Linguistics
Morphology:
Word Formation Processes
(Yule, 2003 & Jarvie, 1993)
M.C. Rafael Velasco Argente
Spring 2012
What’s 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
• Big
sadder
bigger
saddest
biggest
• Learn learned
learning
What about word formation?
• The word formation processes consists on the following
ones:
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–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
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 company’s name.
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–
–
–
–
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 don’t 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/Englishsuffixes
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
• It’s 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
Bound morphemes-Derivational and
inflectional Morphemes
• Inflectional morphemes. These are
morphemes that help the words to change
their grammatical function. They are
suffixes
• Car-cars
• Do-Done
• Cold-Coldest
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