PROCESSES OF WORD FORMATION I> DEFINITION

• Word formation is the creation of new words. Hereafter are several ways of doing this.

II> PROCESSES OF WORD FORMATIONII.1> Compounding

• two or more independent existing words form a new one.

• written either as a single word (e.g. stomachache), as hyphenated words (e.g. self-confident), or as 2 words (e.g. bus stop).

• occurs in all word classes:- Noun: coffee shop, egghead, sleeping bag,

swimming pool, tooth brush.- Verb: down size, download, upload, upgrade.- Adjective: bad-tempered, hotheaded, newly-wed,

home-made- Adverb: furthermore, moreover, kind-heartedly

- Pronoun: something, anything, nobody, nothing- Preposition: across from, because of, next to, prior

to.- Auxiliary: be going to, had better, would rather.- Conjunction: however, no matter what, in order that,

wherever.• class of the final component determines the

grammatical category of the compound, e.g. mother-in-law (noun), download (verb), headstrong (adjective), etc.

• compounds formed with a preposition usually fall in the category of the non-prepositional components of the compound, e.g. workout, break-up, downturn, downfall, etc.

II.2> Affixation/ derivation• the most common process• is accomplished by means of a large number of

affixes which are added to base morphemes.• involves the changes of grammatical potential, form,

and/or meaning of a word• consists of prefixation and suffixation.• Prefixation: the addition of a bound morpheme at

the beginning of a base to form a new word, e.g. dislike, inject, repay.

• Suffixation: the addition of a bound morpheme takes place at the end of a base, e.g. audience, childlike, realism.

II.3> Clipping/shortening • way of creating new words by omitting/cutting off the beginning,

the end, or both, of a word, resulting a part which can stand for the whole original word and is referred to as clipped word.

• words formed by this process are usually found in everyday casual speech.

E.g.: airplane plane advertisement adElizabeth Liz

• clipped words are also formed from grammatical units.E.g.: American Indian (modifier+N)Ameriandian

medical care (modifier+N) medicare• usually occur first in slang & argot, & then some make their way

into standard English.E.g.: chapman (“fellow”) chap

quacksalver (“very bad doctor”) quack

II.4> Blending• combing parts of other words/; “fusion of 2 words into

1, usually the 1st part of 1 word with the last part of another…The resultant blend partakes of both original meanings” [Stageberg, 1983:51].

-E.g.: slang language slanguage

positive electron positron

binary digit bit • words formed by this process are termed blendings,

or fusions, or portmanteau words. • Many blends are nonce words, here today & gone

tomorrow.

II.5> Acronymy• words “are formed from the initial letters of a set of other

words” • words derived by this process are labeled acronyms. • resulting words are either capitalized (NATO, AIDS) or written

in the same way as common nouns (laser, radar).• can be pronounced as the spelling indicates, e.g. NATO[1]

/ne1t6$/, AIDS[2] /e1dz/, laser[3] /le1z6/, radar[4] /re1d6/, or produced by articulating each letter when the string of letters is not easy to pronounced, e.g. IFM[5] /a1 em ‘ef/, NFL [6]/en ef ‘el/.

[1] NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization[2] AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome[3] laser: light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation[4] radar: radio detecting and ranging[5] IMF: International Monetary Fund[6] NFL: National Football League

• Numerous in large organizations (army, government, big business): JVC (Victor Company of Japan), Nabisco (National Biscuit Company)

• Military acronyms: CQ (call to quarters), TD (temporary duty), PX (post exchange), C/O (care of)

II.6> Back formation/reversion• a word of one type is reduced to form

another word of different type.

• a word is formed from the one that looks like its derivative.

• applies chiefly to the coining of verbs from nouns.

• e.g.: televise (v) television (n)

baby-sit (v) baby-sitter (n)

• is the reverse of suffixation also called reversion.

Other processes of word formation• Coinage/Invention

-inventing names for new products: nylon, aspirin

-using specific brand names as the generic name for different brands of these types of products: Vaseline, Frigidaire

-changing proper name of individuals or places to common nouns: “sandwich” was named for the 4th Earl (Count) of Sandwich who put his food between 2 slices of bread so that he could eat while he gambled.

• Borrowing

- from French: champagne, beige, fiancé

- from German” rucksack, kindergarten

- from Italian: cantata, opera, concerto, hamburger

- from American Indian languages: shampoo, cot

- from Vietnamese: pho, ao dai

• Conversion/function shift/category change

E.g.: -This is a must. (The verb must is converted into a noun.)

-This room can house four persons comfortably. (The noun house is changed into a verb.)

-The black are always the ones that suffer. (The adjective black becomes a noun.)

• Semantic shift/semantic change/semantic progression

E.g.: with the advent of computer technology mouse ( a kind of rodent has been used to refer to the input device into a computer).

• whose metaphorical origins are all but lost”E.g.: broadcast originally meant "to cast seeds

out"; with the advent of radio and television, the word has been extended to indicate the transmission of audio and video signals. Outside of agricultural circles, very few people use broadcast in the earlier sense.

• Echoism/onomatopoeia (từ tượng hình/tượng thanh)

E.g.: -for natural sounds, words like quack (duck), bark (dog), roar (lion), meow (cat) are typically used in English

-machines and their sounds are also often described with onomatopoeia; e.g. in honk or beep-beep for the horn of automobiles; vroom or brum for engines. Some of these words are used both as nouns and as verbs.

-sometimes things are named after the sounds they make, e.g.: many birds are named after their calls, such as the cuckoo (grayish brown European bird), the whooping crane (American crane with loud whooping).

• Antonomasia (tên riêng chỉ loại)

• is the use of a proper name to designate a member of a class. For example, Solomon—the wisest king of Israel, now refers to a wise ruler, or Don Juan—the name of a character in Spanish legend who is skilled at persuading women to have intimacy with him, now is used to refer to a libertine man.

• Reduplication (hiện tượng láy)

• Another way to invent words is reduplication—the process of making new words by repeating parts of words. There is a variety of this: rhyming, exact and ablaut (vowel substitution).

• Examples are respectively okey-dokey, wee-wee, and zig-zag.

III> Exercise: Identify the processes of word formation

No.

Words Word formation process

1door bell compounding

2bank draft

3TOEIC

4megastar

5consultation

6dorm

7flu

8prof

9house keep

10 transceiver

11 S.O.S12

newsboy13

Phil14

promgirl15 escalator16

splatter 17 laze18 orate19

unexpectedly20 FIFA

Answer key

1 door bell Compounding (door + bell)2 bank draft Compounding (bank + draft)3 TOEIC acronymy (Test of English for

International Communication)4 megastar prefixation (mega-+ star)5 consultation suffixation (consult)6 dorm clipping (dormitory)7 flu clipping (influenza)8 prof clipping (professor)9 house keep back-formation (housekeeper)

10 transceiver blending (transmitter & receiver)

11 S.O.S acronymy (Save Our Souls)12 newsboy clipping (newspaper boy)13 Phil clipping (Philip) 14 promgirl clipping (promotion girl)15 escalator blending (escalate + elevator)16 splatter blending (splash + spatter)17 laze back-formation (lazy)18 orate back-formation (oration)19 unexpectedly

affixation=prefixation+suffixation (un-+expect+-ed+-ly)

20 FIFA acronymy (Federation of International Football Association)