Morphology:

Word Formation Processes

(Yule, 2003 & Jarvie, 1993)
M.C. Rafael Velasco Argente
Linguistics
Spring 2012
Whats Morphology?
Morphology refers to the study of how
words are created in a language

There are two processes involved in
Morphology: Inflection and Word
Formation


What are Inflection and Word
Formation?

Inflection refers to the change in the base
form of a word (root or stem)

The base form of a noun is the singular
form (e.g. cat); for an adjective the base
form (old) and for a verb the base form is
the infinitive or imperative (speak)
Examples of Inflection
Apple apples
House houses

Sad sadder saddest
Big bigger biggest

Learn learned learning

What about word formation?
The word formation processes consists on the following
ones:
Etymology
Coinage
Borrowing
Compounding
Blending
Clipping
Backformation
Conversion
Acronyms
Affixation (prefixes, suffixes and infixes)
Compound processes
Coinage
This refers to the creation of totally new terms
into a language. Most of them come from the
name of the inventors, the products names or
the companys name.

Kleenex
Nylon
Zipper
Aspirin
Rotoplas
Borrowing
This process refers, as the name claims,
when a language borrows terms from
other languages.

Alcohol (Arabic)
Boss (Dutch)
Piano (Italian)
Yoghurt (Turkish)
Robot (Czech)
Compounding
It It refers to the joining of two separate
words to produce a single word. The two
words dont lose their individual sounds.

Bookcase
Fingerprint
Sunburn
Doorknob
Basketball


Blending
Similar to compounding, blending refers to
the joining of two terms; however, in this
case one (or both) word(s) lose a sound.

Motel (motor-hotel)
Telecast (television-broadcast)
Spanglish (Spanish-English)
Modem (Modulator-demodulator)
Clipping
Clipping a synonym of reduction. In this
process a word that has more than one
syllable is reduced to a shorter form

Celular (cel)
Brassiere (bra)
Fanatic (fan)
Situation Comedy (sitcom)
Facebook (el Face)
Backformation
This occurs when a word of one type (usually a
noun) is changed to another different type of
word (usually a verb)

Donation(n) -donate (v)
Option(n) -Opt (v)
Babysitter(n) -Babysit (v)

Hypocorisms: the reduction of a long word to a single
syllable and the y and ie are added to the end.
Television-telly Barbecue-barbie Breakfast -breakie

Conversion
This is the change of the function of the
word. For example when a noun comes to
be used as a verb.

Butter
Bottle
Water
Print out (a printout)
Want to be (wannabe)

Etymology
Etymology refers to the origin of several words.
Usually these words are originated from Latin or
Greek.

Some of them are not necessarily complete
words but prefixes or part of blendings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_and_Lati
n_roots_in_English
Affixation
Affixation is the process where we take a base
form word and we add a prefix, infix or suffix.

A prefix is an affixation process that includes
adding a morpheme at the beginning of the word

A suffix is a segment that we add at the end of
the words.

An infix is what goes between the prefix and the
root
Prefixes (examples)


http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/prefixtext.htm


Suffixes
These are the responsible for making words change their
function.
There are:

Noun suffixes
Adjective Suffixes
Verb Suffixes
Adverb Suffixes

As a reading, writing or listening recognition strategy,
despite of not having the exact meaning of a word, just
by looking at the suffix we now the function of the word.
Suffixes (Examples)
http://www.scribd.com
/doc/441225/English-
suffixes

Infixes
They are not very common in English.
When they appear is because they are
usually in an exclamation word.

Unfuckingbelievable!

Absogoddamlutely!


Acronyms
Sometimes words are created because of
acronyms. Acronyms are abbreviations
pronounced as if they were words. They
have proloferated.

Spanish
SIDA (Sindrome de Inmuno-Deficiencia Adquirida)
OVNI (Objeto Volador No Identificado)

English
Radar (Radio Detecting and ranging)
UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization)



Analogies
Its when you use a word to compare the
person.

Technobabble
Telethon
Smart cookie

Compound Processes
Sometimes in order to form a word we
can combine some of the previous
processes.
For example:
Deli (borrowing from German
Delicatessen/Clipping)

Yuppie (Young Urban Professional
(Acronym+ie(hypocorsim)
Morphemes
A morpheme is the minimal unit of a word.
There are different types of morphemes
Free Morphemes
Bound Morphemes
Lexical
Functional
Derivational
Inflectional

Allomorphs
Free Morphemes
These are morphemes that stand by
themselves as single words, for example
Open
Tour
Teach

Bound morphemes
The bound morphemes are those that are
attached to a free morpheme to have a
meaning.

All prefixes and suffixes are bound
morphemes.

Un-dress-ed care-less-ness
Ex: reduce, receive and repeat (bound stems)
Free Morphemes-Lexical & Functional
Lexical morphemes are usually free
morphemes. They carry their full meaning
in the word itself.
Nouns, adjectives and verbs

Functional Morphemes are words that
bring a function inside of them. They assist
lexical morphemes to add details to the
meaning.
Conjunctions (and...) prepositions, articles,
pronuouns
Bound morphemes-Derivational and
inflectional Morphemes
Derivational morphemes: They refer to
those bound morphemes that create new
words out of/with a free morpheme.

Pay-ment
Quick-ly
God-ess
Inflectional morphemes. These are
morphemes that help the words to change
their grammatical function. They are
suffixes

Car-cars
Do-Done
Cold-Coldest
Bound morphemes-Derivational and
inflectional Morphemes
Morph and Allomorphs
A morph is a modification of a morpheme.
The basic example of it is the plural s.

Bus-Buses
Girl-Girls
Baby-babies
Sheep-sheep
The allomorph is
the set of morphs