Word Formation in English

Word formation is a process with the result of a new lexeme. Lexeme is a standard shape of a word as you would find in dictionary. There are many processes that result in a new word being added to the vocabulary. The following are the important methods.

1.       Affixation/ Derivation

 

A process by which a word is derived by adding an affix to an existing word or another affix is called Affixation.

a.       Use of Prefixes

                                            i.            Negative prefixes (im-possible, in-evitable, un-stable, a-moral, non-violence, dis-service, il-logical, ir-rational, de-frost, mis-understand, pseudo-secular)

                                          ii.            Prefixes of Number (mono-syllabic, uni-lingual, bi-polar, di-pole, tri-cycle, tetra-cyclic, multi-national, poly-syllabic)

                                        iii.            Prefixes of time and order (re-evaluate, ante-chamber, fore-tell, pre-mature, post-war, ex-MLA, super-fine)

                                         iv.            Prefixes of location (sub-way, inter-racial, intra-departmental, trans-migration

                                           v.            Prefixes of degree or size (super-man, out-run, under-cooked, hyper-active, ultra-modern, mini-bus, over-active, arch-angel,  midi-skirt, maxi-dress)

                                         vi.            Prefixes of attitude (pro-hindu, anti-social, co-operate, counter-proposal)

                                       vii.            Other prefixes (auto-biography, neo-rich, semi-circle, pan-Indian)

                                     viii.            Class-changing prefixes change the class of the word (be-head, en-able, a-float, de-form)

b.      Use of Suffixes

                                            i.            Class-maintaining suffixes

Friend-ship, boy-hood, hindu-ite, London-er, Tiger-ess, king-dom, machine-ery

                                          ii.            Class-changing suffixes

·         Noun to adjective

India-ian, China-ese, beauty-ful, harm-less, friend-ly, child-like, child-ish, accident-al, virtue-ous.

·         Adjective to noun

Able-ity, happy-ness, brave-ery

·         Noun to verb

Fort-ify, length-en, top-le

·         Verb to noun

Drive-er, govern-ment, drain-age, pollute-ant, pay-ee, condemn-ation, withdraw-al, act-or

·         Verb to adverb

Sleep-ily, play-fully

·         Adjective to adverb

Nice-ly, back-wards

 

2.       Inflection

 

In linguistics, inflection is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, person, number, gender and case.

-s in cars (plural)

-‘s in John’s (possession)

-s in reads (first person singular)

-ing in dancing (continuous)

-ed in danced (past tense)

-t in dreamt (perfect)

-er in older (comparative)

-est in oldest (superlative)

 

3.       Conversion

 

Some words are used as words of different classes without any change in the form of the word, without the addition if an affix or prefix. This process of derivation is called conversion.

Examples:

Switch on the light./ Light the lamp.

The Earth is round./ The doctor went on a round./You must round all the sharp corners.

 

4.       Compounding

 

Compounds are formed by joining two or more bases. These bases are sometimes separated by a hyphen, while on other cases, the hyphen appears to have disappeared with the passage of time.

Types of Compounds

·         Noun+ Noun- motor cycle, teargas, girl-friend, fire-engine, goldfish, pot-belly, hair breadth.

·         Noun + Adjective- trustworthy, home sick, duty free, beauty conscious, brick-red, sea-green.

·         Adjective +Noun – paleface, yellow press, red light, fathead, blackboard

·         Verbs/Adverbials/Verbal nouns- sight-seeing, birth-control, record-player, brain-washing, walking-stick, man-eating, heart-breaking, easy-going, baby-sitting, lip-read.

 

5.       Clipping

 

Some words are use in shortened form by subtracting one or more syllables from a word. This shortening occurs at the beginning of the word, at the end of the word or at both ends of the word.

·         Back-clipping/Apocopation- Last part of the word is dropped

Ad (advertisement), Doc (doctor), gas (gasoline), gym (gymnasium), exam (examination), pub (public house), cable (cablegram), pop (popular concert), fax (facsimile)

·         Fore-clipping/ Aphaeresis- Retains the final part

Phone (telephone), chute (parachute), gator (alligator), varsity (university)

·         Middle Clipping/ Syncopation – Middle part of the word is retained

Flu (influenza), tec (detective), shrink (head-shrinker), jams (pyjamas)

·         Complex Clipping- In compound words, one part of the original compound remains intact.

Cablegram (cabletelegram), op art (optical art), navi cert (navigation certificate)

 

 

 

 

6.       Syncopation

 

This is a particular form of shortening or abbreviation. Example: pram. Its original form was perambulator. It was syncopated to prambulator and then abbreviated to pram. In syncopation, a vowel is removed from a word and the consonants on either side are then run together. As a result, one syllable is lost. Other examples are Once which was originally ones, Else which was originally elles. Likewise,, some past participles like born, worn, shorn, forlorn are syncopated forms. At one time they had the terminal ending –en and were used as boren, woren, shoren and forloren.

 

 

7.       Acronyms

 

Acronyms and Initialisms are formed by joining the initial letters of other words. The difference between an acronym and an abbreviation is that the latter may be formed by the initial letters in a phrase and is read letter by letter.

Acronyms

AIDS- Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome

LASER- Light Amplification by Simulated Emission of Radiation

UNICEF- United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund

NATO- North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

Gestapo- Geheim, Staats Polizei

 

Abbreviations

BBC- British Broadcasting Corporation

DNA- Deoxyribonucleic acid

B2C- Business to Customer

UNO- United Nations Organisation

 

8.       Blending/ Portmanteau Words

 

A blend is a word formed by parts of two other words, sometimes, but not always, morphemes. Most blends are formed by one of the following methods.

a.       The beginning of one word is added to the end of the second word (brunch from breakfast and lunch)

b.       The beginnings of two words are combined (cyborg from cybernetic and organism)

c.       One complete word is combined with part of another (guesstimate from guess and estimate)

d.       Two words are blended around a common sequence of sounds (Californication from California and fornication)

e.       Multiple sounds from two component words are blended while preserving the sounds order. (Slithy from lithe and slimy)

 

9.       Telescoping

 

It is a type of blending where two words are formed into one by the omission of a portion of one word duplicated in the other

Example

SLNAGUAGE from ‘slang’ ‘language’

to don was originally to do on.

to doff was originally to do off

 

10.   Borrowings

 

English has a large number of words borrowed from other languages with which it has come to contact over the years. The language has been enriched by borrowings.

 

Guru from Hindi

Bazaar from Persian

Sheikh from Arabic

Tycoon from Japanese

Dame from French

Biology, Boxer, Ozone from German

Jacket, Yoghurt, Kiosh from Turkish

Pistol, Robot from Czech

Croissant from French

Piano from Italian

Pretzel from German

Sofa from Arabic

Tattoo from Tahitian

 

A calque or loan translation is called borrowing the meaning or idiom from another language rather than the lexical item in itself.

Sakul/Schakul in German became School.

Skyscraper from Dutch wolkenkrabber

Boyfriend from Japanese boyifurendo

 

11.   Coinages/ Inventions

 

Coinage is the invention of totally new words. The typical process of coinage usually involved the extension of a product name from a specific reference to a more general one.

Kleenex, Xerox and Kodak, Vaseline are examples

These started as names of specific products and now they are used as the generic names for different brands of these types of products.

X-ray, Laser, Sputnik, Astronaut are other examples.

 

12.   Eponyms

 

There are a number of words in English based on proper names of a person or place.

Sandwich from Earl of Sandwich

Watt from Scott-James Watt

Volt from Alessandro Volta

Gamp (Umbrella) from Mrs Gamp (Dickens’ character)

Boycott from Captain Boycott

Calico from Calicut

Malapropism from Mrs. Malaprop

Jeans from the city of Genoa

 

 

 

 

 

13.   Reduplication

 

The process of forming new words either by doubling an entire word (total reduplication) or part of a word (partial reduplication). Total reduplication in English is extremely rare.

 

Criss-Cross, Pooh-pooh, hush-hush, dooddle-doo, kit-kat, see-saw, wishy-washy, tip-top, hurry-worry, trin-trin, hanky-panky, sing-song, walkie-talkie, humdrum, goody-goody.

 

Rhyming Compounds: These words compounded from two rhyming words are associated in English with child talk, technically called hypocoristic language.

 

Bunnie-wunnie, henny-penny, snuggly-wuggly, piggie-wiggie

 

14.   Onomatopoeic Words/ Echoing

 

Sometimes words are formed by the sounds that suggest their meaning.

Clang, whisper, thunder, click, tick, lisp, murmur

 

15.   Back formation

 

Sometimes words are creatively reduced (form is changed) due to incorrect morphological analysis.

Editor à edit

Televisionà televise

Babysitter à babysit

 

16.   Metanalysis

 

A spelling or sound in a word is split in the wrong place, often when the word has jumped from one language to another and is subjected to gravitational pull of new phonetic combinations.

 

Apron <An Apron < Napron (Middle English) < Naperon (ME French)

Noche < An Oche < Oche (French meaning an incision)

Nickname < A nickname < An ekename (ME)

 

17.   Elison

 

The term for leaving out letters in a word in order to form a shorter word.

 

Gonna -going to

Wanna -want to

Ne’er -never

Can’t- cannot

O’er- over

‘tis- it is

 

18.   Hypocrisms

 

The process where a longer word is reduced to a single syllable the -y or -ie is added to the end.

Movie from moving picture

Telly from Television

Barbie from Barbecue

Aussie from Australian

Hankie from Handkerchief

 

19.   Reanalysis

 

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

 

20.   Analogy

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

 

21.   Novel creation

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

 

Some examples of now-conventionalized words that were novel creations include blimp, googol (the mathematical term), bling, and possibly slang, which emerged in the last 200 years with no obvious etymology. Some novel creations seem to display 'sound symbolism', in which a word's phonological form suggests its meaning in some way. For example, the sound of the word bling seems to evoke heavy jewelry making noise.

 

22.   Creative respelling

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

 

23.   Corruption or Misunderstanding

 

Sometimes new words are formed by corruption or through misunderstanding. For example, the word whitsun (the 7th day after easter) came into existence through a corruption. It refers to the Sunday following Easter. It refers to the festival, which celebrates the decent of the Holy Spirit. The word whitsun originated Whitsunday which meant white Sunday. On that day, all converts to Christianity wore white robes, as a symbol of purification. Then Metanalysis, whit Sunday was transformed to whitsun day. Later on, the analogy of this came whitsun week, whitsun tide, whitsun Sunday, and even whitsun Monday, which is a contradiction in terms. In the same way goodbye is a garbled form of God be with you.

 

24.    Freak Formation

Certain words came into existence as a result of Freak-Formation ie., quite unexpectedly or strangely or accidentally. Example: Teetotaller. Teetotaller (one who abstains from alcohol). This word originated as a result of stammering by an antialcohol advocate. He stammered while pronouncing the expression total abstainer and thus the word Teetotaller was formed.