words and word-formation process

8/10/2019 Words and Word-Formation Process

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WORDOrthographic: a word is what occurs between spaces in writing.Semantic: a word has semantic coherence; it expresses a unifiedsemantic concept.Phonological:

Potential pause: a word occurs between potential pauses inspeaking .Stress: a word spoken in isolation has one and only one primarystress.

Morphological: a word has an international cohesion and is

indivisible by other units; a word may be modified onlyexternally by the addition of suffixes and prefixes.Grammatical: words fall into particular classes.Syntactic: a word has external distribution or mobility; it ismoved as unit, not in parts.


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Types of words A simple word. It has one free root, e.g. hand A complex word. It has a free root and one or more

bound morphs, e.g. unhappy A compound word. It has two free roots, e.g. handbook A compound-complex word. It has two free roots andassociated bound morphs, e.g. handwriting


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WORD FORMATION Word formation denotes to the process of creation of new lexical units.There are numerous word formation process:

1. Reduplication. It is a process similar to derivation, in which theinitial syllable or the entire word is doubled, exactly or with a slightphonological change.In English, reduplication is often used in childrens language (e.g.boo-boo, choo-choo) or for humorous or ironic effect (e.g. goody-goody, pooh-pooh).Three different kinds of reduplication can be identified:a. Exact reduplication, e.g. papa, mama, so-sob. Ablaut reduplication in which the vowel alternates while theconsonants are identical, e.g. zig-zag, ping-pong, tick-tockc. rhyme reduplication in which the consonants change while the vowel remains the same, e.g. hodge-podge, boogie-woogie, nitty-gritty.


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WORD FORMATION (continuation)2. Compounding. It is the combination of two or more free roots(plus associated affixes).English orthography is indeterminate because compounds canbe written as a single word or as two words, hyphenated or not.Example: icecream, ice cream, ice-cream.

3. Blending. It involves two processes of word formation,compounding and clipping. Two free words are combined andblended, usually by clipping off the end of the first word andthe beginning of the second word, although sometimes one orthe other morpheme is left intact. Blending sometimes calledportmanteau words. Examples: sm(oke) + (f)og : smogmo(tor) + (ho)tel: moteltw(ist) + (wh)irl: twirl


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WORD FORMATION (continuation)4. Conversion or functional shift. It is the conversion of one part ofspeech to another without the addition of a suffix. It issometimes said that zero ( ) derivational suffix is added(since it is usual for derivational suffixes to change the part ofspeech, as discussed above). The only concrete change thatmay occur in a functional shift is a change in stress. Thefunctional shift can be found in English:a. V to N e.g. (a) run, drive, walk, cut, lookb. N to V e.g. (to) man, head, contact, ship, mail

c. A to V e.g. (to) weary, better, empty, dirty, bared. N to A e.g. blue-collar (worker), plant (supervisor), paper(shredder), head (bookkeeper)e. A to N (the) rich, poor, (a) daily, double, givenf. Prt to V e.g. (to) down, up, off, thwart


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WORD FORMATION (continuation)5. Back formation. In back formation, speakers derive a

morphologically simple word from a form which theyanalyze, on the basis of derivational and inflectional

patterns existing in English, as a morphologicallycomplex word. So, it is a process in which a word changesits form and function. Examples:typewriter typewriteemotion emotesedative sedateParamedical paramedicenthusiasm enthuse


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WORD FORMATION (continuation)6. Shortening. There are three types of shortening:a. acronyms (the initial letters of words in a phrase are pronounced as a word). Examples: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), AIDS(Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), sonar (SOund NAvigationRanging), radar (RAdio Detecting And Ranging), laser (Light Amplificationby Stimulated Emission of Radiation)

Note that acronyms are always in order to produce a word in which conforms toEnglish phonotactics.b. initialisms (the initial letters of words in a phrase are pronounced asletters). Examples: a.m., p.m., B.Cc. clipped forms. A clipping is the result of deliberately dropping part of a

word, usually either the end or the beginning, or less often both, whileretaining the same meaning and same word class. Examples:Dropping the end: mike (microphone), fan (fanatic), porn (pornography)dropping beginning: car (motorcar), venture (adventure), cello (violoncello)dropping beginning and the end: flu (influenza), fridge (refrigerator), shrink(head-shrinker)


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WORD FORMATION7. Root creation (coinage). The rarest form of word

formation is root creation, the invention of anentirely new root morpheme. Examples: meow(onomatopeic), squeak (natural sounds), quark(process), aspirin (name of product), volt (name ofperson).

8. Borrowing. It is taking a word from one language andincorporating it into another. Examples: boxer,ozone, biology (German); jackal, kiosk, yogurt(Turkish),;pistol, robot (Czech)


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WORD FORMATION9. Derivation. It is the addition of a derivational affix (a prefix, a suffix,and, in some languages, an infix).the addition of a derivational affix to a root produces a new word with one or more of the following changes:

a. a phonological change (including stress change), e.g. reduce(reduction), clear (clarify), include (inclusive).b. an orthographic change to the root, e.g. pity (pitiful), happy(happiness), deny (denial).c. a semantic change, which may be fairly complex, e.g. husband(husbandry), post (postage), recite (recital).

d. a change in word class. Examples: flower (N) flowery (A),happy (A) happiness (N), child (N) childhood (N), work (V) worker (N), priority (N) prioritize (V), simple (A) simplify (V),support (V) supportive (A), green (A ) greenish (A), quick (A) quickly (Adv), home (N) homeward (Adv)


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WORDIDIOMS. A final consideration in regard to words is the existence of

special kinds of phrases called idiom. An idiom is a

sequence of words which functions as a single unit ; it issyntactically fixed and semantically conventionalized.Examples: sit tight

hit the road

take heartadd fuel to the firebe dead to the worldlet the cat out of the bag


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Brinton, Laurel J. 1980. The Structure of ModernEnglish: A Linguistic Introduction. Philadelphia: JohnBenjamin Publishing Company. Kracht, Marcus. Introduction to linguistics (e-book)Nursamsu. 2009. Introduction to Linguistics .Tulungagung: Unpublished book.

Yule, Goerge. 1986. The Study of Language: AnIntroduction . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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