fAith B.

De Vera
 review
When we wish to refer to a minimal grammatical form merely as a form, we will us
e the term morph.
Morphology- is the study of word formation, of the structure of words.
morphemes- those words that function to specify the relationship between one
lexical morpheme and another words.
free morphemes- those morphemes that can stand alone as words .
bound morphemes- those morphemes that occur only in combination.
affixes- are classified according to whether they are attached before or after the
form to which they are attached.
Objectives:
 WORDY-WEIRDY
etymology- the study of the origin of the words. Comes from Latin and but has
Greek roots(etymon 'original from + logia 'study of').
words-in grammar, are the basic units of analysis

base- is commonly used by linguists to refer to any stem (or root) to which an affi
x is attached.

"A stem may consist of a single root, of two roots forming a compound stem, and
one or more derivational affixes forming a derived stem."
(R. M. W. Dixon, The Languages of Australia. Cambridge University Press, 2010)
WOrD FoRMATiOn
According to linguist Bogdan Szymanek,
"English word-formation is doing quite well and keeps
many people busy: first, the ordinary language user,
the journalist or media man, the writer and the
copywriter, and all those other individuals who like to
test, from time to time,
the limits of morphological creativity, and, finally,
the linguist, who must try to make sense of the new
creations" ("The Latest Trends in English Word-Formation"
in Handbook of Word-Formation, 2005).
WOrD FoRMATiOn
In linguistics(particularly morphology and
lexicology), word formation refers to the ways
in which new words are made on the basis of other
words or morphemes.
Word-formation can denote either a state
or a process, and it can be viewed either
diachronically (through different periods in
history or synchronically
(at one particular period in time).
Types of Word Formation Processes
A. Compounding
>It forms a word out of two or more root morphemes. The words are called compounds
or compound words.
-In Linguistics, compounds can be either native or borrowed.
>Native English roots are typically free morphemes.
e.g. mailman cupcake
cup holder mail carrier
email e-ticket
dog house dry run
fireplace fireplug

-Some compounds have a preposition as one of the component words.

pick-up truck talking-to
-In Greek and Latin, in contrast to English,
roots do not typically stand alone.
-So compounds are composed of bound roots
-Compounds formed in English from
borrowed Latin and Greek morphemes
preserve this characteristic.
e.g.
photograph, iatrogenic
 Things to note about compounds
 Over time, the convention for writing compounds can change, usually i
n the direction from separate words.
e.g. email used to be written with a hyphen

• In the 19th century, today and tomorrow were sometimes still

written to-day and to-morrow.
The to originally was the preposition to with an older meaning 'at
[a particular period of time]'.
Clock work changed to clock-work and finally to one word with no
break (clockwork).
If you read older literature you might see some compound words
that are now written as one word appearing with unfamiliar
spaces or hyphens between the components.
 Things to note about compounds
• They can combine words of different parts of speech.
e.g. as adjective-noun (dry run, blackbird, hard drive)
as adjective-noun (dry run, blackbird, hard drive)

Sometimes these compounds are different in the part of speech of the

whole compound vs. the part of speech of its components.

Some compounds have more than two component words.

These are formed by successively combining words into compounds.

e.g. pick-up truck, ice-cream cone, no-fault insurance

formed from pick-up and truck , where the first component, pick-up
is itself a compound formed from pick and up.
 subtype of compounds does not have to do with part of speech, but
rather the sound characteristics of the words. These subtypes are not
mutually exclusive.
Rhyming compounds (subtype of compounds)
These words are compounded from two rhyming words.
e.g. lovey-dovey
chiller-killer

There are words that are formally very similar to rhyming compounds,
but are not quite compounds in English because the second element is
not really a word--it is just a nonsense item added to a root word to form
a rhyme.
e.g. higgledy-piggledy
tootsie-wootsie
This formation process is associated in English with child talk
(and talk addressed to children), technically called hypocoristic
language.
e.g. bunnie-wunnie Henny Penny
snuggly-wuggly Georgie Porgie Piggie-Wiggie

Another word type that looks a bit like rhyming compounds com
prises words that are formed of two elements that almost match,
but differ in their vowels. Again, the second element is typically
a nonsense form:
pitter-patter zigzag tick-tock
riffraff flipflop
There are a number of ways approaching the study and classification of
compound words,the most accessible of which is to classify them according
to the part of speech of the compound and then sud-classify them according
to the parts of speech of its constituents.
1.Compound Nouns Table 1 is based on discussion in Bauer(1983).
a. noun+noun: bath towel; boy friend; death blow
b. verb+noun: pickpocket; breakfast
c. noun+verb: nosebleed; sunshine
d. verb+verb: make-believe
e. adjective+noun: deep structure; fast-food
f. particle+noun: in-crowd; down-town
g. adverb+noun: now generation
h. verb+particle: cop-out; drop-out
i. phrase compounds: son-in-law
2.Compound Verbs
a. noun+verb: sky-dive
b. adjective+verb: fine-tune
c. particle+verb: overbook
d. adjective+noun: brown-bag
3. Compound Adjectives
a. noun+adjective: card-carrying; childproof
b. verb+adjective: fail safe
c. adjective+adjective: open-ended
d. adverb+adjective: cross-modal
4. Compound adverbs
a. uptightly b. cross- modally
5. Neo- Classical Compounds
a. astro-naut
b. hydro-electric
c. mechano-phobe
The head of the compound is the constituent modified by the
compound's other constituents.
In English, heads of the compounds are typically the rightmost
constituent (excluding any derivational and inflectional suffixes).
e.g.

traffic - cop
line-backer
teapot
Exercise1
Give the meaning of the following compounds.
darkroom
- a room which is dark
security officer
- an officer who is security
Identify compounds in the following phrases.
1. a sting by a bee-
bee-sting
2. a test of blood-
blood test
3. a pool for swimming-
swimming pool
4. a friend who is a girl-
girlfriend
5. a shark which is a killer -
killer shark
 B. Coining
The creation of new words
without reference to the existing
morphological resources of the
language, that is, solely out of
the sounds of the language.

It is the invention of a totally

new term. The most typical
sources are invented trade
names for commercial
products that become general
terms.
 Coining is very rare, but gogool [note the spelling] is an attested example,
meaning 10 100 .
This word was invented in 1940 by the nine-year-old nephew of a mathematician.
(see Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary)

bling, and possibly slang, which emerged in the last 200 years with no obvious
etymology.It seems to evoke heavy jewelry making noise.
aspirin
nylon
xerox
Eponyms or Antonomasia-words based on a name of a person or a place.
sandwich (fromthe 18th century Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on having bread
and meat together while gambling)

hoover (from the Hoover Suction Sweeper Company which produced the
first vacuum cleaner)
C. Clipping
It is a type of abbreviation of a word in which one part is 'clipped' off
the rest, and the remaining word now means essentially the same thing as what the
whole word means or meant.
e.g. rifle- meaning a gun with a rifled barrel.
A fairly modern clipping of an earlier compound rifle gun. (Rifled means
having a spiral groove causing the bullet to spin, and thus making it more accurate.)
burger
Formed by clipping off the beginning of the word hamburger. (This clipping could only
come about once hamburg+er was reanalyzed as ham+burger.)
advertisement?
ad
telephone?
phone
D. Conversion/functional shift/zero derivation
Refers to the process of changing or converting the class of a word without changing its
form. The word email, for instance, can be used as a verb in Modern English though it was only a
noun in the past. Change of part of speech without any corresponding formal change.
Noun to verb: bottle (The wine was brewed in France but bottled in Hong Kong.)
butter (Don’t butter the bread for me. I prefer jam.)
Verb to noun: hit (He scored a hit in his first shot.)
cheat (He used some cheats in the computer game to make him win easier.)
must (It is a must for you to visit the Forbidden City if you go to Beijing.)
Adjective to regular (I am one of the regulars at the pubs in Tsim Sha Tsui.)
noun:
final (It is obvious that the LA Lakers will enter the NBA Finals.)
crazy (Stop shouting and running around like a crazy.)
Adjective to empty (Can you empty the bin for me, please?)
verb:
dirty (Don’t sit on the floor. You might dirty your dress.)
E. Acronym
-It is a type of abbreviation, which are new words formed from the initial letters of
a set of words.They are pronounced as new single words.

e.g. NATO(The North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

UNICEF(The United Nations Children’s Fund)
NFA(National Food Authority )

BRB - be right back (from 1980s, 90s)

FYI - for your information (from mid 20th century)
LOL - laughing out loud (early 21st century) - now pronounced either /lol/ or /el o el/;
ROFL - rolling on the floor laughing
ROFLMAO - rolling on the floor laughing my ass off
F.Abbreviation
A little like clipping, it involves the shortening of existing words to create other
words, usually informal versions of the originals.

e.g.

professor- prof
doctor - doc
G. BlenDing
Involves taking two or more words, removing parts of each, and joining the
residues together to create a new word whose form and meaning are taken
from the source words.
Blending is one of the most beloved of word formation processes in English.
It is especially creative in that speakers take two words and merge them
based not on morpheme structure but on sound structure. The resulting
words are called blends.
Some blends that have been around for quite a while include
brunch (breakfast and lunch),
motel (motor hotel),
electrocute (electric and execute),
smog (smoke and fog)
Here are some more recent blends
– mocktail (mock + cocktail) 'cocktail with no alcohol'
– splog (spam + blog) 'fake blog designed to attract
hits and raise Google-ranking'
– Britpoperati (Britpop + literati) 'those knowledgable about current Briti
sh pop music'

Blending is typically accomplished by combining the initial part of one

word and the last part of another word.
e.g.
brunch (breakfast + lunch)
kidult (kid + adult)
edutainment (education + entertainment)
emoticon (emotion + icon)
H. Borrowing
Involves copying a word that generally belonged in one language into another
language.
Borrowing is one of the most common sources of new words in
English. The words formed by borrowing of words from other languages are
called loanwords. Over 80% of the English words are loanwords, and they
are from over 120 languages.
ketchup gweilo cha chaan teng laisee dim sum (Chinese)
balcony opera violin spaghetti macaroni (Italian)
kindergarten pretzel hamburger iceberg (German)
karaoke tsunami sushi origami tycoon karate soy (Japanese)
croissant macaroon resume mayonnaise coup d’etat (French)
e.g. Mexican terms: taco burrito
Latin: homicide
Greek: chorus
French: mutton
Spanish: ranch
German: semester

The borrowed word never remains a perfect copy

of its original. It is made to fit the phonological,
morphological, and syntactic structure.
I. Back Formation

Is the process of shortening a long word by cutting off an affix to form a new
word. The new word has a different part of speech from the original word.
Examples:

televise ← television
donate ← donation
babysit ← babysitter
backform ← backformation
J. Derivation
It is the process of creating separate but morphologically related words.
e.g. record (noun) record (verb)
perfect (adj.) perfect (verb)

Derivation is also known as affixation. New words are created by adding

affixes to an existing word.
divine divinity
profane profanity

In some derivationally relatedword pairs, only a feature of the final consonant changes, usually
its voicing:
advice advise
belief believe
mouth mouthe
Snapshots

Derivation-adding derivational affix, chaging the syntactic category orient--orientation

Back Formation-removing what is mistaken for an affix burglar--burgle
Borrowing-copying a word that generally belonged in one language into
another language. German---semester
Blending-take two words and merge them based not on morpheme structure
but on sound structure. carjacking (car and hijacking) arose since the 1970s.
Abbreviation- the shortening of existing words to create other words professor- prof
Acronym- new words formed from the initial letters of a set of words TGIS
Conversion-the process of changing or converting the class of a word without changing
its form adj.-verb: empty (Can you empty the bin for me, please?)
Clipping-shortening a word brassiere > bra
Coining-creation of new words without reference to the existing morphological resources
Kodak
Combining-It forms a word out of two or more root morphemes. put-down
 Birth and Death Rates of Words

"Just as a new species can be born into an environment, a wor

d can emerge in a language. Evolutionary selection laws can a
pply pressure on the sustainability of new words since there are
limited resources (topics, books, etc.) for the use of words.
Along the same lines, old words can be driven to extinction
when cultural and technological factors limit the use of a word,
in analogy to the environmental factors that can change the
survival capacity of a living species by altering its ability to
survive and reproduce."

(Alexander M. Petersen, Joel Tenenbaum, Shlomo Havlin, and H. Eugene Stan

ley, "Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to W
ord Death." Scientific Reports, March 15, 2012)