Word Formation in English - Essay Example

Word Formation in EnglishWord Formation is a process by which new words are formed out of words by various means like of affixation, compounding, clipping, acronym etc. In other words word formation is the creation of a new word (The study of language.)1 There are several word formation processes that are common not only for the English language but are also very similar in a majority of majority of languages. These are Compounding this is a method in which two different words are joined together to refer to one thing.

For example earthquake is a compound made out of two words earth and quake, but it does not refer to two things, it refers to one object only. Blending this is quiet akin to compounding, but is distinctly characterized by taking only parts of words and joining them. For example motel which combines motor and hotel. Clipping this is cutting of long words. It is a very common practice in the English language. For example advertisement is shortened to advert.Neologism or Coinage this is creation of an entirely new word.

This word formation process is often applied to new concepts, to fuse pre-existing concepts, or to make older expressions sound more current. Coinage is particularly useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas which have taken on a new cultural perspective. For example e-mail (The need for neologisms) 2Loanword or Borrowing this is taking a word from one language and incorporating it into another. The English language has included words from all over the world, France, Germany, Turkey etc.

For example café from French and yogurt from Turkish. Acronym or Initialisms this is a word formed from the initial letters of words in a phrase or a name in short abbreviations. For example AIDS acquired immune deficiency syndrome.Backformation this is a process in which a word changes its form and function or removing seeming affixes from existing words. In this nouns are usually converted into verb. To show it on an example: edit from editor. Conversion this is forming a new word from an existing identical one, change in function of a verb without changing its form.

For example bottle - bottling Affixation or Derivation this is the most common word formation process it is done by adding affixes: prefixes or suffixes or infixes. For example mis-taken In its wider sense word formation denotes the processes of creation of new lexical units, but it is rare that only one process occurs in one word, two or more processes can be involved in creating words.Refrences1-The need for neologisms 1996 by Ingar Roggen http://folk.uio.no/iroggen/Root_knowledge.html 2-The study of language Cambridge:CUP. Yule G. 1996.