Lecture 5

Word Formation Process

Borrowing
• Borrowing a word from another language is
extremely common in English.
• Can you give some examples?
Borrowing
Origin Borrowed Words
Scandinavian Take, give, they
French Genre. revolution
Chinese Typhoon, Kowtow
Malay Amok
Hebrew Hallelujah, shalom
Latin Bona fide, prima facie
Coinage
• Coinage involves inventing a word from scratch

Example 1
–Words derived from trade/brand names
•Kodak, Xerox, Nylon, Vaseline
Interesting examples
a) Kleenex is coined from the word clean
b) Jell-O is coined from the word gel.
Coinage
Example 2
Words derived from personal names
–Eponyms
Word Names

Watt James Watt 19th- century scientist

Curie Marie and Pierre Curie Early 20th-century scientists

Fahrenheit Gabriel Fahrenheit 18th-century scientist

Coinage
Example 2
Words derived from personal names
–More examples
Word Names

Sandwich John Montagu, Was too busy gambling to

the 4th Earl of Sandwich stop for a meal so he
(1718-1792) ordered his servant to bring
him roast-beef between two
slices of bread.
Boycott Charles Boycott Was ostracized for refusing
19th century land agent in to lower rents
Ireland
Coinage
Example 3
Formed by reordering the letters of a word

–In computer speech processing, new words such as cepstrum

and cepstral were purposely formed by reordering the letters
of spectrum and spectral
Coinage
Example 4
New words coined using Greek roots borrowed into English
Word Greek Roots

Thermometer thermos’ “hot” + ‘metron’ “measure”

Acrophobia ‘akros’ “topmost”+ ‘phobia’ “fear”

Triskaidekaphobia ‘tris’ "3" + ‘kai ’ "and" + 'deka‘ "10" + ‘phobia’ "fear"

Coinage
• More Examples
–Robert Osborn, an ingenious cartoonist, has coined the
following phobias:
Word Greek Roots

Logizomechanophobia ‘logizomai’ “ to reckon or

compute”+ 'mekhane’ “device”
ellipsosyllabophobia ‘elleipsis’ “a falling short” + +‘Phobia’ “fear”
‘syllabe’ “syllable”
pornophobia ‘porne’ “prostitute”
Blending
• Created from non-morphemic parts of two already
existing items, usually the first part of one and the
final part of the other.
Blending
Combination of Blending
Television + Broadcast
Motor + Hotel
Smoke + Fog
Information + Commercial
Urine + Analysis
Cranberry + Apple
Broiled + Roasted
Chuckle + Snort
Breakfast + Lunch
Blending
• Sometimes, a word is formed by a process that is on
the borderline between compounding and blending in
that it combines all of one word with part of another.
Words Combination of

E-mail Electronic + mail

Medicare Medical + care

Guesstimate Guess+estimate
Clipping
• Clipping is a process that shortens a polysyllabic word
by deleting one or more syllables.
Full Word Clipped Form

Refrigerator

Condominium

Professor

Laboratory

Zoological garden
Backformation
• Backformation is a process that creates a new word
by removing a real or supposed affix from another
word in the language as a result of ignorance, incorrect
morphological analysis and purposeful intention
Backformation
• Intentional backformation
-Analogy: act/action; exempt/exemption; revise/revision
Original word Verbs formed by back-formation

Resurrection Resurrect

Television Televise

Enthusiasm Enthuse

Liaison Liaise

Orientation Orientate
Backformation
• Incorrect Morphological Analysis
–Analogy – run/runner, walk/walker
Original Word Misanalysis Verb Formed

Editor Edit + or Edit

Peddler Peddle + er Peddle

Swindler Swindle + er Swindle

Hawker Hawk + er Hawk

Backformation
• Incorrect assumption
–The word pea was derived from a singular word pease
by speakers who interpreted the final /z/ as the plural suffix
•monokini vs bikini
•intuition/tuit
•liposuction/liposuct
Conversion
• Conversion is a process that assigns an already existing word
to a new syntactic category
• It does not add an affix
• It is often considered a type of derivation because of the
change in category and meaning that it brings about
• Zero derivation
Conversion
V derived from N N derived from V V derived from A
Ink(a contract) (a long) run Dirty (a shirt)
Butter (the bread) (a hot) drink Empty (the box)
Ship (the package) (a pleasant) drive Better (the old score)
Nail (the door shut) (a brief) report Right (a wrong)
Button (the shirt) (an important) call Total (a car)
Conversion
Conversion
• Less common types of conversion
Types Examples

Adj  N the poor, the meek

Prep  V down a beer, up the price

Cliticization
• Morphemes that behave like words in terms of meaning and
function, but are unable to stand alone as independent
forms for phonological reasons (as they no longer constitute
a syllable) are called clitics
Cliticization
•Clitics must be attached to another word, known as a host
E.g. ’m for am
’s for is
’re for are
Cliticization
• Clitics that attach to the end of their host are called enclitics
–I’m reluctant to go.
• Clitics that attach to the beginning of their host are known as
proclitics (common in French)
–Jean t’aime.
Reduplication
• Repeating a part of a word (partial reduplication) or all of a
word (total reduplication).
• The duplicated part of the word usually occurs within or next
to the morpheme from which it is taken.
Reduplication
• Some of the functions of reduplication are:
–To indicate the number of entities
–To indicate the size of a noun
–To indicate the number of times an action occurs
–To indicate the intensity with which an action is
performed or the intensity of a state
Reduplication
Reduplicated word Definition Function

Itsy-bitsy Very small, tiny Size of noun

Teeny-weeny Very small, tiny Size of noun

Higgledy-piggledy Disorderly or jumbled Action or state in more than

one place

Helter-skelter Hurried or confused Action or state in more than

one place

Splish-splash Distributing liquid Action or state in more than

one place
Reduplication
• Emphasises intensity
–I’m very very happy to be here.
–It’s a big big dog.
Acronyms
• Words derived from the initials of several words and
pronounced as the spelling indicates are known as acronyms
• Common in names of organisations and in military,
computer and scientific terminology
Acronyms
Acronyms
• Acronyms may be built on acronyms
Acronyms Full Spelling

ROM read-only memory

PROM programmable read-only memory

EPROM erasable programmable read-only memory

Abbreviations
• Abbreviations are pronounced as a series of letters rather
than words
–FYI, FAQ, FBI, CIA
Onomatopoeia
• Words created to sound like the thing that they name are
called onomatopoeic words.
• Some onomatopoeic words in English are buzz, hiss, sizzle,
and cuckoo.
• Onomatopoeic words are not exact phonetic copies of
noises; their forms can differ from one language to another.
Onomatopoeia
English Japanese Tagalog

cock-a-doodle-doo kokekokko kuk-kukaok

meow nyaa ngiyaw

chirp pii-pii tiririt

bow-wow wan-wan aw-aw

Compounding
• Compounding involves creating a new word by combining
two free morphemes.
• The elements making up a compound can all typically occur
as independent words elsewhere in the language
• Compounds differ from words created by either affixation or
cliticization
Compounding
• The combination of lexical categories to create a larger word
• Most compound words are Ns, Vs, As
• Few are Ps
• Can you give some examples?
• ………………………………………………
Categories of Compounds
•What are the categories of compounds?
–The rightmost word in a compound is the head of the
compound
–The head is the part of a word or phrase that determines
its broad meaning and grammatical category
–When two words fall into different categories, the class
of the second or final word will be the grammatical category
of the compound
Categories of Compounds
• Two words having the same grammatical category.
N+N Adj + Adj

Girlfriend Icy-cold
Fighter-bomber Red-hot
Paper clip Worldly-wise
Elevator-operator
Landlord
Mailman
Categories of Compounds
•Two words belonging to different grammatical categories.

N + Adj V+N

Headstrong Pickpocket
Watertight Pinchpenny
Lifelong Daredevil
Categories of Compounds
• When compounds are formed with a preposition, they are in
the category of the non-prepositional part of the compound
- uplift
- undertake
- hanger-on
- sundown
Properties of Compounds
• In terms of pronunciation, however, there is an important
generalization to be made.
• How does the pronunciation of compounds differ from the
way we pronounce non-compounds (the sequence of two
words forming a noun phrase)?
Properties of Compounds
• The first component in most A-N compounds is usually
stressed (pronounced louder and higher in pitch)
- Redcoat
• In non-compounds, the second element is generally stressed
- redCoat
Properties of Compounds
Properties of Compounds
• Another distinguishing feature of compounds in English is
that tense and plural markers can typically not be attached to
the first element, although they can be added to the
compound as a whole.
Properties of Compounds
•The player dropped kick the ball through the goalposts.
•The player drop kicked the ball through the goal posts.
•The foxes hunter didn’t have a license.
•The fox hunters didn’t have a license.

*However, some exceptions are passers-by and mothers-in-

law.
Properties of Compounds
• The Adj in a compound cannot be preceded by a word such
as ‘very’
–We live next to a very greenhouse. [X]
•When it is not part of a compound, an adjective can typically
be accompanied by this type of word.
–We live next to a very green fence. [/]
Types of Compounds
•An endocentric compound denotes a sub-type of the concept denoted
by its head
•The rightmost component of the compound identifies the general
class to which the meaning of the whole word belongs.

Example Meaning
Dog food A type of food
Cave man A type man
Sky-blue A type of blue
Steamboat A boat powered by steam
Air hose A hose that carries air
Types of Compounds
•An exocentric compound does not follow the meanings of its
parts.
–A greenbottle is not a type of bottle, rather, it is a fly of
the genus lucilia
–A redneck is not a type of neck, but an ultra
conservative, white working class person
–A sugar-daddy is not a type of sugar-coated father but a
woman’s lover who is deemed to be both overgenerous and
much too old for her
Types of Compounds
• A striking difference between English endocentric and
exocentric compounds shows up in cases where the head is a
word, which has an irregular plural form.
Types of Compounds
• The endocentric compounds employ the usual irregular
plural, whereas the exocentric permits the plural suffix ‘-s’ for
certain words.
Endocentric Compounds Exocentric Compounds
Wisdom teeth Saber tooths

Club feet Bigfoots

Policemen Walkmans

Oak leaves Maple leafs

Cranberry Morphemes
• If a word contains elements whose morphological status is
ambiguous, as in the case of cranberry and huckleberry,
determining its internal structure can be a tricky business
• Although berry is a clearly a morpheme, one is not sure
what to make of cran- and huckle-
Cranberry Morphemes
• Comparable words such as elderberry and waxberry can be
analysed uncontroversially as Noun+Noun compounds:
- Elder denotes the elder tree which produces elderberries
- Wax is short for wax-myrtle, the shrub that produces
waxberries
Cranberry Morphemes
• However, there is no cran or huckle tree or shrub that
produces cranberry or huckleberry fruits
• The forms cran- and huckle- never occur elsewhere in
language as independent words or bound morphemes
–They are restricted to just one compound word
Thank you