ASSIGNMENT TSL426

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT (20%)

DUE – Week 6 (14 – 18 November)

QUESTION 2
DISCUSS THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE WORD
FORMATION PROCESSES IN ENGLISH AND MALAY.

PREPARED BY:
AMZAR RIFQI BIN MAD JAIS

MATRIC NUMBER:
2022812584

CLASS:
ED241B

PREPARED FOR:
PROF MADYA DR. SUTHAGAR NARASUMAN

DATE OF SUBMISSION:
18th NOVEMBER 2022
 Table of content
bi Subject page
l
1 Introduction 1

2 Word formation processes in the English language and the Malay language 1

3 Similarities and Differences of word formation processes in the English 2-4

language and the Malay language.
4 Conclusion 5

5 References 6
1. Introduction
Every language has its own word formation processes. While there are differences in the
use of word formation in every language, the term used for those word formations is still the
same. This is also true for the Malay language and English language. Malay and English
language are popular languages in the world, but both languages underwent different histories
and compositions (Azmi et al., 2016). Word formation processes is a subtopic in morphology
where it studies the processes of how a word is created. The word formation processes are
borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, backformation, conversion, derivation, coinage
and reduplication. Considering the history of the language, there ought to be some differences
and similarities in the word formation processes n the Malay language and the English language.
Thus, I’ll be discussing the differences and similarities of the word formation processes that are
used in the Malay language and English languages by writing the difference and similarities of
each word formation process in each language.

2. Word formation processes in the English language and the Malay language
2.1 The English Language
There are 9 word-formation processes in the English language. First, there is borrowing
which is the use of another language word being adapted to the English language as a loanword.
Then there is compounding, which is two words that have their own meaning being combined
into one word without any changes to create a brand new word. Next, the clipping word
formation process which is when a word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form
and becomes a word in its own right. Other than that there is also the blending word formation
process, which is to combine part of a word with meaning into one new word. Then there is the
backformation word formation process which is the reduction of the back of the word to change
its meaning. There is also the conversion word formation process which is the process where the
meaning of the word is changed without any changes. There is also the derivation word
formation process which is adding affixes to a word to make new words. The last two word-
formation process is reduplication which is the repetition of a word, and the coinage word-
formation process which is a creation of a totally new word.
2.2 The Malay language
Unlike the English language, the Malay language only has 8 word-formation processes.
First of all, is the borrowing word formation process for example the word Ahad being borrowed
from the arab word “‫”األحد‬. Next is the compounding word formation process for example
“Matahari” the word “Mata” meaning eyes is combined with “Hari” meaning day. Then there is
the blending word-formation process in the Malay language we have the word berdikari which is
the fusion of “Berdiri”,” Atas”, “Kaki”, and “Sendiri”. Another word formation process is the
cliping word formation process for example “Bazir” from the word “membazir”. Also the
conversion word formation process. The Derivation word formation process also exists in the
Malay language. Lastly reduplication and coinage word formation processes.

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3. Similarities and Differences of word formation processes in the English language and the
Malay language.

3.1 Borrowing
The first word-formation process that we have is borrowing. According to Nordquist
(2019), borrowing is where a word from a language is modified for use in another language. This
word formation process is used in both the Malay language and English languages in a similar
fashion. For example in the English language, there are loanwords such as “allowance” from the
old French word “Alouance” which means payment, and “Déjà vu” which comes from the
French words “Deja” which means already and “Vu” meaning seen (Rodriguez, 2022). In the
Malay language, we have “Abjad” from the Arab word “‫ ”ابجد‬and “Ahad” from the Arab word “
‫”األحد‬. There is one more form of the “borrowing” word formation process which is calque.
Calque is the direct translation of words from another language and is used in another language.
In the English language words like “Loanword” which is a word directly translated from the
German word “Lehnwort”. An example of calque in the Malay language is “Muat naik” which is
directly translated from the English word “Upload”. In conclusion, there is no difference in the
“borrowing” word formation process in the English language and the Malay language as both
languages have loanwords and calque with no difference in rules or application.
3.2 Compounding
Next, the word formation compounding. Compounding is the process where two words
with their own meaning are combined to form a new word with a different meaning that exists in
both the Malay and English language. An example of compounding in the English language
would be “upload” the combination of “up” and “load”. M. Aris (2011) stated that in the Malay
language, there is no ruling as to the actual conjoining of these words, thus, some words appear
as one word while others appear as two words. What he meant by this is, unlike the English
language which has no space between the words in compound words, most compound words in
the Malay language have spaces in between them. Actually, there are only 15 compound words
in the Malay language that has no space between them (Salasiah Hassan Bahari, 2016). In malay
language the compound word “Matahari” has no space in it because it is one of the 15 compound
words that have no space. Although the way the compounding word formation process is done in
English and Malay languages is the same, the difference is in the English language most of the
compound words have no space while in the Malay language most of the compound words have
spaces. To conclude, the compounding word formation process is the same in English and Malay
languages except for the spacing between the compound words.
3.3 Blending
Other than compounding and borrowing, there is also the blending word formation
process. According to Beliaeva (2019), “Blending is a type of word formation in which two or
more words are merged into one so that the blended constituents are either clipped, or partially

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overlap.” In both the Malay language and English language the blending word formation is used.
For example

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in the English language the word “bit” is the result of the blending word formation process. “bit”
comes from taking the “bi” part of binary and combining it with the “t” part of digit. Similarly,
In the Malay language, we have “kugiran” which comes from taking a part of the word
“kumpulan”, “gitar” and “rancak”. There is no difference in the rule or application of the
blending word formation in the English language and the Malay language, the blending word
formation process is the same in both the Malay language and the English language. To
conclude, the blending word formation process is one of the similarity of word formation
processes in the English language and the Malay language.
3.4 Clipping
Next, the clipping word formation process. Clipping is a word formation process where
you reduce a word to form a new word. An example in the English language would be “ad” from
the word advertisement. While clipping is common in the English language, the difference in the
Malay language would be that the word that is clipped in the Malay language are loanwords. For
example, the word “bazir” which means wasting which comes from the word “membazir” which
is a loanword from the word “mubazir” which means corruption in Arabic. Clipping occurs in
the Malay language, and clipping in Malay typically happens to loan words from another
language (Ratsja, 2010). Although the process of clipping word formation in both English and
Malay is the same in the rule, the circumstance of it happening is different. In the English
language, the clipped words come from the English language itself, while in the Malay language
the clipped words are loanwords. To conclude, the clipping word formation exists in both the
Malay language and the English language but the situation where the words would be clipped in
order to create a new word is different. Most likely because of the difference in history that the
two languages had gone through. The similarity is that both languages have clipping word
formation and the way it is applied. The difference is that the words clipped In English is words
in the English language itself while the words clipped In the Malay language are loanwords.
3.5 Backformation
Then we have the backformation word process. Backformation is when you change the
end of a word to change its meaning. In the English language this word formation process is used
usually to change the context of a word from a noun to a verb. For example, the word
competition will be changed to compete after the backformation process changes its use. The
word competition is a noun while the word compete is a verb. While this is extremely common
in the English language, the Malay language does not have any backformation as most words can
use an affix to change their meaning from a noun to a verb. Thus the backformation word
formation process is one of the biggest differences in the word-formation of the English language
and the Malay language. To conclude, the English language has backformation process while the
Malay language does not.
3.6 Conversion
Another word formation process is the conversion process. Conversion is when a word
changes meaning without any changes except for context. Nordquist (2020) stated “In English
grammar, conversion is a word-formation process that assigns an existing word to a different
word class, part of speech, or syntactic category. This process is also called zero derivation or a
functional shift.” An example of when the conversion process happens in the English language

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would be the word “bottle” although it is most well known as a noun, it can also be used as a
verb

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for example, “The company bottled 1 million liquor.” Similarly in the Malay language, a
conversion process is when you use a word for another meaning depending on the context. An
example of this would be the word “pukul” in Malay which means to hit, but the word “pukul”
can also mean “hour”. To conclude, the conversion process is similar in both the Malay language
and the English language which is a process where the word changes its meaning without any
significant changes.
3.7 Derivation
The derivation word formation process is another process in the Malay language and the
English language. Derivation is the process where you add suffixes into words in a certain
language to create a new word. In the English language most commonly we have prefixes which
come before a word, infixes, which is in the middle of a word and suffixes which comes at the
end of a word. An example of a prefix is “un” which usually means not, adding this prefix to the
word kind would create the word “unkind” which means not kind (BBC, 2022). Similarly in the
Malay language, we also have prefixes and suffixes, but we do not have infixes. An example of a
prefix in the Malay language is the suffix “ber” which when added to the word “langar” which
means hit would create the word “berlanggar” which means collide. Unlike the English
language, Malay affixes tend to change the word meaning, for example, the word “mati” in
Malay means death but when the suffix “kan” is added it changes into “matikan” which means
switch off (Azmi et al., 2016). In conclusion, although both the Malay language and the English
language have affixes there are some differences. First, the Malay language does not have
infixes. Second, English affixes just add some context to a word while in the Malay language
affixes tend to change the word’s meaning.
3.8 Reduplication
Next is the reduplication word formation process which is the process where a word is
repeated to create a new word. In the English language, reduplication is rare but there are some
words formed through reduplication although these words still have the same meaning as the
words that got reduplicated. An example of this would be the word “bye-bye” which still means
bye. Unlike the English language, reduplication in the Malay language actually serves a purpose,
most usually to make a plural word. For example, the word “kereta” which means car when
reduplicated becomes “kereta-kereta” which means car. To conclude, the English language does
not have an actual reduplication word formation process that would create a new word while in
the Malay language words can be reduplicated to create the plural form of said word.
3.9 Coinage
Last but not least, is the coinage word-formation process. The coinage process is the
creation of a totally new word. This word formation most commonly happens because of a
brand. An example of this would be “google” which means to search for something online.
Similarly in the Malay language, the word “Maggie” means instant noodle. Another form of
coinage is an acronym which is the creation of new words from the abbreviation of the initial
letters of other words, which happens in both the Malay language and the English language

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4. Conclusion
In conclusion, the word formation processes in the English Language and the Malay
language have some similarities and differences. The similarities in the word formation process
in the English language and the Malay language is that both languages have the word formation
borrowing, blending, clipping, compounding, conversion, derivation and coinage. While the
differences in the word formation process in both languages come from the rules of word
formation and the fact that the English language does not have reduplication and the Malay
language does not have backformation.

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 References

Azmi, M. N., Ching, L. T., Jamaludin, N. B., Ramli, M. N., Razali, M. H., Amram, M. A., &
Jayakumar, K. A. P. (2016). The comparisons and contrasts between English and Malay
languages. English Review: Journal of English Education, 4(2), 209.
https://doi.org/10.25134/erjee.v4i2.335

BBC. (2022, March 31). Adding the prefix UN- English - learning with BBC Bitesize - BBC
Bitesize. BBC News. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z8mxrwx/articles/z76yp4j#:~:text=The%20prefix
%20un%2D%20usually%20means,unhappy%20means%20'not%20happy'

Beliaeva, N. (2019). Blending in morphology. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.

https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.511

M.Aris. (2011, August 21). Word-formation processes in Bahasa Melayu/Malaysia. Lingually

Speaking. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from
http://linguallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2013/01/word-formation-processes-in-bahasa.html

Nordquist, R. (2018, August 1). What is a loan translation or calque? ThoughtCo. Retrieved
November 20, 2022, from https://www.thoughtco.com/loan-translation-calque-1691255

Nordquist, R. (2019, June 30). The definition of borrowing language. ThoughtCo. Retrieved
November 20, 2022, from https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-borrowing-language-
1689176

Nordquist, R. (2020, January 7). Linguistic conversion in grammar. ThoughtCo. Retrieved

November 20, 2022, from https://www.thoughtco.com/conversion-functional-shift-in-
grammar-1689925#:~:text=In%20English%20grammar%2C%20conversion%20is,for
%20grammatical%20conversion%20is%20anthimeria.

Ratsja, A. (2010, September 21). Clipping of loanwords in Bahasa Malaysia. Lingually

Speaking. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from
http://linguallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2010/09/clipping-of-loanwords-in-bahasa-
malaysia.html

Rodriguez, E. (2022, June 8). 99 French words we use in English all the time. Busuu Blog.
Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://blog.busuu.com/french-words-in-english/

Salasiah Hassan Bahari . (2016, May 18). 15 Kata Majmuk Yang Telah mantap Dan Dieja rapat.
Share and Discover Knowledge on SlideShare. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from
https://www.slideshare.net/salasiahhassanbahari/15-kata-majmuk-yang-telah-mantap-dan-
dieja-rapat