Chapter 10:

Process of Word Formation

Introduction
• One of the distinctive properties of human language is
creativity, by which we mean the ability of native speakers
of a language to produce and understand new forms in
their language.
• Nowadays, the terms ‘word formation’ does not have a
clear cut, universally accepted usage. It is sometimes
referred to all processes connected with changing the form
of the word by, for example, affixation, which is a matter
of morphology.

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Where do words come from?
• English contains a core of words that have been part of it
as far back as we can trace its history (more than 5000 years
ago)
• Examples: sun, man, foot, father, eat, fire
• English has been an exceptional borrower of words from
other languages throughout its history. This has come
through invasion, immigration, trade and exploration.
• Sometimes, a word may pass through one or more language
before it enters English; e.g. assassin

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Where do words come from?
• Apart from borrowing, English gets nes words by means of
easily definable processes employed by English users. We
will discuss:
A. Compounding G. Blending
B. Derivation H. Back-formation
C. Invention I. Folk Etymology
J. Antonomasia
D. Echoism
K. Reduplication
E. Clipping
F. Acronymy
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Compounding
• Apart from borrowing, English gets nes words by means of
easily definable processes employed by English users. We
will discuss:
A. Compounding G. Blending
B. Derivation H. Back-formation
C. Invention I. Folk Etymology
J. Antonomasia
D. Echoism
K. Reduplication
E. Clipping
F. Acronymy
Dr. Eman Alhusaiyan - Linguistics -1- 2021 01/03/1444
Compounding
• A compound is a word that consists of more than one
other word.
• An endocentric compound consists of a head, i.e. the part
that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound,
and modifiers, which restrict this meaning.
• For example, the English compound doghouse, where house is
the head and dog is the modifier, is understood as a house
intended for a dog.
• Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same part of
speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of doghouse.
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Compounding
• More examples of endocentric compounds in English:
• steamboat = steam (noun/ modifier) +boat (noun/head)
• textbook = text(noun/ modifier) +book(noun/head)
• cavemen = cave(noun/ modifier) +men(noun/head)

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Compounding
• Exocentric compounds do not have a head, and their
meaning often cannot be transparently guessed from its
constituent parts.
• For example, the English compound white-collar is neither a
kind of collar nor a white thing.
• In an exocentric compound, the word class is determined
lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents.
• For example, a must-have is not a verb but a noun.

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Compounding
• English language allows several types of combinations of
different word classes:
• N + N lipstick , teapot
• A + N fast food , soft drink
• V + N breakfast , sky-dive
• N + V sunshine , babysit
• N + A waterproof
• A + A deaf-mute , bitter-sweet

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Compounding
• Compounds may be written as:
1. One word as in : cornflakes
2. A hyphenated word as in : long-haired
3. Two words as in : high school/15/2011
• So, Compound words may take three forms.
•They may be an “open compound”, a “hyphenated
compound”, or a “closed compound”:
Examples:
1. sweet potato (open compound)
2. mother-in-law (hyphenated compound)
3. secondhand (closed compound)
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Compounding
• This very productive source of new terms has been well
documented in English and German, but can also be
found in totally unrelated languages.
• In Arabic, compounding does not play such an
important part. However, we find examples such as:
‫• ذبحة صدرية‬
‫• رأسمال‬
‫ إلخ‬/‫ عبدالعزيز‬/‫• عبدهللا‬
‫• كلمة مرور‬

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Derivation
• Derivation is accomplished by means of a large number
of affixes.
• Prefixes and suffixes
• We can see that some affixes have to be added to the
beginning of the word (e.g. un-, mis-). These are called
prefixes.

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Derivation
• All English words formed by this derivational process
have either prefixes or suffixes, or both.
• Thus, mislead has a prefix, disrespectful has both a prefix
and a suffix, and foolishness has two suffixes.

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Derivation
• Infixes
• There is a third type of affix, not normally used in English,
but found in some other languages.
• This is called an infix :an affix that is incorporated inside
another word.
• It is possible to see the general principle at work in certain
expressions, occasionally used in fortuitous or aggravating
circumstances by emotionally aroused English speakers:
Hallebloodylujah!, Absogoddamlutely! it!

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Invention (Coinage)
• Coinage is the invention of totally new words.
• It is one of the least common processes of word formation
in English
• The typical process of coinage usually involves the
extension of a product name from a specific reference to a
more general one.
• For example, think of Kleenex, Xerox, and Kodak.
• These started as names of specific products, but now they
are used as the generic names for different brands of these
types of products.

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Echoism
• Echoism is the formation of words whose sound suggests
their meaning like hiss and peewee.
• The sound is either natural like the roar of a waterfall
or artificial like the clang of a bell.
• In literature, ECHOISM is referred to as
‘onomatopoeia’.
• EXAMPLES:
• click
• murmur
• whisper
Clipping
• Clipping occurs when a word of more than one syllable is
reduced to a shorter form.
• Examples are ad (advertisement), flu (influenza), perm
(permanent wave), phone, plane
• English speakers also like to clip each other’s names, as in
Al, Ed, Liz, Mike, Ron, Sam, Sue and Tom.

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Clipping
• Clippings are, also, known as ‘shortenings’ Clipping
mainly consists of the following types:
• 1. Back clipping
• 2. Fore-clipping
• 3. Middle clipping

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Clipping
• 1. Back clipping is the most common type, in which
the beginning is retained. The unclipped original may be
either a simple or a composite. Examples
• ad (advertisement), cable (cablegram), doc (doctor), exam (e
xamination), gas (gasoline), math (mathematics), memo (me
morandum), gym (gymnastics, gymnasium)

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Clipping
• 2. Fore-clipping retains the final part.
• Examples
• phone (telephone), varsity (university), chute (parachute), coon (
racoon), gator (alligator)
• 3. Middle clipping. Here, the middle of the word is
retained.
• Examples flu (influenza), tec (detective), jams (pyjamas)

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Acronymy
• Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of
a set of other words.
• These can be forms such as CD (“compact disk”) or VCR
(“video cassette recorder”) where the pronunciation consists of
saying each separate letter.
• Acronyms are pronounced as new single words, as in
NATO, NASA or UNESCO.
• These examples have kept their capital letters, but many
acronyms simply become everyday terms such as laser
(“light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”),
radar (“radio detecting and ranging”)
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Blending
• The combination of two separate forms to produce a
single new term is also present in the process called
blending.
• Blending is typically accomplished by taking only the
beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the
other word.

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Blending
• Formation of blends
• Most blends are formed by one of the following
methods:
• 1. The beginning of one word is added to the end of
the other.
• For example, brunch is a blend of breakfast and lunch.
This is the most common method of blending.
• 2. The beginnings of two words are combined.
• For example, cyborg is a blend
of cybernetic and organism.

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Blending
• Formation of blends
• 3. One complete word is combined with part of another
word.
• For example, guesstimate is a blend of guess and estimate.
• 4. Two words are blended around a common sequence
of sounds.
• For example, the word motel, which is a blend
of motor and hotel

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Backformation
• It is the formation of a word from one that looks like its
derivative. It is an active source of word formation
• In the past, with the introduction of nouns such as beggar,
swindler, and editor into English, speakers followed the
general rule of forming the agentive suffix –er to produce
the verbs beg, swindle and edit.
• This process is the reverse of the usual method of word
formation process whereby we begin with the verb by
adding the agent morpheme –er

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Folk Etymology
• Changing a word, in part or in a whole, to make it more
understandable and more like familiar words, though
based on inaccurate view of its origin.
• Example:
‘salary’ is from the Latin word ‘salarium’, meaning “salt
money”.

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Antonomasia (
• The formation of a common noun, a verb, or an
adjective from the name of a person or a place.
• Names from history and literature have given English many
common nouns.
• When we talked about a hoover , we were using an eponym.
• Other common eponyms are sandwich (from the eighteenth-
century Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on having his
bread and meat together) and jeans (from the Italian city of
Genoa where the type of cloth was first made).

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Antonomasia
• 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).

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Reduplication
• The process of forming a new word by doubling a
morpheme, usually with a change of vowel or initial
consonant.
• Examples: tiptop, boogie-woogie, ticktock

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End of class