Processes of Word Formation
English language contains more that a million word. Where all these words come from?
English contains a core of words that have been a part of for a very long time, more than 5000 years.
English has been a prodigious borrower of words from other languages throughout its history. This has come about through invasion, immigration, exploration, trade, and other venues of contact between English and some foreign language.
See table p.128
Borrowing
A. Compounding
The joining of two or more words into a single word.
hang glider, airstrip, cornflakes, busybody, downpour, cutoff, skydive, alongside, breakfast, long-hired, devil-may-care, high school
Compound words may be written as one word, as a hyphenated word, or as two words.
B. Derivation
It is the forming of new words by combining derivational suffixes or bound bases with existing words.
disadvise, emplane, deplane, teleplay, ecosystem, coachdom, counsellorship, re-ask
C. Invention
Now and then new words are totally invented such as Kodak, nylon, dingbat, goof, and blurb.
D. Echoism
It is the formation of words whose sounds suggests their meanings, such as hiss and peewee. The meaning is:
Sound
natural
the roar of a waterfall
artificial the clang of a bell
Creature bobwhite
E. Clipping
Clipping means cutting off the beginning or the end of a word, or both, leaving a part to stand for the whole. A result form is called a clipped word.
lab, dorm, prof, exam, gym, prom, math, psych, mike
The clipping of the end of the word is the most common, and it is mostly nouns that undergo this process. Clipping results in new free morpheme in the language.
A very few words have been formed by both front and back clipping.
flu (influenza) Liz (Elizabeth) fridge (refrigerator) Clipped words are also formed from grammatical units, such as modifier plus noun.
paratrooper (parachutist trooper) sitcom (situation comedy)
F. Acronymy
It is the process whereby a word is formed from the initials or beginning segments of a succession of words.
Sometimes the initials are pronounced;
MP (military police, Member of Parliament)
In others, the initials and/or beginning segments are pronounced as the spelled word would be.
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) /neto/
radar (radio detecting and ranging) /redar/
There has been a great increase in the use of acronyms. They tend to abound in large organizations– for instance, in the army, in government, and in big business– where they offer neat ways of expressing long terms.
Many acronyms are used and understood only by initials in a given field, like the medical terms PRN, HR, OR, CPR, IV, IC, AIDS.
G. Blending
Blending is the fusion of two words into one, usually the first part of one word with the last part of another. The resultant blend partakes of both original meanings.
gasoline + alcohol = gasohol workaholic (work + alcoholic)
docudrama (documentary + drama) faction (fact + fiction)
slanguage (slang + language) transistor (transfer + resistor)
Many blends are nonce words, and few become part of the standard lexicon.
The two classes, blends and clipped words, are not sharply separated and some words may be put into either classes.
H. Back-formation
“What does a feeper do?” It feeps.
On the analogy of word-pairs such as tell-teller, reap-reaper, write-writer, sing-singer; one might reason that the word feeper must have a parallel verb feep.
In the past, with the introduction of the nouns peddler, beggar, swindler, and editor into English, speakers followed the same analogy and created the previously nonexistent verbs peddle, beg, swindle, and edit.
This process is the reverse of the customary method of word formation:
speak (v) + -er {ER n} = speaker (n)
Back-formation is the formation of a word from one that looks like its derivatives. It is an active source of new words today.
