Words and word formation processes

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:

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.

1. Compounding
2. Derivation: prefixes and suffixes
3. Conversion
4. Blending
5. Abbreviation
   • Clipping
   • Acronyms
6. Novel creation
7. Creative re-spelling
8. Loan words
9. Download this post as a PDF