Theme 10. LEXIS. CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH WORD FORMATION.

PREFIXATION, SUFFIXATION AND COMPOUNDING.

One of the ways of simplifying the process of teaching vocabulary is giving students some
simple rules related to the principles of word-formation. In doing so, the learners will be able
to increase their core vocabulary without having to study long lists of items. In the same way,
their communicative competence will be improved, since they will develop their ability to
derive meaning from many unknown words.
But, in order to understand these processes of word-formation, it is necessary first to have a
good command of some basic notions related to this topic. It is important to know, for
example, what lexis is and the main elements related to it. The comprehension of these
notions is essential in order to better understand the characteristics of word-formation
processes and the more common ways of creating new words in English. This essay will
clarify all these concepts, and the definition of lexis will be the starting point to do so.

English lexis

By lexis we understand the entire scope of all existing words within a language, which either
carry along meaning or function as grammatical features. Therefore, and taking this definition
into account, English lexis would be all the words that constitute the English language.
Although this statement could seem quite simple at first, it is not as straightforward as it
might seem, since the concept of “word” has not been satisfactorily defined yet. Some
linguists define it as an indivisible entity, another ones state that a word is an element
between potential pauses, or that is an element lying between phonetic boundaries. For
Bloomfield, a word is the smallest unit of speech that can meaningful stand on its own.
However, for each of these definitions there are always some possible objections, so at the
end, the concept of word seems to remain a little ambiguous.
Yet lexis encompasses some other concepts related to the notion of word that can be
perfectly defined and which are central to the process of word-formation.
And so, the first notion to be explained is that of lexical items or lexeme. A lexeme is an
abstract unit of the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language, which can be defined as the word as it
appears in the dictionary (Quirk). To put it another way, a lexical item is a word in the sense
that a dictionary contains words. A dictionary usually provides entries only for lexical items,
and not for all the forms a lexical item can have. Therefore, we do not expect to find
different entries for “dog” and “dogs”, but only one for the lexical item “dog”. Likewise, we
expect to find only one entry for the lexeme “take” and not five entries for the five forms of
that lexical item. In English, only the lexical item BE has eight different forms, but no other
lexical item has more than five, and most have fewer than this. Therefore, a given lexical item
may comprise different word variants.
Lexemes are often composed of smaller units with individual meaning called morphemes,
which are the second concept to be explained. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning
and the essential units of Morphology, the branch of linguistics that studies the way words
are constructed. There are several different ways of classifying these morphemes, as for
example dividing them into free morphemes and bound morphemes. The former are those
that can occur independently, without having to be attached to anything else, such as iron or
bus. In this case, the morpheme would be the same as the lexeme. Bound morphemes, on the

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other hand, cannot occur on their own, like for example inter- or –tion, and they must be
attached to a word in order to be used. It is the case of prefixes and suffixes, which we will
explain in detail later on.
Apart from free morphemes and bound morphemes, it is also important to make a distinction
between root morphemes and the base of a word. Root morpheme, or the stem, is the primary
lexical unit of a word which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and
cannot be reduced to smaller constituents. Friend and police would be examples of root
morphemes (simple words). The base, on the other hand, differs from the stem in that in
many cases it may be reduced to smaller constituents. And so, once a base has undergone a
rule of word-formation, the derived word itself may become the base for another derivation,
and so by reapplication, it is possible to derive words of considerable morphological
complexity.
Let’s take the word unfriendliness as an example. This word is constituted by four morphemes
(un-, friend, -ly, and -ness), one free morpheme (friend) and three bound ones. Friend would
be the root morpheme, since it cannot be reduced to smaller units, and it would also be a base
from which the new word friendly has derived. Friendly would be then a new base from which
derive two new words, friendliness and unfriendliness, but it would not be a stem, since it can
be reduced into smaller units.

Now that we have presented the notion of lexis and its main components, such as lexeme,
morpheme, base, stem and so on, it is central to explain how these elements work and combine
to one another in order to create new words. To put it in another words, we will study the
characteristics of word-formation in English.

Characteristics of English word-formation.

As we have seen so far, many different words can be formed by the combination of smaller
parts or constituents already existent within a language.

All this means that words have an internal structure that can be analyzed. According to the
nature of this internal structure, words can be simple, in which case they are indivisible into
smaller meaningful constituents, like for example iron, or horse, or they can be complex, which
are words that comprise several parts that occur elsewhere in the language. For example
friendly is a complex word since it has been formed by adding the suffix –ly to the lexeme
friend. The suffix –ly occurs frequently in the language since it can be added to different
grammatical categories in order to form different words. In this way, we also find daily,
elderly, lovely, likely, weekly, and so on.

Another widely used suffix is –ness, which is added to adjectives in order to turn them into
nouns, and so we can find it in selfishness and happiness. These two examples of suffixes (–ly
and –ness) are said to be highly productive, since they are quite often used in order to create
new words. Now, there are some other suffixes that are less often used, or not used at all for
this purpose, like for example the suffix –th. It seems that no new noun can be formed in
Modern English with the help of the suffix -th (as in depth or length). In this case, the suffix
–th is said to be unproductive. In this sense, we will draw a distinction between productive

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morphological rules and unproductive or less productive ones. The term ‘productivity’ then
refers to the property of an affix or morphological process to give rise to new formations on
a systematic basis.

Therefore, by the application of these rules, speakers of a language may coin new words on
the basis of other words or word-forming elements on a daily basis. However, it is important
to note that even the most productive rules have their own limitations. Thus, one can add the
suffix –ness to adjectives like happy or sad, but it cannot be added to others like glad or
miserable. The words gladness and miserableness would not be actual words, although they are
possible words if we take into account that they are the result of applying a morphological
process that do work in many cases.

Therefore, another characteristic of word-formation in English is that morphological rules

are of limited or restricted productivity, which relates directly with the concepts of
potential and actual words. The former are those words that do not exits yet but that – if
formed - would be morphologically well-formed according to the pertinent word-formation
rule. Actual words designates the already existing established words.

Another feature that characterizes these morphological processes is that they are not
static, but on the contrary, they may change in time. In this sense, some affixes that occur in
many established words are no longer used to create new words. It is what happens with the
nominalizing suffix -ment (entertainment, punishment, etc.). Most of the words created with
this suffix entered the vocabulary between the mid-sixteenth and the mid nineteenth
century, but it has ceased to be productive. Another case in point is the verb-forming suffix
-en (as in blacken, strengthen etc.), which is attested in numerous words, but hardly any of
them was coined after 1900

One last characteristic to be mentioned is that in English, as in many other languages, there
are two main classes of morphological processes to be distinguished:

On the one hand, there is inflection, which is the variation in form of a lexical item for
grammatical purposes. It deals with rules that modify a word to fit into a sentence, for
instance, past tense of regular verbs and plural forms are examples of inflection. It is
important to note that an inflected form is still considered to be a form of the same word.
That is, inflectional morphemes do not change the category of the base word. Thus,
suffixes like participial –ing, plural –s, or third-person-singular –s create new grammatical
words, but they do not create new lexemes. So inflection deals with forms of individual
lexemes
Modern English is considered a weakly inflected language, since it only uses very few inflected
morphemes.
In contrast, derivation is the construction of one lexical item from another lexical item, that
is to say, derivation is what language uses in order to create new words, and the process
under which the word friend has derived to unfriendliness in our previous example. In this
case, the suffixes –ly and –ness do form new lexemes. So derivation deals with the
formation of new lexemes

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Derivation encompass many different process, many of which are going to be presented in
detail.
The three main ones are….

Prefixation, Suffixation and Compounding.

Affixation involves combining a given base word with other linguistic signs in order to convey
different meanings. In this way, the core vocabulary will increase and improve.
English language can add prefixes or suffixes to words to convey different meanings and
make them function differently.

1. The process by which we add a prefix to a base is called Prefixation. Prefixation is defined
as the process of forming a new word by adding a prefix to the base, that is to say, an affix is
added at the beginning of the word. Prefixes do not generally alter the word class of the
base. They are particles that can be added, in initial position, to full words, but they are not
words with an independent existence. Prefixes may be classified in many ways. One of the
possible classifications is:

a) Negative Prefixes: They convey the meaning of “the opposite of”. For example, -Un is
added to native English words: Unwise, unwilling. Il before l: illegal. –Ir before r: irrational. –
Im before labials: immature. –Dis combines with verbs and nouns: disobey, discontent. -Non is
usually hyphenated: non-smoker, non-existent.
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b) Pejorative Prefixes: They convey the idea of bad(ly), wrong(ly) or false: For example, -Mal
combines with verbs, participles, adjectives and abstract nouns: maltreat, malformed,
malfunction. -Mis combines with verbs, participles and abstract nouns: misinform, misleading,
misconduct.

c) Prefixes of Degree or Size: There are many prefixes denoting these ideas of “more” or
“less”, Such as –Over, which expresses “excessive” and combines with verbs and adjectives:
overeat, overconfident. or –Mini, which means small in mini-bus, or –Out, meaning surpassing,
i.e. outstanding, -Under, means not enough, as in undercook, or bellow, as in undergraduate.

d) Prefixes of Attitude and Orientation: These generally express the idea of “for” or
“against”:-Pro means “on the side of” and combines with adjectives and nouns: pro-American,
pro-student. -Anti means “against” and is added to adjectives and nouns: anti-social, anti-war.
Other prefixes in this category are contra, counter.

e) Number Prefixes: Again, these are self-evident: -Mono means “one” and combines with nouns and
adjectives: monoplane, monosyllabic. -Bi, in bilingual, -Tri in tridimensional. To talk about many things
we have -Multi, as in multilingual and -Poly, as in polysyllabic.

2. Suffixation.
Another process of word formation is suffixation, in which a suffix is added to the base to form a new
word. They usually alter the word class of the base word (e.g. nouns from verbs: teach, teacher). Apart

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from creating a new word, many suffixes have grammatical function, since they are used to create
different parts of a verb (e.g. –ing to form the present participle and -ed to form the past participle).
a) Suffixes that form nouns. Nouns can be formed in several ways:
- By adding the suffix –er/-or to the base form of a VERB, they refer to people who work in a certain
profession or carry out a particular action. Some examples are: teacher, swimmer. Nouns can also be
formed from verb by adding the suffixes –al,-ion, -ment to refer to the action expressed by the verb
(arrival, impression, payment).
- By adding the suffixes –dom, -ity, -ness to certain ADJECTIVES. In this way, abstract nouns
referring to the quality expressed by the original adjective are created. Some of these abstract nouns
are: freedom, boredom, sanity, density, goodness and happiness
- By adding the suffixes –hood, ship to other NOUNS. The abstract nouns created are connected to
the concept expressed by the original noun, as it happens in: neighbourhood, brotherhood, friendship
and relationship.
b) Suffixes that form adjectives. There are several suffixes that form adjectives:
The suffix –ed is added to NOUNS to describe a particular quality, for example: a skilled worker, a
blue-eyed girl.
-ish,-like,-ly,-y which expresses comparison or connection of some kind as in childish, human-like,
friendly and rainy.
-proof indicates ability to resist or to protect from: as in waterproof or soundproof
-ful and –less express respectively possession and lack of possession as in colourful, sugarless
Some suffixes can also be added to ADJECTIVES in order to form a different adjective, this is the
case of –ish that sometimes gives the meaning of “rather” as in smallish or greenish
Other suffixes such as –able or-ible are added to VERBS, they indicate possession of a quality or
capacity as in drinkable or acceptable
c) Suffixes that form adverbs. Some suffixes like –ly, -wards, and –wise are used to form adverbs
such as happily, backwards and human-wise.
d) Suffixes that form verbs. The suffixes –en, -ify, -ise/-ize added to nouns or adjectives may
form verbs which describe a corresponding action or process (widen, worsen, classify, simplify,
summarise, legalise).

In general both suffixes and prefixes follow certain patterns and can help us to guess the meaning of
unknown words. They also play an important part in helping us to understand new terminology which is
constantly being developed, particularly in the field of scientific and technical English. Apart from all
the combination reviewed in this unit, they can be combined to create increasingly complex new words
(e.g. de-nation-al-ise; dis-courage-ment; un-employ-able)

3. Compounding.

Compounding is another method of word formation. It is the process of putting two words together in
order to from a third word. It might be hyphenated, written as one word, or as different words, e.g.

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duty-free, newspaper, car park. These words are independent from the type of class of their
constituents. The normal way of classifying compounds is according to the function they play in the
sentence. In this way, there are noun compounds, adjective compounds and verb compounds

a) Noun compounds

A compound noun is a fixed expression which is made up of more than one word and which functions in
the clause as a noun. They are very common in English. In their simplest form they are created by
placing two nouns side by side so that the first noun qualifies the second almost in the same way as an
adjective. E.g. a television program ( i.e. a program shown on television) or winter sports (i.e. sports
practised in winter). Sometimes two or more written forms are acceptable for compound nouns (e.g.
earache or ear-ache). In compound nouns the first noun is normally singular even when the meaning is
plural, as in “car salesman” ( a man who sells cars)
They can be formed with a verb and a noun. In this case we find nouns such as: sunrise, hangmen,
headache, knitwear
They can also be formed with a verbal, deverbal and agentive noun, some examples are: handwriting,
swimming pool, baby sitter, homework
They can be made of two nouns as girlfriend, snowflake and motorcycle.
And finally the can be made of an adjective and a noun as it happens in: blackboard or
darkroom

b) Adjective compounds

Adjective compounds are made up of two or more words, they are usually written with hyphens between
them, and function as the nucleus of an adjectival phrase or as modifiers of a nouns phrase. Some of
the adjectives compounds are formed by
-Noun/adj/adv + participles, “mouth watering feeling”, “hand made object” hard-working person”, “well-
read”
- Noun + adjective, “homesick”.
- Adjective + adjective “deaf-mute”, “bitter sweet”

c) Verb compounds
They are rare but it is pretty easy to guess their meaning, since most compound verbs originally have
the collective meaning of both components. Some examples are:
- (n+v/v+n) baby-sit , pickpocket. - (v+v): hearsay, make-believe. - (adj/adv/prep+v): deepfreeze,
downcast, overbook
- Back formation: These occur when a compound verbal noun is shortened to form a verb: sleep-walking,
sleep-walk, brain-washing, brain-wash.
- Adverb and Verb: These are generally formed with the adverbs out, over and under: outdo, overcome,
underline.

4. Conversion

The last of the main mechanisms of word formation is conversion. This is the most simple one, since it
does not imply any change in the form of the word. It consists in assigning the base to a different

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word-class without changing its form and it brings about a change in the syntactic function and the
meaning of the item. Some examples of conversion are:
-Verb > Noun: to walk > a walk; to doubt > a doubt Adj > Noun: it´s comic > a comic;
- Noun > Verb: a mask > to mask ; a brake> to brake
- Adj > Verb: dry, to dry: dirty > to dirty
- There are also changes of secondary word class, such as: I ran a lot > I ran the water (from
intransitive to transitive verb), or this is my room > there isn’t enough room (from countable to
uncountable)

The minor processes related the creation of new words in English mentioned above are:
- Acronym: it consists in shortening words or phrases, writing the first letter of each word: BBC,
NATO.
- Blending: it occurs when 2 words merge into each other: smog (smoke+fog), brunch (breakfast +
lunch).
- Borrowing: a word or phrase that has been taken from one language and used in another language:
coup d’état from French or guerrilla from Spanish.
- Calque or loan translation, a type or borrowing in which each morpheme or word is translated into
the equivalent morpheme or word in another language: almighty is a loan translation from the Latin
omni+potens, beer garden and academic freedom are loan translations of the German Biergarten and
akademische Freiheit.
- Clipping: it is an informal shortening of a word into a single syllable: ad (advertisement), flu
(influenza), tv (television), gents (gentlemen).
- Reduplication: it is a type of compound in which both elements are almost the same or with a slight
difference, for example: zig-zag, wishy-washy (desvaído), bye -bye.

Conclusion
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