MORPHOLOGY
WORD FORMATION
THROUGH DERIVATION
SHERILYN O. DE ASIS
MAT – ENGLISH
THEORIES OF LANGUAGE TEACHING
PROF. EVA POLO
We identified that derivational
morphemes are used to create or derive
new words or to make words of a different
grammatical class from the stem. In fact,
derivation is by far the most common word
formation process in the creation of new
English words. Thus, it deserves a more
comprehensive study in order to get better
insights into the word formation process in
English.
For the most part, the core of the
derivational process is an already existing
word, to which we attach affixes. These affixes
are usually described as prefixes and suffixes
and they are not usually listed separately in
dictionaries. Such affixes usually apply to
words of one lexical category (part of speech)
and change them into words of another such
category.
Some common examples include
un-, dis-, mis-, -ness, -ish, -ism, -ful and
-less, as in words like unkind, disagree,
misunderstand, kindness, childish,
behaviourism, useful and useless. We
call the word form created by the
addition of a derivational morpheme a
derived word.
NEOLOGISMS
-under the right conditions these
can be adopted by the larger linguistic
community and become part of the
language” -(Akmaijian et al.)
COINAGE
-Refers to the creation of entirely new,
preiously nonexistent words or terms in a
language.
-It is simply that speakers invent or coin new
words to denote previously noexistent
objects or concepts
-The most common examples are invented trade
names for commercial products which gradually
become general terms (mostly without using capital
letters) for any form of that product \.
Examples: aspirin, nylon, vaseline, zipper,
kleenex, and xerox
-Today some specific brand names such as Xerox,
Kleenex and Vaseline are occasionally used as the
generic name (generification) for different brands of
these types of products.
BORROWING
• Borrowing, which means the taking over
of words from other languages, is one of
the most common processes of word
formation in English
• Borrowed words, also known as
loanwords though English does not give
them back), are common in English and
other languages around the world.
• algebra (Arabic)
• yogurt, croissant (French)
• piano (Italian)
• lilac (Persian)
• shish kebab (Turkish)
• tattoo (Tahitian)
• tycoon (Japanese)
• zebra (Bantu)
Compounding
-The joining of two or more separate
words to produce a single form is
technically known as compounding and
very common in such languages as English,
Turkish and German.
• Notebook • fingerprint
• textbook • wallpaper
• bookcase • waterbed
• Girlfriend
• footprint
• Some compound words introduced
recently into English are Facebook,
YouTube, power nap, and carjack.
• In English, The White House, school bus,
and decision making are also compounds
but written as two words.
BLENDING
-Blending is the word formation process
in which parts of two separate forms
combine to produce a single new word
whose meaning is often a combination of
the original words. Typically, two words are
“blended” by taking the beginning of one
word and joining it to the end of the other
word.
Below are some common examples of everyday
“blended” words with their meaning.
• BRUNCH (breafast + lunch) – a meal eanten the
late morning that is a combination of breakfast
ang lunch
• EMOTICON (emotion + icon) – an image made up
of symbols such as punctuation marks, used in text
messages, emails, etc. to express a particular
emotion
• SMOG (smoke + fog) -a mixture of smoke, gases,
and chemicals, especially in cities, that makes the
atmosphere difficult to breathe and harmful for
health
• MOTEL (motor + hotel) - a hotel by the side of a
road, usually with spaces for cars next to each
room.
• TELECAST (television + broadcast) - a programme
that is broadcast on television
• NETIQUETTE (network + etiquette) -the process
of entertaining people at the same time as you
are teaching them something, and the products,
such as television programmes or software, that
do this
CLIPPING
• This process of word formation happens
when a word of more than one syllable
(photograph) is reduced to a shorter form
(photo).
• This process of word formation happens
when a word of more than one syllable
(photograph) is reduced to a shorter form
(photo). Similarly, everyday fax is the
clipped form for facsimile.
• Common examples of English clippings are
bike for bicycle, match for mathematics,
gas for gasoline, phone for telephone, bus
for omnibus, van for caravan, prof for
professor, fan for fanatic, ad for
advertisement, telly for television and gym
for gymnasium.
• Orthographically, there are also some
clipped abbreviations such as Dr.
(doctor), Mr. (mister) and GB (gigabyte)
whose spellings have been shortened
but whose pronunciations are not
essentially different.
BACKFORMATION
-A very specialized type of word
formation process is known as
backformation in which an actual or
assumed derivational affix is removed from
the base form of a word to create a new
word.
•A good English example of
backformation is the process whereby
the verb televise was created from the
noun television that was already in use.
As in this example of backformation,
one type of word (often a noun) is
created to form another type of word
(often a verb).
Other common examples of words
created by backformation are edit
from editor, donate from donation,
enthuse from enthusiasm, babysit
from babysitter, opt from option,
sculpt from sculptor and liaise from
liaison.
CONVERSION
• When a word of one grammatical
category becomes a word of another
grammatical form without any
changes to pronunciation or spelling,
this process of word formation is
generally known as conversion.
In English, numerous nouns like email,
chair, vacation, bottle, butter, and host have
come to be used as verbs through
conversion:
• I will email you the document as soon as I
finish revising it.
• Jessica chaired the meeting yesterday; Sue
and Robert are vacationing in Marmaris
this summer.
• In English conversion is particularly a
productive process, with new uses
occurring commonly. It seems fair to state
that the most productive form of
conversion in English is noun to verb
conversion, as in the above examples.
ACRONYMS
• Acronyms, also called initialisms, are
new words produced from the initial
letters of a group of other words.
• Although these words are originally
produced as acronyms, people rapidly
forget their origins and such acronyms
regularly become new independent words
in languages.
• Finally, it seems that there are tens of
thousands of acronyms in the English-
speaking world today, which precisely
shows the creative and changeable aspects
of human language.
EPONYMS
• Though not very common, an eponym
refers to the word formation process in
which a new word is formed from a proper
name. In other words, an eponym denotes
the name of an object or activity which is
also the name of the person who first
created the object or did the activity.
• Sandwich-(from the eighteenth-century fourth Earl
of Sandwich, who first insisted on putting his meat
between two slices of bread while gambling)
• Jeans-(from the Italian city of Genoa where the
type of cloth was first made),
• Robot-(after the mechanical creatures in the Czech
writer Karel Capek’s play R.U.R., the initials
standing for “Rossum’s Universal Robots
• Jumbo-(after an elephant brought to the United
States by P. T. Barnum).
• Some eponyms include technical terms
that are based on the names of those who
first discovered or invented things, such as
volt (from the Italian, Alessandro Volta),
watt (from the Scottish inventor, James
Watt), fahrenheit (from the German,
Gabriel Fahrenheit), and boycott (from the
name of Charles C. Boycott).
Learners of English today are faced with
enormous challenges as they must not only
learn to communicate but also understand
and study content presented in English.
Thus, it is important for teachers of English
to understand the best ways to help
students learn the language as fast as
possible.
One of the ways in which they could achieve
this, as suggested by authors such as Graves
(2006), Kieffer (2009) and Kieffer and Lesaux
(2012a/2012b), is to enable learners to acquire
morphological awareness and help them recognize
and manipulate new words. Reasonably, language
learners who recognize how English words are
created, by combining prefixes, suffixes, and roots,
tend to have more words and comprehend texts
better (Kieffer and DiFelice Box, 2013).
Thank you so much
