Word is the process of changing a word to get another word

People in general have no difficulty coping the new words. We can very quickly understand a new word in our language (a neologism) and accept the use of different forms of that new word. This ability must derive in part from the fact that there is a lot of regularity in the word-formation process in our language.

In some aspects the study of the processes whereby new words come into being language like English seems relatively straightforward. This apparent simplicity however masks a number of controversial issues. Despite the disagreement of scholars in the area, there don´t seem to be a regular process involved.

These processes have been at work in the language for some time and many words in daily use today were, at one time, considered barbaric misuses of the language.

What is Coinage?

Coinage is a common process of word-formation in English and it is the invention of totally new terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names for one company´s product which become general terms (without initial capital letters) for any version of that product.

For example: aspirin, nylon, zipper and the more recent examples kleenex, teflon.

This words tend to become everyday words in our language.

What is Borrowing?

Borrowing is one of the most common sources of getting new words in English. That is the taking over of words from other languages. Throughout history the English language has adopted a vast number of loan words from other languages. For example:

• Alcohol (Arabic)
• Boss (Dutch)
• Croissant (French)
• Piano (Italian)
• Pretzel (German)
• Robot (Czech)
• Zebra (Bantu)

Etc…

A special type of borrowing is the loan translation or calque. In this process, there is a direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language. For example: Superman, Loan Translation of Übermensch, German.

What is Compounding?

The combining process of words is technically known as compounding, which is very common in English and German. Obvious English examples would be:

• Bookcase
• Fingerprint
• Sunburn
• Wallpaper
• Textbook
• Wastebasket
• Waterbed

What is Blending?

The combining separate forms to produce a single new term, is also present in the process of blending. Blending, takes only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word.  For instance, if you wish to refer to the combined effects of smoke and fog, there´s the term smog. The recent phenomenon of fund rising on television that feels like a marathon, is typically called a telethon, and if you´re extremely crazy about video, you may be called a videot.

What is Clipping?

Clipping is the process in which the element of reduction which is noticeable in blending is even more apparent. This occurs when a word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form, often in casual speech. For example, the term gasoline is still in use but the term gas, the clipped form is used more frequently. Examples

• Chem.
• Gym
• Math
• Prof
• Typo

What is Backformation?

Backformation is a very specialized type of reduction process. Typically a word of one type, usually noun, is reduced to form another word of a different type, usually verb. A good example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into ude and then the term televise is created form it.

More examples:

• Donation – Donate
• Option – Opt
• Emotion – Emote
• Enthusiasm – Enthuse
• Babysit – Babysitter

What is Conversion?

Conversion is a change in the function of a word, as for example, when a noun comes to be used as a verb without any reduction. Other labels of this very common process are “category change” and “functional shift”. A number of nouns such as paper, butter, bottle, vacation and so on, can via the process of conversion come to be used as verbs as in the following examples:

• My brother is papering my bedroom.
• Did you buttered this toast?
• We bottled the home brew last night.

What is an Acronym?

Some new words known as acronyms are formed with the initial letters of a set of other words. Examples:

• Compact Disk – CD
• Video Cassette Recorder – VCR
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration – NASA
• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – UNESCO
• Personal Identification Number –PIN
• Women against rape – WAR

What is Derivation?

Derivation is the most common word formation process and it accomplished by means of a large number of small bits of the English language which are not usually given separate listings in dictionaries. These small bits are called affixes. Examples:

• Unhappy
• Misrepresent
• Prejudge
• Joyful
• Careless
• Happiness

Prefixes and Suffixes

In the preceding group of words, it should be obvious that some affixes have to be added to the beginning of a word. These are called prefixes: unreliable. The other affix forms are called suffixes and are added at the end of the word: foolishness.

Infixes

One of the characteristics of English words is that any modifications to them occur at the beginning or the end; mix can have something added at the beginning re-mix or at the end, mixes, mixer, but never in the middle, called infixes.

Activities – WORDS AND WORD FORMATION PROCESSES

Activity 1

Identify the word formation process involved in the following sentences:

1. My little cousin wants to be a footballer
2. Rebecca parties every weekend
3. I will have a croissant for breakfast.
4. Does somebody know where is my bra?
5. My family is vacationing in New Zealand
6. I will babysit my little sister this weekend
7. Would you give me your blackberry PIN?
8. She seems really unhappy about her parents’ decision.
9. I always have kleenex in my car.

10.  A carjacking was reported this evening.

(To check your answers, please go to home and check the link: Activities Keyword)

*You may require checking other sources

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:

1. 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
2. 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:

1. Back clipping: (also called final clipping; apocope) it involves the truncation of end of a word as in ad from advertisement.
2. Fore-clipping: (also called initial clipping; apheresis) it is the removal of the beginning of a word as in phone from telephone.
3. Middle clipping: (also medial clipping; syncope) it is the extraction of the beginning and end of a word as in flu from influenza.
4. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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:

1. Repetition without Change: bye-bye, tick-tick
2. Rhyming Reduplication: ding-dong, super-duper, bow-wow
3. Repetition with Change of Vowel: tiptop, chitchat, flip-flop, ping-pong, dilly-dally, wishy-washy
4. 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>.

Conversion
(конверсия)
is
the formation of words without using word-building affixes.
Conversion is the process of shifting a word from one part of speech
to another (e.g. salt,
n →
salt,
v;
jump,
v →
jump, n).
A certain root is used for the formation of a categorically different
word without an element being added, e.g. bag
– to bag,
back
– to back,
bottle
– to bottle.
Conversion is a productive way of forming words in English.

The
productive models of conversion in English are the following:

1)
formation of verbs from nouns (Noun
→
Verb),
e.g. cash,
n –
cash,
v;
work,
n
–
work, v;
butter
–
to
butter;
ship
– to
ship,
a
dog – to dog
(следовать
по
пятам),
a
monkey – to monkey
(передразнивать).
The noun is the name of an animal and the verb denotes behaviour
typical of this animal. Nose
– to
nose,
hammer
– to hammer,
i.e. the noun is the name of a tool and the verb is the name of an
action, which is performed by this tool.

2)
formation of nouns from verbs (Verb
→
Noun),
e.g. fall,
v
– fall,
n;
must,
v
– must,
n;
to
survey –
a
survey;
to
call –
a
call;

3)
formation of nouns from adjectives (Adjective
→
Noun),
e.g. criminal,
adj –
criminal,
n;
intellectual,
adj –
intellectual,
n;
poor
– the
poor;
final
– a
final);

4)
formation of verbs from adjectives (Adjective
→
Verb),
e.g. slow,
adj –
slow,
v;
brown,
adj –
brown,
v;
dirty
– to
dirty.

6. Other types of word-formation

Word-composition
(словосложение)
is the formation of words by joining two (or more) roots, e.g.
night-club,
man-of-war,
passer-by.
The combination of two or more existing words to create a new word is
one of the most common word-building processes in English.
A compound word (or
compound) is a unit consists of more than one lexical root, e.g.
bluebird
(adjective
+ noun); in-laws
(preposition
+ noun); jumpsuit
(verb
+ noun).

Compound
words may be classified according to the parts of speech:

a) nouns:
waterfall,
looking-glass;

b) verbs:
to
honeymoon,
to
outgrow;

c)
adjectives:
peace-loving,
hard-working;

d) adverbs:
downstairs,
lip-deep;

e)
prepositions:
within,
into;

f)
numerals:
thirty-seven,
fifty-nine.

Compounding
(словослияние)
is
the making of a new word by joining two or more roots together. These
words are classified into the following groups:

1)
neutral compounds, where the words are joined together, without any
connecting element, e.g. headache,
heartbreak,
bedroom;

2)
morphological compounds, in which the words are joined by a vowel or
a consonant, e.g. speedometer,
craftsman,
statesman,
bridesmaid;

3)
synthetic compounds, in which words are joined by a prepositions or
conjunction as a linking element, e.g. down-and-out
(в
ужасном
положении,
опустошенный),
mother-in-law,
good-for-nothing
(лентяй,
бездельник);

4)
derivational compounds, in which the words have affixes in their
roots, e.g. film-goer,
blue-eyed;

5)
contracted compounds, in which one of the words is shortened, e.g.
TV-set,
H-bag
(handbag).

Affixation,
conversion, and compounding are the three main types of
word-formation in English. There are a number of other ways of
forming words, such as:

a)
clipping
(сокращение)
is the process of cutting off one or several syllables of a word,
e.g. maths
(mathematics),
lab
(laboratory),
gym
(gymnastics),
ZOO
(zoological
garden), exam
(examination), BBC
(British
Broadcasting Corporation), i.e.
(Latin
“id est” – English “that is”), e.g.
(Latin
“exempli gratia” – English “for example), etc.
(Latin
“et cetera” – English “and so on”).

Three
types of clipping can be distinguished:

• the
  first part is left, e.g. ad
  (advertisement),
  prof
  (professor);

• the
  second part is left, e.g. phone
  (telephone), plane
  (airplane), burger
  (hamburger);

• a
  middle part is left, e.g. fridge
  (refrigerator), flu
  (influenza).

b)
back-formation
(реверсия)
is a process that creates a new word by removing affix from another
word in the language, e.g. to
televise (from
“television”), to
babysit (from
“a babysitter”);

c)
blending
(стяжение)
is the process of merging parts of words into one new word, usually
the first part of one and the final part of the other, e.g. brunch
(from
“breakfast”
and “lunch”);
smog
(from
“smoke”
and “fog”),
motel
(from
“motorist”
and “hotel”),
medicare
(from “medical”
and “care”);

d)
sound
imitation
(звуковое
подражание)
is the formation of words from sounds associated with objects
producing these sounds, buzz,
meow,
cuckoo,
cock-a-doodle-doo,

splash,
tick-tick;

e)
sound-interchange
(чередование
звука)
is
a way of making words by changing the phonetic shape of the root,
e.g. food,
n –
feed,
v;
sing,
v –
song,
n;
speak,
v
– speech,
n; life, n –
live,
n.
It was produced in old English and now it is not produced at all;

f)
stress-interchange
(чередование
ударения)
is a way of making words by changing the stress in one and the same
morpheme in various cases of its occurrence, e.g. ′present,
n
– to
pre′sent, v;
′present,
n
– to
pre′sent, v;
′record,
n
–
to re′cord, v;

′import, n –
to
im′port.

SEMINAR
7

KEY
TERMS

morpheme
root

free
morpheme

bound
morpheme

affix

suffix

prefix

inflexions

derived
word compound word

productivity
conversion

composition
compounding

clipping
back-formation

TOPICS
FOR DISCUSSION AND EXERCISES

1. What is a
   word-formation? How is word-formation classified?

2. How do you
   distinguish between a morpheme and a word?

3. Morphemes;
   types of morphemes. Structural types of words in English.

4. Affixation.
   Classifications of affixes.

5. What is
   conversion? Semantic groups of converted lexical units.

6. Composition.
   Give examples of different types of composition.

7. Ways of
   forming compounds.

8. Classifications
   of compound words.

9. What is
   back-formation?

10. What is
    abbreviation, clipping, blending?

1.
Give examples of free and bound morphemes (5-7 of each type).

2.
Form words with a negative meaning, using prefixes
in-, un-, dis-, de-.

Ability,
able, accessible, action, admissible, expected, comprehensible, to
tie,

eatable, to
bind, to charge, to obey, to organize, to mobilize, to bolt, just,
justice.

3.
State
what part of speech the following words belong to. Read the pairs of
words and comment on the stress in them.

1. Economy
– economic; industry – industrial; technology – technological;
solid – solidity.

2. Canada –
Canadian; Europe – European; Japan – Japanese.

3. To
generate – generation; to investigate – investigation; to form –
formation; to specialize – specialization; to analyse – analysis,
analytic; emphasize – emphasis, emphatic; to separate –
separation.

4.
Translate the following compound words into Russian. State the type
of compounds.

Undertaker,
stay-at-home, red-hot, bird’s-eye, lady-bird, jelly-fish, madbrain,
busybody, brassface, fire-eater, handiwork, officer-in-charge,
early-riser, T-shirt, golden-haired.

5. Analyse
the structure of the compounds. Translate them into Russian.

1. Office-manager,
   office-managing, office-management.

2. Novel-translator,
   novel-translating, novel-translation.

3. Mail-deliverer,
   mail-delivering, mail-delivery.

4. Mainland,
   letterbox, postman, rain-proof, grandchildren, gentleman,
   snow-storm, foot-path, ice-breaker, world-wide, oil-rich,
   first-hand, shorthand, highway, bookshelf.

6. Compare
the verbs with the corresponding nouns. Translate them into Russian.

ape –
to ape ass – to ass
dog – to dog

duck –
to duck fish – to fish
eye – to eye

finger –
to finger monkey – to monkey rat – to
rat

wolf –
to wolf back – to back bone
– to bone

head –
to head shoulder – to shoulder top –
to top

dress –
to dress pocket – to pocket line –
to line

face –
to face collar – to collar
star – to star

Test

1.
Affixation is:

a)
a way of word-building consisting in adding an affix to the root of a
definite part of speech

b)
a way of word-building consisting in adding an affix to the root of a
noun

c)
shortening of words

d)
a type of morphological analysis

2.
The main function of suffixes in Modern English is:

a)
to change the lexical meaning of a word

b)
to form the verb

c)
to ask questions

d)
to form one part of speech from another

3.
Сonversion
is a morphological way of forming words:

a)
when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech

b)
when a noun is formed from the verb

c)
when a noun is formed from the adjective

d)
when a verb is formed from another part of speech

4.
Clipping consists:

a)
in adding a part of a word

b)
in cutting off a part of a word

c)
in cutting off a prefix

d)
in adding a suffix

5.
Determine the number of morphemes in the word “reactivate”:

a)
one

b)
two

c)
three

d)
four

6.
Inflexions
are
morphemes used to change:

a)
phonetic
forms of the word

b)
grammar
forms of the word

c)
semantic forms

d)
stylistic forms

PART
FOUR

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Word
formation

-Good afternoon, dear colleagues! I’d like to
introduce myself. My name is…….

Today we are going to speak
about different ways of word formation. As you know this part of grammar takes
a great deal to prepare students for the Olympiad.

We are not going to
penetrate  deeply  into the course of
theoretical grammar as we used to while studying at the university but  in any
case we’ll have to revise the material just for ourselves.

What  ways of word formation do you remember? Can you call
them? What is the exact number of them?

Even scientists don’t
know the exact number of them as they call one and the same process differently
but all in all they distinguish the following : 

ü 
affixation

ü 
composition

ü 
conversion

ü 
abbreviation      

ü 
clipping

ü 
acronyms   

ü 
sound-interchange

ü 
sound imitation

ü  ellipsis

ü 
borrowings

I’m sure you 
are accustomed  to all of them. So, let’s do the
first  task.

 Упражнение 1. Now combine the terms with the
definitions.

Answers:

1. Affixation — a basic means of forming
words in English which is divided into suffixation and prefixation.

2.Сomposition  — the
combination of two or more existing words to create a new word.  It is also
called compounding.

3.Conversion — a process of creating a
new word in a different part of speech without adding any derivative elements.

4.Abbreviation — consists
of the initial letters or parts of words.

5.Сlipping  — a process that shortens a word
by deleting one or more syllables.

6. Acronyms  — are formed by taking the
initial letters of the words in a phrase and pronouncing them as a word. NATO [] NASA []

7. Sound-interchange —  is defined as an opposition in which words or word forms are
differentiated due to the alternation in the phonemic composition of the root:
as in food(n) – feed(v), proud (adj) – pride (n)

8.Sound
imitation  — the naming of an action or thing
by a more or less exact reproduction of a sound associated with it ( buzz, moo,
quack-quack).

9. Ellipsis — a way
of word formation consisting in omission of the second element of a word
combination: a documentary ← a documentary film.

10.Borrowings  — the process of taking a word from another
language with little or no translation.

That was just a piece of theory.
Now let’s apply our knowledge in practice.

Упражнение
2.Decide what kind of word formation the underlined words belong to!

1. Can you text
her?  (verb from  noun text, meaning to send a text-message) —conversion
2.Maths is the most difficult subject for me. (mathematics) — clipping

3. The USA  is
a great country. (abbreviation)

4. OK, so the meeting is
on Tuesday. That’s a definite. (noun from adjective)- conversion.

5. I adore pop
music (popular)- clipping

6.If you’re not  careful,
some downloads can damage your computer. (noun from verb
download)- conversion

7.I do my homework
every day —   compound

8. He doesn’t like her  untidy
room. affixation

9. Snegurochka  is
a famous character in Russia — borrowing

10. She is a very beautiful
girl  —  affixation

 Упражнение 3. Gradually we have come to the most difficult part
of word formation. That is using the given word so that it fits lexically and
grammatically.

For some VISITORS (VISIT), the main attraction of Jamaica lies in its
glorious beaches and all the EXCITEMENT (EXCITE) of the nightlife that is
associated with them. And indeed, our first-class hotel is located on its own
AMAZING (AMAZE) beach on the island’s north cost. In terms of ENTERTAINMENT
(ENTERTAIN), the hotel offers the full range of THRILLING (THRILL) watersports
during the day, plus a chance to relax or dance to local music in the evening.

But, ALIKE many tourists, your contact with the real Jamaica will not be
LIMITED (LIMIT) to what you see from the window of the airport bus because we
organise trips into the DRAMATIC (DRAMA) interior of the island. You will be
DRIVEN (DRIVE) by jeep, high up into the Blue Mountains, with their ROMANTIC
(ROMANCE) mists, deep valleys and lush vegetation. Your visit to a small coffee
farm will be UNFORGETTABLE (FORGET) as you guaranteed to discover some of the
world famous coffee.

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

The following are the ways by which new words are formed in English. 

Derivation 

Derivation is a process
of forming new words according to fairly regular pattern on the basis of
pre-existing words.

If we analyse
the process of derivation in more detail we will notice that a step in a
derivation is usually not on process but 3 semantinal process namely-

a)     
morphological process

b)     
semantic process

c)     
syntactic process

Major word
formation processes in English are:-

1) Affixation-

One of the
commonest methods of word making in English is called Affixation. Affixation is
accomplished by means of a large number of small bits of the English language
which are not usually given in listings in the dictionary. These small bits are
called affix and the process is known as affixation. A few examples are the
elements un, mis, pre, less ish etc which appear in words like unhappy,
misrepresent, pre-paid, boyish, terrorism etc.

In the preceding
groups of words it should be obvious that some affixes had to be added to the
beginning of a word. For example- “un”. These are called prefixes and the
process is known as prefixation. The other affix forms are added to the end of
the word, for example, “ism” and these are called suffixes. The process
involved here is called suffixation. All English words formed by the
derivational process of affixation used either prefixes or suffixes or both.
Thus “mislead” has a prefix, “disrespectful” has both prefix and suffix and
“likeliness” has two suffixes.   

The English
language has made generous use of prefixes and suffixes to make new words or to
modify or to extend the root idea. But there are some important differences
between prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are put before a word whereas suffixes
are put in the end of a word. Another important difference between them is that
prefixes mostly have a meaning of their own, though they are not generally used
as separate words, whereas suffixes are used only to modify the root idea of a
word or to convert the word into another part of speech. For example, if we add
a prefix to the word “author” we’ll get “co-author”. Here the root idea is not
modified and moreover the word class is unchanged. But by suffixation we get a
new word authorship. Here we get a new word.

Acronyms

Some new words
are formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. These are called
acronyms. For example-SARS, NASA, NATO, UN. Acronyms can loose their initials
become everyday terms such as LASER, SCUBA (self-continued underwater breathing
asparagus)etc.

Backformation

A very
especialised type of reduction process is known as backformation. Typically a
word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form another word of a
different type( usually overt). For example, televise for television, emote
from emotion, enthuse from enthusiasm, edit from editor etc.

Conversion

A change in the
function of a word, as for example when a noun comes to be used as a verb
without any reduction is generally known as conversion. Other lebels for this
very common process are category change and functional shift. A number of nouns
such as paper, butter, bottle etc can via the process of conversation come to
be used as verb as in the following sentences-

He is papering
the bedroom walls

Have you
buttered the toast?

He is tutoring
the students.

Compounding

One of the
commonest ways of making a new word is to join two or more element, each of
which is also used as separate word. This method of forming new word is called composition
or compounding, and the words thus formed are called compounds. For example
brainwash, headache, sleep walking, day dreamer, self control etc.

Words made from the names of places and persons:-

Another prolific
source of word formation in English is the derivation of new words from the
names of places, persons and characters in famous books. For example; the word
sandwitch comes from the name of the Earl of Sandwitch. Cardigan comes from the
Earl of Cardigan. Quicksotic comes from Don Quicksotc. The word solomon as a
substitute for wisdom originates from the Bible.

Portmantaau words:-

This process is
comparatively a new comer in the scenario of word generation. This is of noble
nature in comparison with other forms of word formation. Too different and
independent lexical entries are blended together by subtracting the front
portion of a word and a back portion of another. The word thus formed are
called Portmantaau words; for example; happenstance (happening+circumstance);
workaholic(work+alcoholic);wevzine(web-sight+magazine);
Internet(International+Network) etc.

The
difference between inflection and derivation

Both derivation
and inflection makes word but derivation makes a new word. For example,
respect->respectful; good-> goodness etc. But inflection merely changes
the relation of case, number, gender, person and pens. For example

dog-  dogs-   
dogs

            plural   possessive

look-  looks-  
looks

In English
prefixes are always derivational.

This article is about the unit of speech and writing. For the computer software, see Microsoft Word. For other uses, see Word (disambiguation).

A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible.^[1] Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial.^[2] Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition.^{[3]: 13:618} Some specific definitions of the term «word» are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations.^[4]: 6

Codex Claromontanus in Latin. The practice of separating words with spaces was not universal when this manuscript was written.

The concept of «word» is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own.^[1] Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can also be joined to create other words in a process of morphological derivation.^[2]: 768 In English and many other languages, the morphemes that make up a word generally include at least one root (such as «rock», «god», «type», «writ», «can», «not») and possibly some affixes («-s», «un-«, «-ly», «-ness»). Words with more than one root («[type][writ]er», «[cow][boy]s», «[tele][graph]ically») are called compound words. In turn, words are combined to form other elements of language, such as phrases («a red rock», «put up with»), clauses («I threw a rock»), and sentences («I threw a rock, but missed»).

In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a «word» may be learned as part of learning the writing system.^[5] This is the case for the English language, and for most languages that are written with alphabets derived from the ancient Latin or Greek alphabets. In English orthography, the letter sequences «rock», «god», «write», «with», «the», and «not» are considered to be single-morpheme words, whereas «rocks», «ungodliness», «typewriter», and «cannot» are words composed of two or more morphemes («rock»+»s», «un»+»god»+»li»+»ness», «type»+»writ»+»er», and «can»+»not»).

Definitions and meanings

Since the beginning of the study of linguistics, numerous attempts at defining what a word is have been made, with many different criteria.^[5] However, no satisfying definition has yet been found to apply to all languages and at all levels of linguistic analysis. It is, however, possible to find consistent definitions of «word» at different levels of description.^[4]: 6 These include definitions on the phonetic and phonological level, that it is the smallest segment of sound that can be theoretically isolated by word accent and boundary markers; on the orthographic level as a segment indicated by blank spaces in writing or print; on the basis of morphology as the basic element of grammatical paradigms like inflection, different from word-forms; within semantics as the smallest and relatively independent carrier of meaning in a lexicon; and syntactically, as the smallest permutable and substitutable unit of a sentence.^[2]: 1285

In some languages, these different types of words coincide and one can analyze, for example, a «phonological word» as essentially the same as «grammatical word». However, in other languages they may correspond to elements of different size.^[4]: 1 Much of the difficulty stems from the eurocentric bias, as languages from outside of Europe may not follow the intuitions of European scholars. Some of the criteria for «word» developed can only be applicable to languages of broadly European synthetic structure.^[4]: 1-3 Because of this unclear status, some linguists propose avoiding the term «word» altogether, instead focusing on better defined terms such as morphemes.^[6]

Dictionaries categorize a language’s lexicon into individually listed forms called lemmas. These can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a «word» in the opinion of the writers of that language. This written form of a word constitutes a lexeme.^{[2]: 670-671} The most appropriate means of measuring the length of a word is by counting its syllables or morphemes.^[7] When a word has multiple definitions or multiple senses, it may result in confusion in a debate or discussion.^[8]

Phonology

One distinguishable meaning of the term «word» can be defined on phonological grounds. It is a unit larger or equal to a syllable, which can be distinguished based on segmental or prosodic features, or through its interactions with phonological rules. In Walmatjari, an Australian language, roots or suffixes may have only one syllable but a phonologic word must have at least two syllables. A disyllabic verb root may take a zero suffix, e.g. luwa-ø ‘hit!’, but a monosyllabic root must take a suffix, e.g. ya-nta ‘go!’, thus conforming to a segmental pattern of Walmatjari words. In the Pitjantjatjara dialect of the Wati language, another language form Australia, a word-medial syllable can end with a consonant but a word-final syllable must end with a vowel.^[4]: 14

In most languages, stress may serve a criterion for a phonological word. In languages with a fixed stress, it is possible to ascertain word boundaries from its location. Although it is impossible to predict word boundaries from stress alone in languages with phonemic stress, there will be just one syllable with primary stress per word, which allows for determining the total number of words in an utterance.^[4]: 16

Many phonological rules operate only within a phonological word or specifically across word boundaries. In Hungarian, dental consonants /d/, /t/, /l/ or /n/ assimilate to a following semi-vowel /j/, yielding the corresponding palatal sound, but only within one word. Conversely, external sandhi rules act across word boundaries. The prototypical example of this rule comes from Sanskrit; however, initial consonant mutation in contemporary Celtic languages or the linking r phenomenon in some non-rhotic English dialects can also be used to illustrate word boundaries.^[4]: 17

It is often the case that a phonological word does not correspond to our intuitive conception of a word. The Finnish compound word pääkaupunki ‘capital’ is phonologically two words (pää ‘head’ and kaupunki ‘city’) because it does not conform to Finnish patterns of vowel harmony within words. Conversely, a single phonological word may be made up of more than one syntactical elements, such as in the English phrase I’ll come, where I’ll forms one phonological word.^{[3]: 13:618}

Lexemes

A word can be thought of as an item in a speaker’s internal lexicon; this is called a lexeme. Nevertheless, it is considered different from a word used in everyday speech, since it is assumed to also include inflected forms. Therefore, the lexeme teapot refers to the singular teapot as well as the plural, teapots. There is also the question to what extent should inflected or compounded words be included in a lexeme, especially in agglutinative languages. For example, there is little doubt that in Turkish the lexeme for house should include nominative singular ev or plural evler. However, it is not clear if it should also encompass the word evlerinizden ‘from your houses’, formed through regular suffixation. There are also lexemes such as «black and white» or «do-it-yourself», which, although consist of multiple words, still form a single collocation with a set meaning.^{[3]: 13:618}

Grammar

Grammatical words are proposed to consist of a number of grammatical elements which occur together (not in separate places within a clause) in a fixed order and have a set meaning. However, there are exceptions to all of these criteria.^[4]: 19

Single grammatical words have a fixed internal structure; when the structure is changed, the meaning of the word also changes. In Dyirbal, which can use many derivational affixes with its nouns, there are the dual suffix -jarran and the suffix -gabun meaning «another». With the noun yibi they can be arranged into yibi-jarran-gabun («another two women») or yibi-gabun-jarran («two other women») but changing the suffix order also changes their meaning. Speakers of a language also usually associate a specific meaning with a word and not a single morpheme. For example, when asked to talk about untruthfulness they rarely focus on the meaning of morphemes such as -th or -ness.^[4]: 19-20

Semantics

Leonard Bloomfield introduced the concept of «Minimal Free Forms» in 1928. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves.^[9]: 11 This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense by themselves (for example, the and of).^[10]: 77 Some semanticists have put forward a theory of so-called semantic primitives or semantic primes, indefinable words representing fundamental concepts that are intuitively meaningful. According to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their associated conceptual denotations.^[11][12]

Features

In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax, words (also called lexical items in the literature) are construed as «bundles» of linguistic features that are united into a structure with form and meaning.^{[13]: 36–37} For example, the word «koalas» has semantic features (it denotes real-world objects, koalas), category features (it is a noun), number features (it is plural and must agree with verbs, pronouns, and demonstratives in its domain), phonological features (it is pronounced a certain way), etc.

Orthography

Words made out of letters, divided by spaces

In languages with a literary tradition, the question of what is considered a single word is influenced by orthography. Word separators, typically spaces and punctuation marks are common in modern orthography of languages using alphabetic scripts, but these are a relatively modern development in the history of writing. In character encoding, word segmentation depends on which characters are defined as word dividers. In English orthography, compound expressions may contain spaces. For example, ice cream, air raid shelter and get up each are generally considered to consist of more than one word (as each of the components are free forms, with the possible exception of get), and so is no one, but the similarly compounded someone and nobody are considered single words.

Sometimes, languages which are close grammatically will consider the same order of words in different ways. For example, reflexive verbs in the French infinitive are separate from their respective particle, e.g. se laver («to wash oneself»), whereas in Portuguese they are hyphenated, e.g. lavar-se, and in Spanish they are joined, e.g. lavarse.^[a]

Not all languages delimit words expressly. Mandarin Chinese is a highly analytic language with few inflectional affixes, making it unnecessary to delimit words orthographically. However, there are many multiple-morpheme compounds in Mandarin, as well as a variety of bound morphemes that make it difficult to clearly determine what constitutes a word.^[14]: 56 Japanese uses orthographic cues to delimit words, such as switching between kanji (characters borrowed from Chinese writing) and the two kana syllabaries. This is a fairly soft rule, because content words can also be written in hiragana for effect, though if done extensively spaces are typically added to maintain legibility. Vietnamese orthography, although using the Latin alphabet, delimits monosyllabic morphemes rather than words.

Word boundaries

The task of defining what constitutes a «word» involves determining where one word ends and another word begins, that is identifying word boundaries. There are several ways to determine where the word boundaries of spoken language should be placed:^[5]

• Potential pause: A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries. However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words, or fail to separate two or more closely linked words (e.g. «to a» in «He went to a house»).
• Indivisibility: A speaker is told to say a sentence out loud, and then is told to say the sentence again with extra words added to it. Thus, I have lived in this village for ten years might become My family and I have lived in this little village for about ten or so years. These extra words will tend to be added in the word boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have infixes, which are put inside a word. Similarly, some have separable affixes: in the German sentence «Ich komme gut zu Hause an«, the verb ankommen is separated.
• Phonetic boundaries: Some languages have particular rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be. For example, in a language that regularly stresses the last syllable of a word, a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable. Another example can be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like Turkish):^[15]: 9 the vowels within a given word share the same quality, so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. Nevertheless, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions.
• Orthographic boundaries: Word separators, such as spaces and punctuation marks can be used to distinguish single words. However, this depends on a specific language. East-asian writing systems often do not separate their characters. This is the case with Chinese, Japanese writing, which use logographic characters, as well as Thai and Lao, which are abugidas.

Morphology

A morphology tree of the English word «independently»

Morphology is the study of word formation and structure. Words may undergo different morphological processes which are traditionally classified into two broad groups: derivation and inflection. Derivation is a process in which a new word is created from existing ones, often with a change of meaning. For example, in English the verb to convert may be modified into the noun a convert through stress shift and into the adjective convertible through affixation. Inflection adds grammatical information to a word, such as indicating case, tense, or gender.^[14]: 73

In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, love) may inflect to have a number of different forms (for example, loves, loving, and loved). However, for some purposes these are not usually considered to be different words, but rather different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes.

In Indo-European languages in particular, the morphemes distinguished are:

• The root.
• Optional suffixes.
• A inflectional suffix.

Thus, the Proto-Indo-European *wr̥dhom would be analyzed as consisting of

1. *wr̥-, the zero grade of the root *wer-.
2. A root-extension *-dh- (diachronically a suffix), resulting in a complex root *wr̥dh-.
3. The thematic suffix *-o-.
4. The neuter gender nominative or accusative singular suffix *-m.

Philosophy

Philosophers have found words to be objects of fascination since at least the 5th century BC, with the foundation of the philosophy of language. Plato analyzed words in terms of their origins and the sounds making them up, concluding that there was some connection between sound and meaning, though words change a great deal over time. John Locke wrote that the use of words «is to be sensible marks of ideas», though they are chosen «not by any natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of such an idea».^[16] Wittgenstein’s thought transitioned from a word as representation of meaning to «the meaning of a word is its use in the language.»^[17]

Classes

Each word belongs to a category, based on shared grammatical properties. Typically, a language’s lexicon may be classified into several such groups of words. The total number of categories as well as their types are not universal and vary among languages. For example, English has a group of words called articles, such as the (the definite article) or a (the indefinite article), which mark definiteness or identifiability. This class is not present in Japanese, which depends on context to indicate this difference. On the other hand, Japanese has a class of words called particles which are used to mark noun phrases according to their grammatical function or thematic relation, which English marks using word order or prosody.^{[18]: 21–24}

It is not clear if any categories other than interjection are universal parts of human language. The basic bipartite division that is ubiquitous in natural languages is that of nouns vs verbs. However, in some Wakashan and Salish languages, all content words may be understood as verbal in nature. In Lushootseed, a Salish language, all words with ‘noun-like’ meanings can be used predicatively, where they function like verb. For example, the word sbiaw can be understood as ‘(is a) coyote’ rather than simply ‘coyote’.^{[19][3]: 13:631} On the other hand, in Eskimo–Aleut languages all content words can be analyzed as nominal, with agentive nouns serving the role closest to verbs. Finally, in some Austronesian languages it is not clear whether the distinction is applicable and all words can be best described as interjections which can perform the roles of other categories.^{[3]: 13:631}

The current classification of words into classes is based on the work of Dionysius Thrax, who, in the 1st century BC, distinguished eight categories of Ancient Greek words: noun, verb, participle, article, pronoun, preposition, adverb, and conjunction. Later Latin authors, Apollonius Dyscolus and Priscian, applied his framework to their own language; since Latin has no articles, they replaced this class with interjection. Adjectives (‘happy’), quantifiers (‘few’), and numerals (‘eleven’) were not made separate in those classifications due to their morphological similarity to nouns in Latin and Ancient Greek. They were recognized as distinct categories only when scholars started studying later European languages.^{[3]: 13:629}

In Indian grammatical tradition, Pāṇini introduced a similar fundamental classification into a nominal (nāma, suP) and a verbal (ākhyāta, tiN) class, based on the set of suffixes taken by the word. Some words can be controversial, such as slang in formal contexts; misnomers, due to them not meaning what they would imply; or polysemous words, due to the potential confusion between their various senses.^[20]

History

In ancient Greek and Roman grammatical tradition, the word was the basic unit of analysis. Different grammatical forms of a given lexeme were studied; however, there was no attempt to decompose them into morphemes. ^[21]: 70 This may have been the result of the synthetic nature of these languages, where the internal structure of words may be harder to decode than in analytic languages. There was also no concept of different kinds of words, such as grammatical or phonological – the word was considered a unitary construct.^[4]: 269 The word (dictiō) was defined as the minimal unit of an utterance (ōrātiō), the expression of a complete thought.^[21]: 70

See also

• Longest words
• Utterance
• Word (computer architecture)
• Word count, the number of words in a document or passage of text
• Wording
• Etymology

Notes

References

Bibliography

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Look up word in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Barton, David (1994). Literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. p. 96. ISBN 0-631-19089-9. OCLC 28722223.
• The encyclopedia of language & linguistics. E. K. Brown, Anne Anderson (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier. 2006. ISBN 978-0-08-044854-1. OCLC 771916896.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
• Crystal, David (1995). The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-40179-8. OCLC 31518847.
• Plag, Ingo (2003). Word-formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-511-07843-9. OCLC 57545191.
• The Oxford English Dictionary. J. A. Simpson, E. S. C. Weiner, Oxford University Press (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989. ISBN 0-19-861186-2. OCLC 17648714.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)