Name: Nadya Yasmine Dita Pratiwi

Student Number: 2100004013

Word Formation Process

Word formation process as a way of forming and creating new words from the use of old
words. Use of word formation is of value when the rules for the formation of words are not
identical with the rules for the formation of sentences ( Laurie Baurer ). Adding that suffixes
and affixes are the most used word formation processes for language learning and acquisition.

1. Affixation
Affixation has several types, such as prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes.
a. Suffixes are morphological units that attach themselves after the stems, root or base of
words; examples are “talk-ed,” “dog-s,” and “stable-s,” where the suffix “ed,” “s,”
modifies their meaning into present tense or pluralization. These are inflectional
morphemes where the overall meaning is augmented. However, “stable-s,” with the
added “s,” augments the singularity to plurality in a peculiar way, because the lexeme
“stable,” is ambiguous; it’s a noun for “a building for horses,” and an “adjective,” “to
firmly established or unchanged.” Examples of derivational suffixes are “paint-er,”
where the verb “paint,” has been altered into noun “painter.
b. Affixes are the juxtaposition of prefix, suffix, infix and circumfix elements in a single
morphological units, and affixes themselves are morphemic units that attach to the
root, stem or base of lexemes; hence, prefix, suffix, infix and suffix are considered
affixes. Affixes are homonymic taxonomy because the spelling and pronunciation are
identical with contrasting verb and noun meaning; examples are “affix,” a verb to
“attach or fasten together,” and a noun for “morphemic units that alter or modifies the
root, base or stem of words.”
c. Infixes are inserted between prefixes and suffixes; examples are “unstable,” where
“un,” is the derivational morpheme prefix and “able,” is the free morpheme affixed;
“st,” is the infix because it’s riveted between the prefix “un,” and the suffix “able.”
Infixes are easy to remember because they’re always implanted between a prefix and
suffix; there’s also the infix being implanted between two free morphemic units; such
as, “mother-in-law,” where the infix “in,” changes the meaning of the noun “mother,”
and the noun “law.” “Mother-in-law,” encapsulates the essence of what an infix
entails; however, “un-st-able,” illustrates the insertion of morphemic elements in the
center of a word, but technically “st,” is a derivational morphemic prefix. Infixes can
add to the intensification of meanings or alter new meanings; consider infixes to be
inflectional or derivational units implanted in the body of a word.
d. Circumfix is an infix antonym, where the former implants on the outer contour of
words and the latter inserts in the middle; you can attribute the definitions to
“implosion,” vs “explosion,” outer and inner. Circumfix is a two part affix at the
beginning and end of a word, and like prefix, suffix, affix and infix, they incur
polysemic ambiguity in the search query. Morphemic units effect search query
inadvertently and indirectly; example, if you search for free morphemes compound
 words such as “blackbird,” the image search will index the “breed,” of bird which is
hyponymic.

2. Borrowing
Borrowing process is the way of creating new word with taking over words from other
languages and using them continually in society. For example: the word umbrella in English
has borrowed from Italian in 1609.

3. Compounding
Compounding process as the way of creating new words with joining of two separate words
into a single form to describe something new. For example the two words wall and papper
which have different meanings taken together become a single form of word as wallpaper
which has a different meaning from those two words.

5. Clipping
Clipping is the process of reducing the elements of a word. This process occurs when a word
of more than one syllable is reduced into a shorter form. As an example the word
advertisement becomes ad and the word brother becomes bro.

6. Back Formation
Backformation is a specialized type of reduction process. Typically a word of one type (e.g
noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (e.g verb). For example the word babysitter
becomes babysit and the word donation becomes a verb donate.

7. Conversion
Conversion is the process of changing the function of words. For example the words in the
form of noun changes become verbs. It sounds similar to the background process but actually
it is different. In the conversion process, it is without the occurrences of the reduction
process. Yule (1985, p.57) states that conversion also can be mentioned as category changes
and functional shifts. For example a noun chair. Become verb in the statement “we have to
chair this meeting” and a verb stand up changes become a noun “stand up comedy”.

8. Acronym
Acronym is the process of creating new word with forming from the initial letters of a set of
other words. For example the long word Automatic Teller Machine becomes ATM.

9. Derivation
Derivation process as the way of creating a new word that accomplished by means of a large
number of small bits (e.g affixes) of the English language which are not usually given
separate listings in dictionaries. For example the word elements un-, mis-, pre-, -ful, -less
which appear in words unhappy, misinformation, prejudge, meaningful, and careless are
called affixes.
. 11. Multiple process
Multiple process is the way of creating a new word with more than one processes at work in
the certain word. For example the word waspish is coming from the word White Anglo-
Saxon Protestant as the acronym process because it is abbreviated into the initial letter
“wasp” and then, it is added with the suffix –ish as the derivation process.