Alejandro Albértuz Matías

Gramática Inglesa: Morfología y Semántica

Encarnación Almazán Ruiz
2 de noviembre de 2017

Major word-formation processes.

In order to clarify the major word-formation processes in morphology, it would be convenient
to define the term “word-formation”. The Macmillan Dictionary online (2017) defines the
term as “the process by which new words are formed out of all or parts of existing ones.”

Added to that, there are two different types of word- formation processes: the major word-
formation processes and the minor ones.

The major word-formation processes can be divided into three different categories:

1. Affixation: it consists on adding affixes to roots or bases to vary its function or meaning.

A. Prefixes, set before the base. They are class- maintaining (e.g unnecessary),
recursive (e.g un-im-proved)and they can have a non-fixed distribution.
According to their meaning, the following cases can be mentioned: negative (e.g
immortal, dissent) , pejorative (e.g malnutrition, pseudo-Elizabethan), locative
(e.g extracurricular, forehead), etc.

B. Suffixes, added after the base. They can be inflectional (e.g breaking,
girls)derivational (which can be either class-changing (e.g reality,
improvement)or class maintaining (e.g scholarship)). They also have an irregular
distribution and are recursive (e.g egoist-ic-al-ly). They are used to form:

• Nouns: e.g existence, employee.

• Adjectives: e.g vocal, anonymous.

• Verbs: e.g terrify, legalize.

2. Conversion: it involves the change of a word from one word class to another. We can
distinguish between “full conversion”(e.g bottle[N] to bottle[V]) and “partial
conversion”. There are several instances of conversion:

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 A. Major types of conversion: deverbal nouns (e.g painting, love), de-
adjectival nouns (e.g bitter) , denominal verbs (e.g peel, plaster) and de-
adjectival verbs (e.g fasten, dirty) .

B. Minor ones : from close system word to noun, from affix to noun, from
phrases to noun, from close system to verb and from phrases to adjective.

3. Compounding: it is based in the combination of two lexical elements to create a new one.
Depending on the criteria, it can be divided into three different categories:

• In agreement with the grammatical category, it can be divided into:

A. Noun compounds, e.g bedtime, eggplant, marketplace.

B. Verb compounds, e.g dry-clean, tie-dye.

C. Adjective compounds, e.g well-know, good-looking.

D. Adverb compounds, e.g offhand, overnight.

• From a semantic perspective:

A. Endocentric, in which one member functions as the head and the other one
as a modifier. E.g darkroom, smalltalk.

B. Exocentric, it denominates an item completely different from the two

components. E.g paleface, skinhead.

C. Appositional, both compound members modify each other and there is

relation of hyponym between the components and the compound. E.g
sleepwalk.

D. Duandva, also the components modify each other, but there is no relation
of hyponym. E.g actor-director.

• Dealing with the syntactic relation, the following cases can be mentioned:

A. Subject+ Verb, e.g churchgoer, landslide.

B. Verb+Object, e.g haircut, babysit.

C. Verb+Adverbial, e.g waiting room.

D. Verbless, e.g bedpost.

As it is shown before, there are many ways to create new words and it makes the
language changes constantly, so it reaffirms the features of language as it is productive,
creative and arbitrary.

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