Morphology: Word Formation Processes (ENGL240 - Fall 2024-25) PDF

MORPHOLOGY: WORD FORMATION PROCESSES (PART II) ENGL240 Introduction to Language Fall 2024-25  OUTLINE  Word formation processes  Conversion  backformation  Coinage  Blending  Clipping ...

MORPHOLOGY: WORD FORMATION PROCESSES (PART II) ENGL240 Introduction to Language Fall 2024-25  OUTLINE  Word formation processes  Conversion  backformation  Coinage  Blending  Clipping  Borrowing  Acronyms and initialisms  References  CONVERSION  Conversion means forming new lexemes by shifting the category or part of speech of an already existing lexeme without adding an affix. This means of word formation is referred to as conversion or functional shift. (Lieber, 2009)  In English, we often create new verbs from nouns, and sometimes we create new verbs from adjectives:  N to V: table to table bread to bread fish to fish  V to N: to throw a throw to kick a kick to fix a (quick) fix  A to V: cool to cool yellow to yellow (Lieber, 2009)  COINAGE  Coinage  Coinage means simply making up entirely new words. However, we rarely coin completely new words (Lieber, 2009).  New products are sometimes given coined names like Kodak, aspirin, Kleenex, or nylon, and these sometimes come to be used as common nouns (Lieber, 2009).  The most contemporary example of coinage is the word google. The term google has become a widely used expression meaning “to use the internet to find information.” New products and concepts (ebay) and new activities (“Have you tried ebaying it?”) are the usual sources of coinage (Yule, 2010).  COINAGE  New words based on the name of a person or a place are called eponyms. The words sandwich (from the eighteenth-century Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on having his bread and meat together while gambling) and jeans (from the Italian city of Genoa where the type of cloth was first made) are eponyms.  Some eponyms are technical terms, based on the names of those who first discovered or invented things, such as fahrenheit (from the German, Gabriel Fahrenheit), volt (from the Italian, Alessandro Volta) and watt (from the Scottish inventor, James Watt) (Yule, 2010)  BACKFORMATION  Backformation simply means a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (usually a verb)  A good example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into use and then the verb televise was created from it.  Other examples of words created by this process are: donate (from “donation”), emote (from “emotion”), enthuse (from “enthusiasm”), liaise (from “liaison”) and babysit (from “babysitter”).  Indeed, when we use the verb backform (Did you know that “opt” was backformed from “option”?), we are using a backformation (Yule, 2010)  BLENDING & CLIPPING  Blending is a process of word formation in which parts of lexemes that are not themselves morphemes are combined to form a new lexeme. Familiar examples of blends are words like brunch, a combination of breakfast and lunch, or smog, a combination of smoke and fog. (Yule, 2010)  Clipping is a means of creating new words by shortening already existing words. For example, we have info created from information, blog created from web log, or fridge from refrigerator.  Universities are fertile grounds for the creation of clippings: students study psych, anthro, soc, and even ling with one prof or another, and if they’re taking a science class, may spend long hours in the lab, which might or might not involve running some stats. (Lieber, 2009)  BORROWING  Borrowing is the process of taking over words from other languages (Yule, 2010).  English language has borrowed a number of words from other languages such as tycoon (Japanese), yogurt (Turkish) and zebra (Bantu), pizza (Italian), etc. (Yule, 2010)  Think of words that Arabic has borrowed from other languages.  ACRONYMS AND INITIALISMS  When the first letters of words that make up a name or a phrase are used to create a new word , the results are called acronyms or initialisms.  In acronyms, the new word is pronounced as a word, rather than as a series of letters. For example, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome gives us AIDS, pronounced [eidz]. And self- contained underwater breathing apparatus gives us scuba.  Initialisms are similar to acronyms in that they are composed from the first letters of a phrase, but unlike acronyms, they are pronounced as a series of letters such as PTA for Parent Teacher Association, PR for either ‘public relations’ or ‘personal record’, and NCAA for National College Athletic Association, etc (Lieber, 2009)  REFERENCES  This handout is based on extracts from:  Lieber, R. (2009) Introducing Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Yule, G. (2010) The study of language. 4th edn. Cambridge University Press