowed Latin and Greek morphemes preserve this
characteristic. Examples include photograph,
iatrogenic, and many thousands of other classical words.

Note that compounds are written in various ways in English:
with a space between the elements; with a hyphen between the
elements; or simply with the two roots run together with no separation.
The way the word is written does not affect its status as a
compound. Over time, the convention for writing compounds can change,
usually in the direction from separate words (e.g. email used to be written with a hyphen.
In the 19th century, today and tomorrow were sometimes still written to-day and to-morrow. The to originally was the preposition to with an older meaning ‘at [a particular period of time]’.
Clock work changed
to clock-work and finally to one word with no break
(clockwork). If you read older literature you might see some
compound words that are now written as one word appearing
with unfamiliar spaces or hyphens between the components.

Another thing to note about compounds is that they can combine words
of different parts of speech. The list above shows mostly noun-noun
compounds, which is probably the most common part of speech
combination, but there are others, such as adjective-noun (dry
run, blackbird, hard drive), verb-noun (pick-pocket,
cut-purse, lick-spittle) and even verb-particle (where
‘particle’ means a word basically designating spatial expression that
functions to complete a literal or metaphorical path), as in
run-through, hold-over. Sometimes these compounds are
different in the part of speech of the whole compound vs. the part of
speech of its components. Note that the last two are actually nouns,
despite their components.

Some compounds have more than two component words. These are formed
by successively combining words into compounds, e.g. pick-up truck,
formed from pick-up and truck , where the first component,
pick-up is itself a compound formed from
pick and up. Other examples are ice-cream
cone, no-fault insurance and even more complex compounds like
top-rack dishwasher safe.

There are a number of subtypes of compounds that do not have to do
with part of speech, but rather the sound characteristics of the
words. These subtypes are not mutually exclusive.

Rhyming compounds (subtype of compounds)
These words are compounded from two rhyming words. Examples:

lovey-dovey
chiller-killer

There are words that are formally very similar to rhyming compounds,
but are not quite compounds in English because the second element is
not really a word—it is just a nonsense item added to a root word to
form a rhyme. Examples:

higgledy-piggledy
tootsie-wootsie

This formation
process is associated in English with child talk (and talk addressed
to children), technically called hypocoristic language. Examples:

bunnie-wunnie
Henny Penny
snuggly-wuggly
Georgie Porgie
Piggie-Wiggie

Another word type that looks a bit like rhyming compounds
comprises words that are formed of
two elements that almost match, but differ in their vowels.
Again, the second element is typically a nonsense form:

pitter-patter
zigzag
tick-tock

riffraff
flipflop

Derivation
Derivation is the creation of words by modification of a root without
the addition of other roots. Often the effect is a change in part of
speech.

Affixation (Subtype of Derivation)
The most common type of derivation is the addition of one or more affixes to a
root, as in the word derivation itself. This process is called
affixation, a term which covers both prefixation and suffixation.

Blending
Blending is one of the most beloved of word formation processes in
English. It is especially creative in that speakers take two words
and merge them based not on morpheme structure but on sound structure.
The resulting words are called blends.

Usually in word formation we combine roots or affixes along their
edges: one morpheme comes to an end before the next one starts. For example, we
form derivation out of the sequence of morphemes
de+riv+at(e)+ion. One morpheme follows the next and each one has
identifiable
boundaries. The morphemes do not overlap.

But in
blending, part of one word is stitched onto another word, without any
regard for where one morpheme ends and another begins. For example,
the word swooshtika ‘Nike swoosh as a logo symbolizing
corporate power and hegemony’
was formed from swoosh and swastika. The swoosh
part remains whole and recognizable in the blend, but the tika part is
not a morpheme, either in the word swastika or
in the blend. The blend is a perfect merger of form, and also of
content. The meaning contains an implicit analogy between the
swastika and the swoosh, and thus conceptually blends them into one
new kind of thing having properties of both, but also combined
properties of neither source. Other examples include glitterati (blending
glitter and literati) ‘Hollywood social set’, mockumentary (mock and
documentary) ‘spoof documentary’.

The earliest blends in English only go back to the 19th century, with
wordplay coinages by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky. For example, he
introduced to the language slithy, formed from lithe and
slimy, and galumph, (from gallop and
triumph. Interestingly galumph has survived as a word in
English, but it now seems to mean ‘walk in a stomping, ungainly way’.

Some blends that have been around for quite a while include brunch
(breakfast and lunch), motel (motor hotel), electrocute (electric and
execute), smog (smoke and
fog) and cheeseburger (cheese and hamburger).
These go back to the first half of the twentieth
century. Others, such as stagflation (stagnation and inflation),
spork (spoon and fork), and carjacking (car and hijacking) arose
since the 1970s.

Here are some more recent blends I have run across:

mocktail (mock and cocktail) ‘cocktail with no alcohol’
splog (spam and blog) ‘fake blog designed to attract hits and
raise Google-ranking’
Britpoperati (Britpop and literati) ‘those knowledgable about current British pop music’

Clipping
Clipping is a type of abbreviation of a word in which one part is
‘clipped’ off the rest, and the remaining word now means essentially the same
thing as what the whole word means or meant. For example, the word
rifle is a fairly modern clipping of an earlier compound
rifle gun, meaning a gun with a rifled barrel. (Rifled means
having a spiral groove causing the bullet to spin, and thus making it
more accurate.) Another clipping is burger, formed by clipping
off the beginning of the word hamburger. (This clipping could
only come about once hamburg+er was reanalyzed as ham+burger.)

Acronyms

Acronyms are formed by taking the initial letters of a phrase
and making a word out of it. Acronyms provide a way of turning a phrase into a word. The classical acronym is also
pronounced as a word. Scuba was formed
from self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. The
word snafu was originally WW2 army slang for Situation
Normal All Fucked Up. Acronyms were being used more and more by
military bureaucrats, and soldiers coined snafu in an
apparent parody of this overused device. Sometimes an acronym uses not just the first letter, but the first syllable of a component word, for example radar, RAdio Detection And Ranging and sonar, SOund Navigation and Ranging. Radar forms an analogical model for both sonar and lidar, a technology that measures distance to a target and and maps its surface by
bouncing a laser off it. There is some evidence that lidar was not coined as an acronym, but instead as a blend of light and radar. Based on the word itself, either etymology appears to work, so many speakers assume that lidar is an acronym rather than a blend.

A German example that strings together the initial syllables of the
words in the phrase, is Gestapo , from GEheime STAats POlizei
‘Sectret State Police’. Another is Stasi, from STAats
SIcherheit ‘State Security’.

Acronyms are a subtype of initialism. Initialisms also include words made from the initial letters of a Phrase but NOT pronounced as a normal word — it is instead pronounced as a string of letters. Organzation names aroften initialisms of his type. Examples:

NOW (National Organization of Women)
US or U.S., USA or U.S.A. (United States)
UN or U.N. (United Nations)
IMF (International Monetary Fund)

Some organizations ARE pronounced as a word:
UNICEF
MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving)

The last example incorporates a meaning into the word that fits the nature of the organization. Sometimes this type is called a Reverse Acronym or a Backronym.

These can be thought of as a special case of acronyms.

Memos, email, and text messaging (text-speak) are modes of communication
that give rise to both clippings and acronyms, since these
word formation methods are designed to abbreviate.
Some acronyms:

NB — Nota bene, literally ‘note well’. Used by scholars making notes
on texts. (A large number of other scholarly acronyms from Latin are
used, probably most invented in the medieval period or Renaissance,
not originally in Latin)
BRB — be right back (from 1980s, 90s)
FYI — for your information (from mid 20th century)

LOL — laughing
out loud (early 21st century) — now pronounced either /lol/ or /el o
el/; has spawned compounds like Lolcats).
ROFL — rolling on the floor laughing
ROFLMAO — rolling on the floor laughing my ass off

Reanalysis
Sometimes speakers unconsciously change the morphological boundaries of a word, creating a new morph or making an old one unrecognizable. This happened in hamburger, which was originally Hamburger steak ‘chopped and formed steak in the Hamburg style, then hamburger (hamburg + er), then ham + burger

Folk etymology
A popular idea of a word’s origin that is not in accordance with its real origin.

Many folk etymologies are cases of reanalysis in which the word is not only reanalysis but it changes under the influence of the new understanding of its morphemes. The result is that speakers think it has a different origin than it does.

Analogy
Sometimes speakers take an existing word as a model and form other words using some of its morphemes as a fixed part, and changing one of them to something new, with an analogically similar meaning. Cheeseburger was formed on the analogy of hamburger, replacing a perceived morpheme ham with cheese.
carjack and skyjack were also formed by analogy.

Novel creation
In novel creation, a speaker or writer forms a word without starting
from other morphemes. It is as if the word if formed out of ‘whole
cloth’, without reusing any parts.

Some examples of now-conventionalized words that were novel creations
include blimp, googol (the mathematical term),
bling, and possibly slang, which emerged in the last 200
years with no obvious etymology. Some novel creations seem to display
‘sound symbolism’, in which a word’s phonological form suggests its
meaning in some way. For example, the sound of the word bling
seems to evoke heavy jewelry making noise. Another novel creation whose sound seems
to relate to its meaning is badonkadonk, ‘female rear end’, a
reduplicated word which can remind English speakers of the repetitive
movement of the rear end while walking.

Creative respelling
Sometimes words are formed by simply changing the spelling of a word
that the speaker wants to relate to the new word. Product names
often involve creative respelling, such as Mr. Kleen.

Источник

What is Word Formation?

Word formation process is subject of morphology where we learn how new words are formed. In linguistics, word formation process is the creation of a new word by making changes in existing words or by creating new words. In other words, it refers to the ways in which new words are made on the basis of other words.

Different Forms of Word Formation

Word Formation process is achieved by different ways to create a new word that includes; coinage, compounding, borrowing, blending, acronym, clipping, contraction, backformation, affixation and conversion.

Compounding

Compounding is a type of word formation where we join two words side by side to create a new word. It is very common type of word formation in a language. Some time we write a compound word with a hyphen between two words and some time we keep a space and sometime we write them jointly. All these three forms are common in all languages.

Common examples of word compounding are:

· Part + time = part-time

· Book + case = bookcase

· Low + paid = low-paid

· Door + knob = doorknob

· Finger + print = fingerprint

· Wall + paper = wallpaper

· Sun + burn = sunburn

· Text + book = textbook

· Good + looking = good-looking

· Ice + cream = Ice-cream

Borrowing

In word formation process, borrowing is the process by which a word from one language is adapted for use in another language. The word that is borrowed is called a borrowing, a loanword, or a borrowed word. It is also known as lexical borrowing. It is the most common source of new words in all languages.

Common Examples of borrowed words in English language are:

· Dope (Dutch)

· Croissant (French)

· Zebra (Bantu)

· Lilac (Persian)

· Pretzel (German)

· Yogurt (Turkish)

· Piano (Italian)

· Sofa (Arabic)

· Tattoo (Tahitian)

· Tycoon (Japanese)

Blending

Blending is the combination of two separate words to form a single new word. It is different from compounding where we add two words side by side to make a new word but in blending we do not use both words in complete sense but new/derived word has part of both words e.g. word smog and fog are different words and when we blend them to make a new word, we use a part of each word to make a new word that is smog. We took first two letters from first word (sm) from smoke and last two (og) from fog to derive a new word smog.

Some more examples of blending are:

· Smoke + murk=smurk

· Smoke + haze= smaze

· Motel (hotel + motor)

· Brunch (breakfast + lunch )

· Infotainment ( information + entertainment)

· Franglais ( French + English)

· Spanglish (Spanish + English )

Abbreviations

Abbreviation is a process where we create a new word by making a change in lexical form of a word keeping same meaning. There are three main types of abbreviations.

1. Clipping / Shortening / Truncation

2. Acronyms / Initialism

3. Contraction

Clipping / Shortening / Truncation

Clipping is the type of word formation where we use a part of word instead of whole word. This form of word formation is used where there is a long/multi-syllable word and to save time we use a short one instead of that long word e.g. the word advertisement is a long word and we use its short form ad (ads for plural form) instead of whole word.

Here are some examples of clipping:

· Ad from advertisement

· Gas from gasoline

· Exam from examination

· Cab from cabriolet

· Fax from facsimile

· Condo from condominium

· Fan from fanatic

· Flu from Inﬂuenza

· Edu from education

· Gym from gymnasium

· Lab from laboratory

Acronyms / Initialism

An acronym is a word or name formed as an abbreviation from the initial letters in a phrase or a multi syllable word (as in Benelux). The initials are pronounced as new single words. Commonly derived word are written in upper case e.g. NATO.

Some common examples of acronyms are:

· CD is acronym of compact disk

· VCR is acronym of video cassette recorder

· NATO is acronym of North Atlantic Treaty Organization

· NASA is acronym of National Aeronautics and Space Administration

· ATM is acronym of Automatic Teller Machine

· PIN is acronym of Personal Identiﬁcation Number

Some time the word is written in lower case (Initial letter capital when at start of sentence)

· Laser is acronym of Light Ampliﬁcation by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

· Scuba is acronym of Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

· Radar is acronym of Radio Detecting And Ranging

Contraction

A contraction is a word formed as an abbreviation from a word. Contractions are abbreviations in which we omit letters from the middle of a word or more than one words.

Some common contractions are below:

· Dr is from Doctor.

· St is from Saint.

· He’s from He is.

· I’ve is from I have.

Affixation

Affixation is the word formation process where a new word is created by adding suffix or prefix to a root word. The affixation may involve prefixes, suffixes, infixes. In prefixes, we add extra letters before root word e.g. re+right to make a new word rewrite. In suffix, we add some extra letters with a base/root word e.g. read+able. In infixes, the base word is changed in its form e.g. the plural of woman is women that creates new word “women”.

1. Prefixes: un+ plug = unplug

2. Suffixes: cut + ie = cutie

3. Infixes: man + plural = men

Zero-derivation (Conversion)

Zero-derivation, or conversion, is a derivational process that forms new words from existing words. Zero derivation, is a kind of word formation involving the creation of a word from an existing word without any change in form, which is to say, derivation using only zero. Zero-derivation or conversion changes the lexical category of a word without changing its phonological shape. For example, the word ship is a noun and we use it also as a verb. See below sentences to understand it.

1. Beach hotel has a ship to enjoy honeymoon.

2. Beach hotel will ship your luggage in two days.

In first sentence, the word ship is a noun and in second sentence the word ship (verb) is derived from the action of ship (noun) that transports luggage, so the word ship (verb) has meaning of transportation.

Backformation

Backformation is the word formation process where a new word is derived by removing what appears to be an affix. When we remove last part of word (that looks like suffix but not a suffix in real) from a word it creates a new word.

Some very familiar words are below:

· Peddle from peddler

· Edit from editor

· Pea from pease

Coinage / Neologism

It is also a process of word formation where new words (either deliberately or accidentally) are invented. This is a very rare process to create new words, but in the media and industry, people and companies try to surpass others with unique words to name their services or products.

Some common examples of coinage are: Kodak, Google, Bing, Nylon etc.

Eponyms

In word formation process, sometime new words are derives by based on the name of a person or a place. Some time these words have attribution to a place and sometime the words are attributes to the things/terms who discover/invent them. For example, the word volt is electric term that is after the name of Italian scientist Alessandro Volta.

Some common examples of eponyms are:

· Hoover: after the person who marketed it

· Jeans: after a city of Italy Genoa

· Spangle: after the person who invented it

· Watt: after the name of scientist James Watt

· Fahrenheit: after the name of German scientist Gabriel Fahrenheit

Источник

Definition

Word Formation Process (also called Morphological Process) is a means by which new words are produced either by modification of existing words or by complete innovation, which in turn become a part of the language.

Types of Word Formation Processes

Different types of word formation processes are employed to create new words. However, all word formation processes basically bring either inflectional or derivational changes. Therefore, inflection (also called inflexion) and derivation are the two core processes of word formation. Inflection differs from derivation to the following extent:

Inflection	Derivation
Produces grammatical variants of the same word.	Produces a new word on the basis of an existing word.
Modifies a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, mood, voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case.	Changes the word class (also called parts of speech; form class; lexical class; syntactic category).
Does not change the meaning of a word. For example: determine→ determines, determining, determined.	Modifies the meaning of the root. For example: modern → modernize (to make modern).

The major word formation processes include but are not limited to the following:

Affixation

It is a word formation process wherein an affix is attached to a root (also called stem; base) to form a new word. A root is a free morpheme (also called unbound morpheme) that can appear alone. On the other hand, an Affix is a bound morpheme which never occurs by itself, but is always attached to some free morpheme and can be either inflectional or derivational. An Inflectional affix modifies the form/grammatical category of a word, i.e., tense, person, number, gender, case, etc. For example: rat → rats. Contrariwise, a derivational affix modifies the parts of speech of the root, while leaving the grammatical category unchanged. In this way, there is a change of meaning of the root. For example: write → writer.

In English there are two types of affixations:

Prefixation: In this morphological process words are formed by adding an affix to the front of a root. The type of affix used in this process is referred to as prefix. For example: un + tidy → untidy
Suffixation: In this morphological process words are formed by adding an affix to the end of a root. The type of affix used in this process is referred to as suffix. For example: fear + less → fearless

Conversion

This refers to the change of function or parts of speech of a word without adding an affix. Conversion is also called zero derivation or null derivation since the functional change is brought about by supplementing an invisible affix. Sometimes it is also called functional shift. Typically conversion is made from “noun to verb” and from “verb to noun”. Less frequently, conversion is also done from “adjective to verb” and “adjective to noun”. For instance:

Noun to Verb:

access
email
film
name
shape

Verb to Noun:

attack
alert
hope
increase
visit
cover

Adjective to Verb:

brown
black
slow

Adjective to Noun:

crazy
nasty

Back-formation

Back-formation is a morphological process in which new word is created by extracting affixes from another word. In this way, it is the reverse of affixation, in which affixes are added. Back-formation is also different from clipping since it brings a change in the parts of speech or the word’s meaning. For example: the noun insertion has been back-formed into verb insert by removing the suffix ion.

Clipping

As the name suggests, clipping is the word formation process in which a word is reduced to a shorter form. With a sharp contrast to back-formation, clipping keeps the original word meaning intact. These words are very common in everyday speech. For instance: lab is the clipped form of laboratory. . There are four types of clippings:

Back clipping: (also called final clipping; apocope) it involves the truncation of end of a word as in ad from advertisement.
Fore-clipping: (also called initial clipping; apheresis) it is the removal of the beginning of a word as in phone from telephone.
Middle clipping: (also medial clipping; syncope) it is the extraction of the beginning and end of a word as in flu from influenza.
Complex clipping: is removing multiple parts from multiple words as in cablegram from cabletelegram.

Compounding

Also called composition, by this process two or more than two words are combined together to create a single word, having a single idea and function. In English, there are compound nouns, compound adjectives, and compound verbs. Customarily compound words are spelt as a single word, or as two or more hyphenated words, and even as two or more separate words. For example:

life + style → lifestyle
mother + in + law → mother-in-law
shopping + mall → shopping mall

There are no specific rules for hyphenated compounds. Generally, some new and original compound nouns are hyphenated, but the hyphen is ignored when they become more familiar. However, there are some compound adjectives that are always hyphenated. For instance: state-of-the-art. The hyphen is often retained when two vowels come together, such as: Co-operation. Hyphens are often used to tell the ages of people and things, for example: 10-year-old. The general rule is that words are combined with hyphens to avoid confusion.

Borrowing

This refers to the words adopted from other languages. There are two types of borrowings:

Loan-word: By this process, a word is borrowed from another language without translating it into the target language. For example: the phrase tour-de-force is borrowed directly from French, which means a masterly or brilliant feat.
Loan-translation: Also known as calque, a morphological process wherein a word or phrase from another language is borrowed by literally translating it into the target language. For example: the phrase point of view has been translated into English from the French phrase point de vue.

Coinage

Also called invention, is a morphological process by which new words are invented. Sometimes popular trademark names of various products are adopted by people so extensively that they ultimately become the everyday words of language. For example:

Heroin
Aspirin
Escalator
Xerox
Kerosene
Nylon
Band-Aid
Vaseline
Margarine
Videotape

Again, some words are being invented due to rapid cultural changes and the spread of information technology, mass media, internet, etc. For example:

Google
Blog
Hotspot
Netbook
Tablet
Tweet
Emoticon
Smartphone

Blending

Blending (also called portmanteau) is a morphological process in which the parts of two or more words are combined together to form a new word. Usually, the parts consist of the beginning of one word and the end of the other word(s). Typically, the meaning of the blended word reverberates with the meanings of the original words. For example:

breakfast + lunch → brunch
motor+hotel → motel

However, blending should not be confused with compounding, which combines two words without truncation of parts of the roots of the blended words.

Acronyms

These words are formed with the initial letters or each of the major parts of a word or a longer phrase. With a few exceptions, acronyms are usually capitalized. Some linguists confuse acronyms with initialisms, which are also abbreviations formed in the similar manner as the former. In essence, there is a sharp difference between the two. In language, an acronym is pronounced as a single word rather than just a sequence of individual letters, which is characteristic of initialisms. For example:
Acronyms:

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization → UNESCO
Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation → Laser
International Criminal Police Organization → Interpol

Initialisms:

Personal Computer → PC
Asian Development Bank → ADB
Liquid Crystal Display → LCD

Reduplication

Reduplication (also called cloning; doubling; duplication; repetition; tautonym) is a word formation process in which a new word is created by repeating all or part of a root or a stem, often with a change of vowel or initial consonant. Reduplication is not a major means of creating lexemes in English, but it is perhaps the most unusual one. Based on their usage, the techniques of reduplication could be classified in the following manner:

Repetition without Change: bye-bye, tick-tick
Rhyming Reduplication: ding-dong, super-duper, bow-wow
Repetition with Change of Vowel: tiptop, chitchat, flip-flop, ping-pong, dilly-dally, wishy-washy
Repetition with Change of Initial Consonant: teeny-weeny

References

“English Word Formation Processes.” Really Learn English. 2016. Really-Learn-English.com.

14 July 2016 <http://www.really-learn-english.com/word-formation-processes.html>.

“Inflection.” Wikipedia. 2016. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 14 July 2016

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection>.

“Morphological Derivation.” Wikipedia. 2016. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 14 July 2016

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_derivation>.

Yule, George. The Study of Language. 2^nd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 1996.

“Word Formation.” Wikipedia. 2016. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 14 July 2016

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_formation>.

Источник

Word Formation Processes in English

Become a member of TranslationDirectory.com at just

$8 per month (paid per year)

Abstract

One
of the distinctive properties of human language is creativity,
by which we mean the ability of native speakers of a language
to produce and understand new forms in their language.
Even though creativity is most apparent when it comes
to sentence formation, it is also manifest in our lexical
knowledge, where new words are added to our mental lexicon
regularly. In this paper the most comprehensive expositions
of word formation processes that speakers of a language
use regularly (and unconsciously too) to create new words
in their language are presented.

1. Introduction

Nowadays, the terms ‘word formation’
does not have a clear cut, universally accepted usage.
It is sometimes referred to all processes connected with
changing the form of the word by, for example, affixation,
which is a matter of morphology. In its wider sense word formation denotes
the processes of creation of new lexical units. Although
it seems that the difference between morphological change
of a word and creation of a new term is quite easy to
perceive, there is sometimes a dispute as to whether blending
is still a morphological change or making a new word. There are, of course, numerous word formation processes that do not arouse any
controversies and are very similar in the majority of
languages.

2. Clipping

Clipping is the word
formation process which consists in the reduction
of a word to one of its parts (Marchand: 1969). Clippings
are, also, known as «shortenings.»Clipping mainly
consists of the following types:

1.
Back clipping

2.
Fore-clipping

3.
Middle clipping

4.
Complex clipping

2.1 Back clipping

Back clipping or apocopation
is the most common type, in which the beginning is retained.
The unclipped original may be either a simple or a composite.
Examples are: ad (advertisement), cable
(cablegram), doc (doctor), exam (examination),
gas (gasoline), math (mathematics), memo
(memorandum), gym (gymnastics, gymnasium) mutt
(muttonhead), pub (public house), pop (popular
concert), trad (traditional jazz), fax (facsimile).

2.2. Fore-clipping

Fore-clipping or aphaeresis retains
the final part. Examples are: phone (telephone),
varsity (university), chute (parachute),
coon (racoon), gator (alligator), pike
(turnpike).

2.3. Middle clipping

In middle clipping or syncope, the middle
of the word is retained. Examples are: flu (influenza),
tec (detective), polly (apollinaris), jams
(pyjamas), shrink (head-shrinker).

2.4. Complex clipping

Clipped forms are also used in compounds. One part of the original compound
most often remains intact. Examples are: cablegram
(cable telegram), op art (optical
art), org-man (organization man),
linocut (linoleum cut). Sometimes
both halves of a compound are clipped as in navicert
(navigation certificate). In these cases
it is difficult to know whether the resultant formation
should be treated as a clipping or as a blend, for the border between the two types is not always clear.
According to Bauer (1993), the easiest way to draw the
distinction is to say that those forms which retain compound
stress are clipped compounds, whereas those that take
simple word stress are not. By this criterion bodbiz,
Chicom, Comsymp, Intelsat, midcult, pro—am, sci-fi,
and sitcom are all compounds made of clippings.
According to Marchand (1969), clippings are not coined
as words belonging to the standard vocabulary of a language.
They originate as terms of a special group like schools,
army, police, the medical profession, etc., in the intimacy
of a milieu where a hint is sufficient to indicate the
whole. For example, in school slang originated exam,
math, lab, and spec(ulation), tick(et
= credit) originated in stock-exchange slang, whereas
vet(eran), cap(tain), are army slang. While
clipping terms of some influential groups can pass into
common usage, becoming part of Standard English, clippings
of a socially unimportant class or group will remain groap
slang.

3. Acronymy

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations,
such as NATO,
laser,
and IBM, that are formed
using the initial letters of words or word parts in a
phrase or name. Acronyms and initialisms are usually pronounced
in a way that is distinct from that of the full forms
for which they stand: as the names of the individual letters
(as in IBM), as a word (as in NATO), or
as a combination (as in IUPAC). Another
term, alphabetism, is sometimes used to describe abbreviations
pronounced as the names of letters.

Examples :

pronounced as a word, containing only initial
letters:

FNMA: (Fannie Mae)
Federal National Mortgage Association
laser: light amplification
by the stimulated emission of radiation
NATO: North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation
scuba: self-contained
underwater breathing apparatus

pronounced as a word, containing non-initial
letters:

Amphetamine:
Alpha-methyl-phenethylamine
Gestapo: Geheime
Staatspolizei («secret state police»)
Interpol:
International Criminal Police Organization
radar: radio detection
and ranging

pronounced only as the names of letters

BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation
DNA: deoxyribonucleic
acid
LED: light-emitting
diode
OB-GYN: obstetrics and gyn(a)ecology
or obstetrician and gyn(a)ecologist

shortcut incorporated into name

3M: (three em)
originally Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company
E³: (e
three) Electronic Entertainment Exposition
W3C: (double-u
three cee) World Wide Web Consortium

recursive acronyms, in which the abbreviation
itself is the expansion of one initial (particularly
enjoyed by the open-source community)

GNU: GNU’s Not Unix!
HURD:
HIRD of Unix-Replacing Daemons, where «HIRD»
stands for «HURD of Interfaces Representing Depth»
VISA: VISA International Service Association
XNA:
XNA’s Not Acronymed — Microsoft’s new game development framework

pseudo-acronyms
are used because, when pronounced as intended, they
resemble the sounds of other words:

ICQ: «I seek
you»
IOU: «I owe you»
OU812:
«Oh, you ate one, too?», a Van Halen
album
CQR: «secure», a brand of boat
anchor

multi-layered acronyms:

GTK+: GIMP Tool
Kit, i.e. GNU Image Manipulation Program Tool
Kit, i.e. GNU’s Not Unix Image Manipulation
Program Tool Kit
GAIM: GTK+ AOL Instant
Messenger, i.e. GIMP Tool Kit America OnLine
Instant Messenger, i.e. GNU Image Manipulation
Program Tool Kit America OnLine Instant Messenger,
i.e. GNU’s Not Unix Image Manipulation Program
Tool Kit America OnLine Instant Messenger
VHDL: VHSIC Hardware
Description Language, i.e. Very High Speed
Integrated Circuits Hardware Description Language

4. Blending

A blend is a word formed from parts of two other words. These parts
are sometimes, but not always, morphemes.

A blend is different from a portmanteau
word in that a portmanteau refers strictly to a blending
of two function
words, similar to a contraction.

4.1. Formation
of blendings

Most blends are formed by one of the following methods:

1.
The beginning of one word is added
to the end of the other. For example, brunch is a blend of breakfast and lunch. This is the most common method of blending.

2.
The beginnings of two words are combined.
For example, cyborg is a blend
of cybernetic and organism.

3.
One complete word is combined with
part of another word. For example, guesstimate is a blend
of guess and estimate.

4.
Two words are blended around a common
sequence of sounds. For example, the word Californication, from a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is a blend of California
and fornication.

5.
Multiple sounds from two component
words are blended, while mostly preserving the sounds’
order. Poet Lewis Carroll was well
known for these kinds of blends. An example of this is
the word slithy, a blend of
lithe and slimy. This method is difficult to achieve and is considered a
sign of Carroll’s verbal wit.

When two words are combined in their entirety, the result is considered
a compound
word rather than a blend. For example, bagpipe is a compound,
not a blend,

5. Back-formation

Back-formation refers to the process of creating a new lexeme
(less precisely, a new «word») by removing actual
or supposed affixes. The resulting
neologism
is called a back-formation. Back-formations are
shortened words created from longer words, thus back-formations
may be viewed as a sub-type of clipping.

For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin,
and the verb resurrect was then backformed hundreds
of years later from it by removing the -ion suffix.
This segmentation of resurrection into resurrect
+ ion was possible because English had many examples
of Latinate words that had verb and verb+-ion pairs
— in these pairs the -ion suffix is added to verb
forms in order to create nouns (such as, insert/insertion,
project/projection, etc.).

Back formation may be similar to the reanalyses of folk etymologies when it rests on an erroneous understanding
of the morphology of the longer word. For example, the
singular noun asset is a back-formation from the
plural assets. However, assets is originally
not a plural; it is a loan-word from
Anglo-Norman asetz (modern French
assez). The -s was reanalyzed as a plural
suffix.

5.1. Back-formation in the English
language

Many words came into English by this route: Pease was once
a mass noun but was reinterpreted as a plural,
leading to the back-formation pea. The noun statistic
was likewise a back-formation from the field of study
statistics.
In Britain the verb burgle came into use in the
19th century as a back-formation from burglar (which
can be compared to the North
America verb burglarize formed by suffixation).

Even though many English words are formed this way, new coinages may
sound strange, and are often used for humorous effect.
For example, gruntled or pervious (from
disgruntled and impervious) would be considered
mistakes today, and used only in humorous contexts. The
comedian George Gobel
regularly used original back-formations in his humorous
monologues. Bill Bryson
mused that the English language would be richer if we
could call a tidy-haired person shevelled — as
an opposite to dishevelled.

Frequently back-formations begin in colloquial use and only gradually
become accepted. For example, enthuse (from enthusiasm)
is gaining popularity, though it is still considered substandard
by some today.

The immense celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the
Siege
of Mafeking briefly created the verb to maffick,
meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly.
«Maffick» was a back-formation from Mafeking,
a place-name
that was treated humorously as a gerund or participle.

6. Derivation

Derivation is used to form new words, as with happi-ness and
un-happy from happy, or determination
from determine. A contrast is intended with the
process of inflection,
which uses another kind of affix in order to form variants
of the same word, as with determine/determine-s/determin-ing/determin-ed.

A derivational suffix usually applies
to words
of one syntactic category and changes them into words
of another syntactic
category. For example, the English
derivational suffix
-ly changes adjectives into adverbs (slow
→ slowly).

Some examples of English derivational suffixes:

adjective-to-noun: -ness
(slow → slowness)
adjective-to-verb: -ize
(modern → modernize)
noun-to-adjective: -al (recreation
→ recreational)
noun-to-verb: -fy (glory →
glorify)
verb-to-adjective: -able (drink
→ drinkable)
verb-to-noun: -ance (deliver
→ deliverance)

Although derivational affixes do not necessarily modify the syntactic category, they modify the meaning of
the base. In many cases, derivational affixes change both
the syntactic category and the meaning: modern
→ modernize («to make modern»).
The modification of meaning is sometimes predictable:
Adjective + ness → the state of being
(Adjective); (stupid→ stupidness).

A prefix (write → re-write;
lord → over-lord) will rarely change
syntactic category in English. The derivational prefix un- applies to adjectives (healthy
→ unhealthy), some verbs (do →
undo), but rarely nouns. A few exceptions are the
prefixes en- and be-. En- (em- before labials) is usually
used as a transitive marker on verbs, but can also be
applied to adjectives and nouns to form transitive verb:
circle (verb) → encircle (verb); but
rich (adj) → enrich (verb), large
(adj) → enlarge (verb), rapture (noun)
→ enrapture (verb), slave (noun) →
enslave (verb). The prefix be-, though not as productive
as it once was in English, can function in a similar way
to en- to mark transitivity, but can also be attached
to nouns, often in a causative or privative sense: siege
(noun) → besiege (verb), jewel (noun)
→ bejewel (verb), head (noun) →
behead (verb).

Note that derivational affixes are bound
morphemes. In that, derivation differs from compounding, by which free morphemes
are combined (lawsuit, Latin professor).
It also differs from inflection
in that inflection does not change a word’s syntactic
category and creates not new lexemes but new word forms (table → tables; open
→ opened).

Derivation may occur without any change of form, for example telephone
(noun) and to telephone. This is known as conversion. Some linguists consider that
when a word’s syntactic category is changed without any
change of form, a null morpheme
is being affixed.

7. Borrowing

Borrowing is just taking a word from another
language. The borrowed words are called loan words. A
loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken
into one language from
another with little or no translation. By contrast, a
calque or loan translation
is a related concept whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed
rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself
a calque
of the German Lehnwort. Loanwords can also be called
«borrowings».

7.1. Loanwords in English

English
has many loanwords. In 1973,
a computerized survey of about 80,000 words in the old
Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd edition) was published
in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff. Their estimates for the origin of English
words were as follows:

French,
including Old French and early Anglo-French:
28.3%
Latin, including
modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
Germanic languages, including Old and Middle
English: 25%
Greek:
5.32%
No etymology
given or unknown: 4.03%
Derived from proper
names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than
1%

However, if the frequency of use of words is considered, words from
Old and Middle English occupy the vast majority.

Examples:

Biology, boxer ,ozone from German

Jacket,yoghurt,kiosh from Turkish

Pistl,robot from Czech

8. Coinage

Coinage is the invention of totally new words. The typical process
of coinage usually involves the extension of a product
name from a specific reference to a more general one.
For example, think of Kleenex, Xerox, and Kodak. These
started as names of specific products, but now they are
used as the generic names for different brands of these
types of products.

9. Compounding

A compound is a lexeme (a word) that consists of
more than one other lexeme. An endocentric
compound consists of a head, i.e. the categorical part that contains
the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers,
which restrict this meaning. For example, the English
compound doghouse, where house is the head
and dog is the modifier, is understood as a house
intended for a dog. Endocentric compounds tend to be of
the same part
of speech (word class) as their head, as in the case
of doghouse. (Such compounds were called karmadharaya in the Sanskrit tradition.)

Exocentric
compounds do not have a head, and their meaning often
cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts.
For example, the English compound white-collar
is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In an exocentric
compound, the word class is determined lexically, disregarding
the class of the constituents. For example, a must-have
is not a verb but a noun. English language allows several
types of combinations of different word classes:

N + N lipstick , teapot

A + N fast food , soft drink

V + N breakfast , sky-dive

N + V sunshine , babysit

N + A capital-intensive , waterproof

A + A deaf-mute , bitter-sweet

Like derivational rules, compounding rules may differ in productivity. In English,
the N + N rule/pattern is extremely productive, so that
novel compounds are created all he time and are hardy
noticed. By contrast, the V + N rule/pattern is unproductive
and limited to a few lexically listed items. Apart from
endocentric and exocentric compounds there is another
type of compound which requires an interpretation different
from the ones introduced so far. Consider the hyphenated
words in the examples below:

a. singer-songwriter

scientist-explorer

poet-translator

hero-martyr

b. the doctor-patient gap

the nature-nurture debate

a modifier-head structure

the mind-body problem

Both sets of words are characterized by the fact that none of the two members
of the compound seems in any sense more important than
the other. They could be said to have two semantic heads,
none of them being subordinate to the other. Given that
no member is semantically prominent, but both members
equally contribute to the meaning of the compound, these
compounds have been labeled copulative compounds (or dvandva
compounds in Sanskrit grammarian terms).

Why are the copulative compounds in (a & b) divided into two different sets
(a) and (b)? The idea behind this differentiation is that
copulatives fall into two classes, depending on their
interpretation. Each form in (a) refers to one entity
that is characterized by both members of the compound.
A poet-translator, for example, is a person who
is both as a poet and a translator. This type of copulative
compound is sometimes called appositional compound. By
contrast, the dvandvas in (b) denote two entities that
stand in a particular relationship with regard to the
following noun. The particular type of relationship is
determined by the following noun. The doctor-patient
gap is thus a gap between doctor and patient, the
nature-nurture debate is a debate on the relationship
between nature and nurture, and so on. This second type
of copulative compound is also known as coordinative compound.
If the noun following the compound allows both readings,
the compound is in principle ambiguous. Thus a scientist-philosopher
crew could be a crew made up of scientist-philosophers,
or a crew made up of scientists and philosophers. It is
often stated that dvandva compounds are not very common
in English (e.g. Bauer 1983:203), but in a more recent
study by Olson (2001) hundreds of attested forms are listed,
which shows that such compounds are far from marginal.

The above mentioned word formation processes are the most frequent or
important in the English language, but it is rarely the
case that only one process occurs in one word. Words can
be loaned and then back formed, later on gaining an affix.
There are practically no boundaries to those processes
other that human ingenuity.

10. Conclusion

In this paper different word formation processes were explained including derivation,
compounding, blending, clipping, acronymy, backformation
and conversion, and also different categories of each
were explained.

References

Haspelmath, M. (2003). Morphology.
London: MacMillan Press LTD.

Plag, I. (2003). Word-Formation
in English. UK: Cambridge University Press.Hans

Katamba, F. (2005). English words.
London: Ruotledge.

Bloomfield, L. (1962). Language
. London: Oxford press.

Submit your article!