TOPIC 10

LEXICON. CHARACTERISTICS OF WORD-

FORMATION IN ENGLISH. PREFIXATION,
SUFFIXATION AND COMPOUNDING.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
1. BASIC CONCEPTS IN MORPHOLOGY.
2. AFFIXATION.
2.1. SUFFIXATION.
2.2. PREFIXATION.
3. COMPOUNDING.
4. OTHER WORD FORMATION PROCESSES.
5. PEDAGOGICAL AND CURRICULAR CONSIDERATIONS.
CONCLUSION.
INTRODUCTION.
Like any complex system that can adapt itself to an everchanging environment,
language is very efficient at striking a balance between restrictiveness and creative
freedom. Not only can it generate unlimited meaning with limited resources, it also
enables the renewal of its word stock to prevent obsolescence through a set of word
formation processes.
Regarding the teaching of English as a foreign language, it seems reasonable to
conclude that, that being the case, the knowledge of such processes would enhance
students’ ability to understand and express themselves in English. Arguably, not only
its mastery would allow them to discriminate among classes of lexemes, it would also
help them to infer the meaning of unknown words.
This way, the following pages will describe the processes under which English forms
new words out of existing ones from the perspective of foreign language teaching. To
that end, a last section will attempt to elucidate a proper methodology to implement
the content of this topic in compulsory and post-compulsory secondary education
bearing in mind the main guidelines established by the educational authorities.
1. BASIC CONCEPTS IN MORPHOLOGY.
There are many ways in which a language can establish connections among the
elements that compose it: phonetically, morphologically, etymologically,
pragmatically, semantically, and syntactically to name but a few. The rules that control
such connections greatly determine the shape of the language. They are the hallmark
that makes any languages instantly recognizable. For instance, Spanish almost
perfectly phonemic spelling, the highly flexible sentence structure of German, or the
fact that most consonants that come at the end of a word are silent in French. About
English, the following pages will consider a very important aspect, it’s morphology.
The term ‘morphology’ might either refer to the form of lexemes and the
mechanisms under which they are produced or the branch of linguistics that studies
them. In this case, we are considering the processes of lexeme formation in the English
language. To that end, we must first ask ourselves a key question in this topic. What
the fuck is a word?
According to some scholar dude, words are the smallest units of syntax that can
occur by themselves. They are an arbitrary connection between form (graphological or
phonological) and meaning (literal or figurative). Depending on the word class to which
they belong, they can either be function words or lexemes. Function words or
grammatical words fulfill structural functions such as establishing syntagmatic
relations, carrying deictic marks, or expressing time references. For instance, these can
be prepositions, determiners, or auxiliary verbs. Lexemes or content words, on the
other hand, convey conceptual meaning. They are the arbitrary labels that stand for
the different realities composing our world, namely, nouns, adjectives, lexical verbs,
and adverbs. For their own purposes, function words belong to a closed class whilst
lexical words belong to an opened class. This means that, while the number of
function words remains stable, new lexemes are formed every day through a language
phenomenon known as derivation.
With some exceptions, the term ‘derivation’ denotes the creation of words
through alterations in word shape and it stands in opposition to ‘inflection’, which
implies the attachment of grammatical information to certain words to locate them
within a paradigm, e.g. the plural -s in the paradigm ‘one vs. more than one’. For a
better understanding of the process of ‘derivation’, we must first clarify the elements
that compose a word.
Just as cells are composed of many biomolecules such as proteins and acids, words
are made of different types of morphemes. A morpheme is, according to Brinton
(2005), the “smallest meaningful unit in language”. Although its shape length might be
equivalent to that of a word, its main defining feature is its internal indivisibility. This
means that it may or may not stand alone. In this regard, there are two mutually
exclusive classes of morphemes, free vs. bound morphemes. Words such as ‘act’, ‘bad’,
or ‘avail’ are composed by free morphemes that function independently. Conversely,
morphemes such as -tion, -ly, or -ible are considered bound morphemes because they
must be attached to other forms, e.g. action, badly, and available.
Free morphemes always form roots. That is, they constitute the core lexical
meaning of a word, an example being the root ‘class’ in the verb ‘declassify’. However,
roots, are not always composed by free morphemes. Occasionally, they are constituted
by bound morphemes, e.g. the roots -vert, -mit, and -ceive in the words ‘convert’,
‘transmit’, and ‘conceive’. This particularity of English is a consequence of the massive
influx of romance words that have permeated into the language throughout its history.
When these roots entered the language, their original meaning was somewhat
obscured. Nonetheless, they were quickly adapted to the English word formation
processes.
Bound morphemes mostly form affixes. These are morphemes adding secondary
meaning to the root. Broadly speaking, there are two types of affixes in English,
suffixes, which are attached at the end of roots, and prefixes, which attach to the
beginning of roots, e.g. the suffix -ly in ‘happily’ or the prefix un- in ‘unhappy’.
Occasionally, English uses morphemes that are inserted in the middle of a word known
as interfixes. However, their application is restricted to a colloquial use of the language
and often for humorous purposes, as in im-fucking-possible or abso-bloody-lutely.
Finally, another important clarification regarding free roots and affixes is the
differentiation between roots, bases and stems. A base is the combination of a root
and derivational affixes to which other derivational affixes might be added. A stem, on
the other hand, is the combination of a root and derivational affixes to which
inflections might be added. For instance, ‘ill’ would be the root of the noun ‘illnesses’,
whereas ‘illness’ would be its base and ‘illnesses’ its stem.
Apart from this, English employs other types of derivation. As it will be explained in
the following pages, these might be zero derivation, compounding, conversion,
clipping, blending, abbreviations, coinages, borrowings, and calques.
2. AFFIXATION
The addition of a derivational affix to a root is known as affixation, a process that,
among other things, might cause one or more phonological, orthographic, semantic,
and word class changes. Depending on their origin, affixes might be native, coming
from Old English, or foreign, either coming from French or Latin, e.g. happiness,
thinkable, and remake. As to their productivity range, some might be extensively
productive whereas others might be limited or even unproductive. This way, there are
prolific affixes such as -able or -ness whilst affixes such as -th have become obsolete.
As already mentioned, depending on their position, they might be prefixes or suffixes.
Both processes of suffixation and prefixation will be explained more exhaustively in the
following sections.
2.1. SUFFIXATION.
 Suffixes in English might change the root in either of two ways: semantically or
shifting its lexical category. The ones causing a semantic change are those used to
make an abstract noun out of a concrete one, e.g. friend vs. friendship, the diminutive
suffixes, e.g. dad vs. daddy, the feminine suffixes, e.g. lion vs. lioness, and the ones
conveying measurement, e.g. bag vs. baggage. However, suffixes most often change
the root’s part of speech. Those producing a noun from a verb or an adjective are
known as nominalizers. They constitute the largest group of class-changing suffixes.
This way, we might find deverbal nouns, i.e. nouns formed out of a verb, such as
participant, employee, singer, coverage, refusal, exploration, building, or amazement.
De-adjectival nouns include words such as elasticity or brightness. Suffixes producing a
verb from a noun or an adjective are known as verbalizers. Some examples are the de-
adjectival verbs simplify, prioritize, and deafen, and the denominal verb hyphenate.
Adjectivalizers turn nouns and verbs into adjectives, e.g. the denominal adjectives
useful, homeless, stamped, childish, daily, and sandy or the deverbal adjectives
relatable, and attractive. Finally, the smallest set of word class-changing suffixes are
the adverbializers. These might indicate manner, as in personally, direction, as in
onward, and relation to manner or dimension, as in clockwise or moneywise.
2.2. PREFIXATION.
Prefixes might as well change the part of the speech of the root. However, their
type is far less common than word class-changing suffixes. Only three unproductive
prefixes systematically change the part of speech of the root: a-, as in asleep, be-, as in
befriend, and en-, as in enlarge. Those that modify the root semantically, on the other
hand, might indicate time, e.g. afterthought, number, e.g. multinational, place, e.g.
interconnect, degree, e.g. overconfident, privation, e.g. unconventional, negation, e.g.
antiwar, size, e.g. microcosm, completeness, e.g. fulfill, reversal, e.g. counterattack, or
subordination, e.g. vicechair, among many other things. Note, however, the difficulty
involved in their classification as there is not a clear-cut method. In fact, some prefixes
might fit into more than one category. For instance, under- might express degree or
place, consider, for instance, the difference between underachieve and underwater.
3. COMPOUNDING.
Another productive word formation process in English is compounding. A
compound is the product of the combination of two or more free-roots, which, unlike
other multiword structures in English, function as a single lexeme. Words in idioms
such as ‘under the weather’ or ‘so far so good’ share unity. However, they do not
behave as such at word level. They rather work as a phrase. On the contrary, elements
in a compound do not remain distinct words once they have been linked. They become
a single language unit with internal stability. This is evident, for example, in the
difference between ‘off-putting’ and ‘put off’. Regardless the fact that both expressions
are seemingly made of the same words, a combination of the verb ‘put’ and the
preposition or adverb ‘off’, the former does not allow the separation of the elements
that compose it whereas the latter does, e.g. they decided to put off the wedding /
they decided to put the wedding off. However, the most reliable test of distinguishing
compounds and phrases is stress. Although this does not hold true for compound
adjectives, compounds generally have one primary stress whilst phrases have more
than one. This is clear in the difference between the compound noun ‘bréakdown’ and
the phrasal verb ‘bréak dówn’.
As to their spelling, there are three types of compounds in English: closed, open,
and hyphenated. The first type includes words such as ‘makeup’ and ‘notebook’, in
which the two elements have been linked by eliminating the space between them. On
the contrary, a space remains in open compounds as in ‘living room’ and ‘full moon’.
Finally, compounds might require to be hyphenated as in ‘mother-in-law’ or ‘up-to-
date’. Regarding their use, there is much controversy over the topic. In many cases,
spelling adapts to language as it evolves. For instance, as the internet has become
more widespread the term ‘on-line’ has lost its hyphen. As a good rule of thumb,
however, it is generally the case that compound adjectives are hyphenated when they
precede the noun they are modifying, but not when they follow it. Consider the
difference between ‘an up-to-date user guide’ and ‘this user guide is not up to date’.
Semantically, compounds might be classified into one of four types: endocentric,
exocentric, copulative or appositional. The relation between the roots in endocentric
compounds is that of a modifier and a head. Such is the case of ‘taxi driver’, in which
the core meaning of the compound is carried by the head, ‘driver’. On the contrary,
exocentric compounds, also known with the Sanskrit term ‘bahuvrihi’, offer an opaque
meaning. Their lack of transparency lays in the fact that none of the roots function as a
head. Rather, they refer to an external entity, e.g. redneck, heartthrob, or grasshopper.
The meaning of copulative compounds can be more easily grasped. The reason: having
two semantic heads instead of one. This way, they denote the sum of the elements
that compose them, e.g. bittersweet, sleepwalk, or deaf-mute. Finally, appositional
compounds are the product of the juxtaposition of two mutually exclusive
classifications for the same referent, e.g. actor-director, maidservant, or player-coach.
Syntactically, English does not seem to restrict the possibility for the combination
of the elements in compounding. In fact, a great variety of patterns can result in
virtually any part of speech. Nouns, for instance, can be composed of N+N, V+N, A+N,
P+N, N+P, V+P, or N+ V, e.g. airplane, crybaby, madman, background, makeup, drop-
out, or bloodshed. Verbs can result from the combinations N+V, A+V, P+V, or A+N, e.g.
babysit, whitewash, outdo, blacklist. Adjectives, on the other hand, form from the
patterns N+A, A+A, N+N, A+N, V+P, N+V+-ing, A+V+-ing, N+V+-en, A+V+-en, or A+N+-
ed, e.g. lifelong, red-hot, seaside, white-collar, wrap-around, heart-breaking,
easygoing, manmade, widespread, coldblooded. It is also important to note that, once
formed the compound, it might then undergo further word formation processes. Thus,
the derivational suffix ‘ly’ might be added word ‘gentleman’ to form the adjective
‘gentlemanly’, which could be further elaborated with the attachment of the prefix
‘un’ resulting in its antonym ‘ungentlemanly’.
4. OTHER WORD FORMATION PROCESSES.
 As already mentioned, other word formation processes in English include blending,
back formation, abbreviations, coinages, zero derivation, clipping, borrowings, and
calques.
Blending involves both compounding and clipping. In this process, two shortened
words are blended together, thus its name, resulting in a new lexeme that might be
any part of speech. Examples include ‘smog’, coming from smoke and fog, and ‘biopic’,
from biography and picture. It is important to note that blends usually involve the
clipping of the end of the last word and the beginning of the second one, e.g. ‘motel’
results from the shortening of mo(tor) and (ho)tel.
Back formation is a language phenomenon that derives from a general
misinterpretation of a word structure. By analogy with common derivational processes
of affixation, e.g. adding -er to a verb in order to form a noun, certain words are coined
in back formation by removing a misunderstood derivational affix. Thus, the nouns
‘babysitter’, ‘typewriter’, and ‘sightseer’ derived into the verbs ‘babysit’, ‘typewrite’,
and ‘sightsee’. Since the coinage of these nouns precedes the verbs, the word
formation process is considered to be retro-active rather than a case of removal.
Abbreviations might occur in one of three ways. Through acronyms, initialisms, or
clipped forms. Clipping involves the removal of word parts. Although they are usually
at the end, as in rehab<rehabilitation, they might also take place at the beginning,
burger<hamburger, or both, fridge < refrigerator. When compounds are clipped, they
might drop the beginning of the first word, as in ‘narc’ from ‘narcotic agent’, or the
end of the last word, as in ‘high tech’ from ‘high technology’. Clipped forms might also
occur with diminutive suffixes, e.g. ‘movie’, ‘hankie’, and ‘nightie’. In a more extreme
form of clipping, the only remaining part of the word is the prefix or suffix attached to
it. Some examples include ‘ex’ from ‘ex-wife’, ‘bi’ from ‘bi-sexual’, and ‘bus’ from
‘omnibus’. Yet more extremely, words in acronyms are reduced to their initial letters,
e.g. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome), and ‘radar’ (radio detecting and ranging). Note that the formation of the
acronym might be altered in order to conform the English phonotactics. Finally,
initialisms include the first letters of words in phrases that are commonly used in
written English. Some examples include, ‘asap’ from ‘as soon as possible’, ‘i.e.’ from ‘id
est’, or ‘e.g.’ from ‘exempli gratia’. The language source of initialisms might be a
foreign one, especially Latin and Ancient Greek.
Other productive word formation processes in English include zero derivation,
novel creations, borrowings, and calques. Zero derivation is a rather productive
process of word creation in analytical languages and a process that would be
completely useless to inflectional languages such as Spanish. In English, it owes its
utility to the fact that most syntagmatic relations between elements in a sentence are
established through word position. That is, despite a word not having a derivational
suffix indicating its part of speech, its lexeme type can still be easily identifiable
through word order. This way, a proficient English speaker can effortlessly understand
that ‘water’ is a noun in ‘she is drinking water’ and a verb in ‘they water the plants’.
Also known as conversion, zero derivation basically entails the creation of a new
lexeme that shares its form with another one belonging to a different part of speech. A
recent example is the verb ‘google’ formed out of the proper name of the famous
website. Novel creations or coinages are much less common. They entail the
formation of words without starting from existing morphemes. Some examples include
‘kleenex’, ‘nylon’, and ‘zipper’. Finally, borrowings and calques denote a process of
word formation with an external source. When a word form comes directly from a
foreign language without translation, it is considered a borrowing, as in ‘algebra’
(Arabic), ‘haiku’ (Japanese), or ‘mosquito’ (Spanish). Calquing, on the other hand,
involves the translation of phrases or words, e.g. ‘blue-blood’ from Spanish ‘sangre
azul’, ‘common place’ from Latin ‘locus commūnis’, and ‘free verse’ from French ‘vers
libre’.
5. PEDAGOGICAL AND CURRICULAR CONSIDERATIONS.
As it is established in the Order of July 14, 2016, which organizes the evaluation of
our students’ learning process, form the first year of Compulsory Secondary Education
in Andalucía, students are required to “identify essential information and relevant
details” in oral and written texts. At higher levels, they are expected to “write, in a
conventional format, brief reports in which they provide relevant information
regarding an academical topic”. Therefore, it seems reasonable to argue that having
some notions of the characteristics of word formation processes in English would help
them reach these evaluation criteria. Not only they would create closer ties with their
target language by identifying similarities and differences with their mother tongue,
they would also become more accurate at predicting the meaning of unknown words
in turn being able to include them into their register more easily.
To that end, word sort activities seem to be a proper teaching method. They entail
the use of small word corpuses which students would have to analyze. By comparing,
contrasting, and classifying words, they would identify patterns of word formation. The
idea is that, by drawing connections, students would progressively unravel the
functioning of English derivational morphology in a more natural way that would
resemble the acquisition of a mother tongue (Schmidt noticing hypothesis, Krashen
input hypothesis). On top of that, research shows that these types of activities
enhance comprehension and retention. As Allen J argues, word sort activities invite
students to think critically and make deep and meaningful connections.
This type of activity could in turn be connected with a Task Based Approach. This
would involve sorting out the class into groups and asking them to draw conclusions
from analyzing a 20-word corpus. This way, as research indicates, group work
discussion and shared goals would enhance their learning while optimizing language
analysis. The final product would consist in preparing a presentation explaining the
word formation process reflected in the corpus they had studied.
CONCLUSION.
 When we say that languages are alive, we are pointing at their word formation
processes. Indeed, this ability languages have to adapt themselves to an everchanging
environment is synonymous of their derivational morphology. Thus, it seems fair to
claim that they cannot be properly mastered if conceived as a static system. Rather,
they must be understood as a dynamic one. This way, it is our duty as teachers of
English as a foreign language to help our students develop an intuition for word
formation in the English language.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Structure of Modern English, a Linguistic Introduction/ Laurel J. Brinton/ John
Benjamins Publishing Company/ 2000.
Allen, J. (1999). Words, words, words: Teaching vocabulary in grades 4-12. US:
Stenhouse Publishing.