LINGUISTICS I

CHAPTER 5 Week 7

WORD FORMATION

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi M.Fatih Adıgüzel

1
WORD FORMATION: Some Terms
Neologism: A new word or phrase that has come into
common use or a new meaning that has been given
to an existing word. Examples include 'coach potato,'
‘cyberspace.' Once the word is no longer novel, it is
formally accepted as part of the vernacular language and
appears in dictionaries.

Etymology : The study of the origin and history of a

word. If you look at a dictionary entry, you can see the
etymology of a word in some dictionaries. (Etymological
dictionaries detail: The language of origin, The original
meaning of the root, Historic and present use)
Etymology of a Word : An example
The etymology of “disaster”

 "anything that befalls of ruinous or distressing nature; any

unfortunate event," especially a sudden or great misfortune,
1590s,
 from French désastre (1560s),
 from Italian disastro, literally "ill-starred," from dis-, here
merely pejorative, equivalent to English mis- "ill" (see dis-)
+ astro "star, planet,"
 from Latin astrum,
 from Greek astron "star"
The origin of the word points to unfavourable events being
blamed on certain planet positions. Destiny is written in the stars.
 Ways of Word Formation
When we look closely at the etymologies of
words, we soon discover that there are many
different ways in which new words can enter
the language. We should keep in mind that
these processes have been at work in the
language for some time and a lot of words in
daily use today were, at one time, considered
barbaric misuses of the language.
Ways of Word Formation
•
1) COINAGE
 One of the least common processes of word formation in
English is coinage, that is, the invention of totally new terms.
The most typical sources are invented trade names for
commercial products that become general terms (usually
without capital letters) for any version of that product.
Older examples are aspirin, nylon, vaseline and zipper;
more recent examples are kleenex, teflon and erox.
 The most salient contemporary example of coinage is the
word Google - the name of a company (Google), the term
google (without a capital letter) has become a widely used
expression meaning “to use the internet to find information.”
COINAGE (CONT.)
COINAGE (CONT.)
2) BORROWING

One of the most common sources of new words in English

is the process simply labeled borrowing; that is, the
taking over of words from other languages. Throughout
its history, the English language has adopted a vast
number of words from other languages, including:

croissant (French), dope (Dutch), lilac (Persian),

piano (Italian), pretzel (German), sofa (Arabic),
tycoon (Japanese), yogurt (Turkish) and zebra (Bantu)
BORROWING (cont.) Calque

A special type of borrowing is described as loan-

translation or calque (/kælk/). In this process, there is a
direct translation of the elements of a word into the
borrowing language. Interesting examples are the French
term gratte-ciel, which literally translates as “scrape-sky,”
the Dutch wolkenkrabber (“cloud scratcher”) or the
German Wolkenkratzer (“cloud scraper”), all of which
were calques for the English skyscraper.
Take into account (English) <= prendre en compte (French)
3) COMPOUNDING
 Compounding is the process of combining two separate words
to create a new word (commonly a noun, verb, or adjective).
 Compounds are written sometimes as one word (sunglasses),

sometimes as two hyphenated words (life-threatening), and

sometimes as two separate words (football stadium).
Compounding is very common in English.
 Examples:

Bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook,

wallpaper, wastebasket, waterbed.
These examples are nouns, but we can also create compound
adjectives (good-looking, low-paid) and compounds of adjective
(fast) plus noun (food) as in a fast-food restaurant or a full-time job.
 4) BLENDING
The combination of two separate forms to produce a single
new term is also present in the process called blending. It is
similar to compounding, but in blending, we only take the
beginning of one word and join it to the end of the other word.
• Gasoline + alcohol => Gasohol (In some parts of the
USA, there’s a product that is used like gasoline)
• Smoke + fog => smog (used to talk about the combined
effects of smoke and fog)
Other examples:
bit (binary/digit), brunch (breakfast/lunch),
motel (motor/hotel), telecast (television/broadcast),
sitcom (situation/comedy), frenemy (friend/enemy),
infotainment (information/entertainment),
workoholic (work/alcoholic)
5) CLIPPING
 Clipping occurs when a word of more than one
syllable (facsimile) is reduced to a shorter form (fax),
usually beginning in casual speech. The term gasoline
is still used, but most people talk about gas, using the
clipped form.
 Other examples are ad (advertisement), bra (brassiere),
cab (cabriolet), fan (fanatic), perm (permanent wave),
flu (influenza), pub (public house), gym (gymnasium)
 English speakers also like to clip each other’s names, as
in Al, Ed, Liz, Mike, Ron, Sam, Sue and Tom.
5) CLIPPING – hypocorism /haɪˈpɒkəˌrɪzəm/
A particular type of reduction, favoured in Australian
and British English, produces forms technically known as
hypocorisms. In this process, a longer word is reduced to
a single syllable, then -y or -ie is added to the end of the
monosyllabic root. Examples:
Movie (“moving pictures”) Hankie (“Handkherchief”)
Telly (television”) Roomie (“Room friend”)
Aussie (“Australian”) Granny (“Grandmother”)
Bookie (“bookmaker”) Veggy (“Vegetable”)
Brekky (“breakfast”) Hoodie (“a person with a hood”)
6) BACKFORMATION

 Typically, backformation is a process by which a

word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced so as
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 (by
reduction). Other examples:
 donate (from “donation”), emote (from “emotion”),

enthuse (from “enthusiasm”), liaise (from “liaison”)

babysit (from “babysitter”).
BACKFORMATION (CONT.)
Because –er makes nouns from verbs to describe the job of
someone who does the action described by the verb, the
deletion of –er gives us verbs. However, in the process of
backformation, from nouns ending with –er which were not
derived from a verb, the suffix –er is deleted and verbs are
produced which were not in the language before. To sum up,
in backformation, first nouns appear in a language, and then
verbs are created.
Some examples for backformation with deletion of -er:
(to) edit from an editor, (to) sculpt from a sculptor
(to) swindle from a swindler, (to) burgle from a burglar
(to) peddle from a peddler
7) CONVERSION
A change in the function of a word, as when a noun
comes to be used as a verb (without any reduction), is
generally known as conversion. Other labels for this
very common process are “category change” and
“functional shift.”
For example, a number of nouns such as bottle, butter,
chair and vacation have come to be used, through
conversion, as verbs: We bottled the home-brew last
night; Have you buttered the toast?; Someone has to
chair the meeting; They’re vacationing in Florida.
7) CONVERSION (cont.)
7) CONVERSION (cont.)

 It is worth noting that some words can shift

substantially in meaning when they change
category through conversion.
 The noun doctor doesn’t have a negative sense, but
the verb to doctor often has a negative meaning.
 A reanalysis of meaning is necessary with respect

to the noun total which hasn’t got a negative

meaning, but after conversion, if you total (= verb)
your car, it means you wreck it in an accident.
8) ACRONYM
Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of
other words.
Some acronyms are pronounced by saying each separate letter:
 CD = compact disk

 USA = The United States of America

 UN = The United Nations
 ATM = automatic teller machine

Some acronyms are pronounced as new single words:

 UNICEF = United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund
 UNESCO = United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural

Organization
 NASA = National Aeronautics and Space Agency

 NATO= North Atlantic Treaty Organization

 PIN= Personal Identification Number
8) ACRONYM

 Many acronyms simply become everyday terms such as:

 laser (“light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”)

 radar (“radio detecting and ranging”)
 scuba (“self-contained underwater breathing apparatus”)
 zip (“zone improvement plan”) code.
9) DERIVATION

 Derivation is the most common word formation process. New words

are produced by affixation – adding prefixes or suffixes to words.
10) MULTIPLE PROCESSES

More than one process can be at work in the creation

of a particular word. If someone says that problems
with the project have snowballed, the final word can
be analyzed as an example of compounding in which
snow and ball were combined to form the noun
snowball, which was then turned into a verb through
conversion.
Forms that begin as acronyms can also go through
other processes, as in the use of lase as a verb, the
result of backformation from laser.