WORD FORMATION PROCESSES

There are different ways of creating new words:

WORD FORMATION PROCESSES

5. BACK-FORMATION

3. CONVERSION

• It is a process of creating new forms by removing affixes, that is the backwards derivation

Hospitalise (Verb) >> Hospital (Noun) + -ise

Affixation

but....

What is the word formation process in this sentence?

Ex: Television (n) first came into use

Televise (v) was created from it.

Where do they bottle Coca-Cola?

How are new words formed in English?

ORIGINAL

BACK-FORMATION

• The plants need water (n)
• I´ll water (v) the plants.
• I´ll try (v) to persuade her.
• It was a good try (n)

bottle: verb.

• It is formed from the noun bottle.
• There is no change of shape.
• Look at these examples:

editor-------------------------- edit

donation---------------------- donate

babysitter--------------------- babysit

obsessive---------------------- obsess

resurrection------------------ resurrect

What processes are we talking about?

There are a wide range of morphological operations that are involved in the formation of lexical bases

1. COMPOUNDING

4. DERIVATION by BASE MODIFICATION

6. CLIPPING

Compounding is a process to form new words from 2/more independent words. Compound words may be written as : 1 word = girlfriend

2 words with an hyphen= stir-fry

Types of Compounding:

• Compound Nouns: birdcage, gentleman, hangman, outpatient,...

[the 2nd base is most often a noun, while the first can belong to a range of categories ]

• Compound Adjectives: dirt-cheap, snow-white, stress-free, skin-deep, heart-broken,...
• Compound Verbs: baby-sit, blow-dry, sleepwalk, handwash,...
• Compound Verbs with Prepositions: over-react, underachieve

The extension of a base from one category to another is accompanied by a phonological modification of the base (not the addition of any affix)

Modification ------- change in the vowel or final consonant or a shift in the stress from one syllable to another

PHONOLOGICAL PROCESS IN COMPOUNDS

Look at the following sentences and indicate which modification is the primary one:

In Clipping, a word is reduced without changing the meaning of the word.

It´s a merely variant with the same meaning, usually more informal one.

Compound stress rule can distinguish between compound words and phrases:

• The same word is stressed on the first syllable.
• Independent words in phrases are stressed differently (almost always on the second syllable)

a) This is the document you need

b) We will document its development

'GREENHOUSE (a house for your vegetables) VS

GREEN 'HOUSE (a house painted in green)

a) The interview was very torment

b) they want to torment me

Ex: PHONE------------the Clipped form from the original, TELEPHONE

'BLACKBIRD (a type of bird) VS

BLACK 'BIRD (a bird that is black)

'EASYGOING VS 'EASY GOING

Clipping

Full Form

2. AFFIXATION

Prefixes: mis-, de-, pre-, un-, in-, im-, ...

Suffixes: -ly, -able, -ness, -ism, -ity, ...

A base is expanded by.....

• The addition of a prefix at the beginning of the base/stem. UN-CONDITIONAL
• A suffix at the end. LUCK-LESS

Let´s see a peculiarity in the morphological processes!

Words with more than one affix is followed in a hierarchical structure

delicatessen-------------------------------- deli

airplane------------------------------------- plane

helicopter----------------------------------- copter

influenza------------------------------------ flu

gymnasium--------------------------------- gym

7. BLENDING

REFERENCES:

A new word is created by combining the parts of two different words.

8. INITIALISM

This word-formation process creates bases from the initial letters of a sequence of words.

Ex: Smoke + fog = smog

Breakfast + lunch = brunch

Motor + hotel = motel

• R. HUDDLESTON and G.K. PULLUM.2005. A Student´s Introduction to English Grammar. Cambridge: CUP. VII
• GEERT BOOJ. 2005. The Grammar of Words. Oxford: OUP. Chapter 2

There are 2 subtypes:

ABBREVIATION

ACRONYM

Uttering the names of the letters

Picking initials letters that spell out a pronounceable word

DNA (deoxirubonucleic acid)

["dienei"]

TV (television) ["tivi"]

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation)

RADAR (Radio Detecting And Ranging)