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How Are Words Formed

Word knowledge contributes to achievement in the subjects of the school curriculum, as well as in formal and informal speaking and writing. Most people feel that there is a relationship between vocabulary and comprehension, as messages are composed of ideas, and ideas are expressed in words. Most researchers in education have assumed that vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension are closely related, and numerous studies have shown the strong correlation between the two. Although the opportunities for vocabulary instruction are especially pronounced in language arts and reading, vocabulary instruction belongs to all subjects of the curriculum in which learners meet both new ideas and the words by which they are represented in the language.

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AmandaMP
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2K views

How Are Words Formed

Word knowledge contributes to achievement in the subjects of the school curriculum, as well as in formal and informal speaking and writing. Most people feel that there is a relationship between vocabulary and comprehension, as messages are composed of ideas, and ideas are expressed in words. Most researchers in education have assumed that vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension are closely related, and numerous studies have shown the strong correlation between the two. Although the opportunities for vocabulary instruction are especially pronounced in language arts and reading, vocabulary instruction belongs to all subjects of the curriculum in which learners meet both new ideas and the words by which they are represented in the language.

Uploaded by

AmandaMP
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How are words formed?

It is time for me to go on with the way words are formed in English


According to Bauer (1983), it can be said that there are different ways of wordformation in English. These are the following: compounding, affixation (prefixation
and suffixation), clipping, conversion, backformation, blending, formation of
acronyms, and eponymy. Lets see them separately.
Firstly, as far as COMPOUNDING is concerned, I should say that it is the way in
which two or more existing words are stuck together, as it happens in girlfriend,
takeover, bittersweet or couchpotato. Compounds may be written as two
independent words (washing machine), as two words joined by a hyphen (taxfree), or as one word (toothache). Often the three forms of the same compound
exist side
by side. The meaning of a compound cannot always be deduced from the separate
meaning of the individual elements (hot dog).
Secondly, as far as AFFIXATION (also known as DERIVATION) is
concerned, I should say that it involves the addition of morphemes that do not
have word status, that is to say, it involves the addition of prefixes, suffixes and
infixes. Prefixes precede the root morpheme (un-happy), and suffixes attach to
the end of the root (happi-ness). On the other hand, infixes are inserted within
the word, but in English they do not really exist. The inclusion of prefixes and
suffixes, as said before, change the word in the sense that they can even give the
opposite meaning or transform it into a different word type, so giving a list of
prefixes and suffixes would be a never-ending task since there are hundreds of
them. It must be pointed that affixation is the most productive way of creating new
words in English. Good examples can be seen in the following table:
Affix
Class(es) of word to
which affix applies
Nature of change in
meaning
Examples
Prefix 'non-' Noun, adjective Negation/opposite
Noun: non-starter
Adj.: non-partisan
Suffix '-ity' Adjective Changes to noun
electric/electricity
obese/obesity
Prefix 'un-'
Verb
Adjective
Reverses action
opposite quality
tie/untie, fasten/unfasten
clear/unclear, safe/unsafe
Suffix '-ous' Noun Changes to adjective fame/famous, glamor/glamorous
Prefix 're-' Verb Repeat action tie/retie, write/rewrite
Suffix '-able' Verb
Changes to adjective;
means 'can undergo
action of verb'

print/printable, drink/drinkable
Thirdly, as far as CLIPPING (or ABBREVIATION) is concerned, I should say
that it is the process through which a word is shortened in English, as in bro from
brother, pro from professional, fax from facsimile, flu from influenza or veg
from
vegetate (as in stay all day in front of TV).
Fourthly, as far as CONVERSION is concerned, I should say that it is the
process through which a word transfers from one word class to another, as in the
verb to refill to the noun a refill. It is also called ZERO DERIVATION, because it
changes the word class without the addition of any suffixes. Other examples of
conversion are the transformation from a hammer to the verb to hammer, or
the
adjective dirty to the verb to dirty.
As far as BACKFORMATION is concerned, it is the process through which new
words are made by removing affixes from old ones. For instance, editor was
adapted to form the verb to edit, and surrealist led to surreal. However, there is
sometimes a false assumption that it brings about new words. For instance, beefburger and later chicken-burger or vege-burger were back-formed from
hamburger, which was not a burger made of ham, but a dish named after the
city of Hamburg.
As far as BLENDING is concerned, I should say that it is the process through which
two or more existing words are merged into one, as in ginormous
(giant+enormous), brunch (breakfast+lunch) smog (smoke+fog) or motel
(motor+hotel), Telethon (television+marathon), or even the language our future
students tend to speak: Spanglish (Spanish+English).
As far as the formation of ACRONYMS is concerned, it is the process through which
a word (an acronym) is formed from the initial letters of other words as in nimby
(not in my back yard), NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). And
even nowadays, with the wide spread of written communication via internet in
forums and chats, more acronyms have been created such as iawtc (Iagree with the
commenter) and so on, that help speed communication.
And finally, as far as EPONYMY is concerned, it is the process through which a new
word is created from a persons name (often the person who popularised or
invented it). A very remarkable example of eponymy can be found in the word
leotard from the acrobat Jules Leotard. However, most of the words created by
eponymy do not tend to last in the language; they are usually NONCES (temporary
words that never properly enter the language). They are often created to solve an
immediate communication problem or to play on current affairs. It is extremely
difficult to predict
which new words will be seized upon and soon enter the dictionaries, and which
will never be heard again. For example, the eponym coined in the early 90s: TO
BOBBITT was coined from the berfamous case of Lorena Bobbitt and her
husband, and the newspapers came up with the verb to Bobbitt meaning
something like to vengefully remove ones husbands penis. A the time, no one
could have known if this word was to be a nonce that would disappear as fast as it
had been coined or whether it would stay with us and enter the dictionaries. As it
turns out, the word is still alive. It is used literally and figuratively (meaning
something like to remove status from), and looks like a strong candidate for
dictionary inclusion.

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