MAJOR WORD FORMATION DEVICES APART FROM AFFIXATION
CONVERSION
Conversion is a word formation process which involves the transfer of the base
from a word class to another without a physical change in its form. It is a
process of stress change or shift. Many nouns can be converted into verbs
through this process while some verbs have the same form as their noun
counterparts. This is achieved by placing stress on either the first syllable or the
second syllable of the word. When the stress is on the first syllable of a word,
the word is a noun and when on the second syllable, the word is a verb.
For example: That ‘convert is a committed Christian
Muslims are not easily con’verted to Christianity.
In the first sentence, the word convert is functioning as a noun but in the second
sentence the same word is functioning as a verb. Other words that are converted
from noun to verbs through stress placement include:
Contract
transfer
Record
permit
Survey
insult
Content
project
Import
practice
Export
advice
Increase
abstract
These words are also technically referred to as having zero affixation. They are
also described as words formed by zero derivation.
Other Examples:
They are said to have zero affixation.
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COMPOUNDING
 Word formation processes by which you string together other words.
It is a unit consisting of two or more bases or roots.
 Highly productive process because all major categories of words can
be represented. As the following examples illustrate:
Compound preposition:- along side of, not withstanding
Compound conjunctions:- whereas, whenever
Compound adverbs:- indeed, moreover
Compound pronouns:- you all, myself
Compound numerals:- thirty-five
Noun + Noun:- Handbook, sky lab, rainbow
Adjective + Noun:- fat lady, poorhouse, redneck
Noun + Adjective:- headstrong, attorney general
Verb + Noun:- pickpocket, killjoy, cult throat
Noun + Verb:-barkeep, toothpick, windbreak
Verb + Verb:-make belief
Verb + Adverb:- holdout, runoff, take over
Adverb + Verb:- down pour, outlay, after-blast
Noun + Verb + er:-man-eater, purse-snatcher
 Same grammatical categories compound remain the same- girl-friend,
family-friend, paper-clip, fighter-bomber
 different grammatical category compound change the category of the
new word to that of the second-head-strong,
 two compound words most common
 exceptional cases-Three-time loser, four-dimensional space-time,
sergeant at-arms, mother-of-pearl, Master-of-ceremony, manabout-town
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 Spellings do not constitute an aid to what sequence constitutes a
compound- some compounds are spelt with a space between them,
others with hyphen and still others with no separation. Blackboard,
gold tail, smoke-screen
 Meaning not always the sum of the meaning of its part eg. A red coatBritish soldiers as opposed to bed time, bedside,
 Expressed different grammatical relations- a house boat is a boat
which is a house, a boat house –a house for boats, but a cat house is
not a house for cat even though some cats live in cat houses
magnifying glass and looking glass/laughing gas.
 However, the meaning of each compound includes at least to some
extent the meanings of the individual parts but not a jack-in-a-box
tropical tree or torn coat-traitor
 Meaning of compounds learned as if they were individual simple
words.
 Fertile in countries where English is used as a second language- cash
madam, senior girls, big man, long leg,
 Compounding exemplifies the way in which the English language
exploits the universal characteristic of dynamism of languages in the
areas of incorporation of new words into its lexicon
 It is a regenerative technique that empowers the users to exploit the
words of language and maximally utilize the expressiveness.
THE MINOR DEVICES
1. WORD COINAGE (NEOLOGISM)
This involves coining new words outrightly to fit certain purposes.
However, word coinage can also be created from existing words. For
example, the coinage ‘kleenex’ is formed from the word ‘clean’. Word
coinage allows as many words as possible to be added into the English
vocabulary.
The motive behind word coinage can be located in the realm of scientific,
technical and commercial endeavours. Word coinage is also more
common with the spoken than the written form of language. Kodak is a
coined word associated with photography and coined out of the imitation
of the two /k/ sounds expressing the clicking of the camera. Some coined
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words are made up for certain consumer goods as in Nylon, Xerox,
Vaseline and OMO. Quite often too, specific brand names such as Xerox
are used as the general name for many brands of the actual product.
Some coined words have no dictionary meaning and are therefore
arbitrarily assigned meaning by the inventors and are adhered to by
imitators. Brooks (1973, p,122), regards ‘Coinage Act’ as the act of
inventing new words or phrases which are common in informal use, but
generally considered not to form part of Standard English and often used
deliberately for novelty or for picturesqueness or unconventionality.
This definition illustrates the three characteristics of word coinage as:
1. It is informal
2. It is chiefly concerned with vocabulary,
3. More at home in the spoken than in the written form.
Coined words are mostly used in interpersonal communication and it is used
to avoid being stilted or formal. It adds liveliness and a greater sense of
intimacy which brings with it an air of friendliness to an interaction.
Some coined words are situationally restricted while some have general
application. In the context of an appropriate communication act, the use of
coinages commands mutual intelligibility among their users in such a way that
a stranger to that speech community would need some induction. However,
coined words have a very short live span even as some serve useful purpose
and thus remain in the vocabulary of English.
ACRONYMS
This is morphological process that is gaining currency in modern
administration and commerce. It is a name giving concept that is arrived at
by picking and stringing together the initial alphabets of the full and
separate words to form a new word. Such words new words are then
pronounced as the spellings indicate. For example UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF,
UNHCR, UNFPA, UNIDO, OAU, ECOWAS, OPEC, FIFA, BBC, CNN, etc
Acronyms are fertile source of communication and they save time and
space. It is most popularized on a daily basis in the civil service, politics,
public relations, media, fashion industries and the entertainment world.
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ABBREVIATION
This refers to how words can be shortened.
Initialisms are a type of abbreviation formed by the initial letters of a word or phrase.
Although abbreviation is largely a convention of written language, sometimes abbreviations
is carried over into spoken language. Almost anything you want to do will require you to
know an abbreviation or two, whether for cooking or travelling. We can thus distinguish
between written and spoken abbreviations. Here are two lists with examples.
Written Abbreviations
 Apr. April
 cm – centimeter(s)
 d. – died, died in
 dept. – department
 Dr. – doctor
 Jr. – Junior
 Mr. – Mister
 oz – ounce(s)
 Sun. – Sunday
 yd – yard(s)
Spoken-Written Abbreviations
 A.M. – ante meridiem [in the morning]
 B.C.E. – Before Common Era
 GOP – Grand Old Party (Republican Party)
 HIV – Human Immunodeficiency Virus
 i.e. – id est [that is]
 JFK – John Fitzgerald Kennedy
 OJ – orange juice
 PMS – premenstrual syndrome
 RSVP – répondez s'il vous plait
 VIP – very important person
If you want to find your way around, you better know location abbreviations such as:
 St - street
 Ave - avenue
 Rd – road
Abbreviations often show up in describing educational degrees and job titles. For example:
 BA - Bachelor of Arts
 BS - Bachelor of Science
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 MA - Master of Arts
 JD - Juris Doctor
 DC - Doctor of Chiropractic
 PA - Personal Assistant
 MD - Managing Director
 VP - Vice President
 SVP - Senior Vice President
 CEO - Chief Executive Officer
Latin has also provided us with other abbreviations that we use so frequently that at times, we
seem to forget what they stand for such as:
 When someone quotes an example and uses the abbreviation e.g. to express it, it stands for
exampli gratia, which means, “example given.”
 Also, i.e., another equally popular abbreviation we use in daily life, stands for id est,
meaning, “that is.”
 “Etc”, which is also often used, is short for etcetera, which means “and other things.”
 Another popular Latin abbreviation we use in our daily life is “viz”, which stands for
videlicet, meaning “namely.”
 Other popular Latin abbreviations include "nb" which is written at the end of a
communication. It stands for nota bene, which means “take notice,” or “note well.”
The advent of the Internet has brought about a whole new range of abbreviations we may use
in our daily life. Among these abbreviations, online chat has evolved and created a language
of its own, made up almost entirely of abbreviations that we use to chat on the internet.
For example:
 LOL - laugh-out-loud
 ROLF - rolling on the floor laughing
 & - and
 ACE - a cool experience
 AD - awesome dude
 AFAIR - as far as I remember
 AFK - away from keyboard
 ANI - age not important
 CUL - see you later
 CWYL - chat with you later
 IQ - ignorance quotient
 XOXO- Hugs and kisses
Which of these do you use when you chat on the internet? These are just a handful of
innumerable abbreviations that are used in chat language.
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You should remember that:
 Abbreviations have become an inalienable part of our lives.
 Abbreviation is related to both the word formation processes of clipping and blending.
(Source: http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/abbreviations/list-of-commonly-usedabbreviations.html)
CLIPPING
This involves a process in which in a word or two or more syllables are
shortened without an alteration in its function. The shortening comes about
by the removal of some syllables and a stretch of alphabets from a whole
word without a change in the concept which the word identifies. The
shortening may occur at three different positions of the word. It may be word
initial, word final or at both ends of the word. It is however most common in
word final position. Like acronyms it is used to save time and space. It
continues to gain ground in public relations, news gathering and in the
advertisement industry. The following examples are instances of clipping:
Maths for Mathematics
Mag for Magazine
Exam for Examination
Lab for Laboratory
Flu or Influenza
Phone for Telephone
Zoo for Zoological Garden
Fridge for Refrigerator
Coop for Cooperative
Clipping is mostly used in informal situations to indicate attitude of
familiarity by the users, to the object being denoted or to the audience being
addressed.
Clipped words are sometimes localised and are therefore not readily
intelligible to foreign users of a language.
BLENDING
This word formation process operates systematically by stringing together some
syllable from a whole word with other syllables from another word in order to
form a completely new word for a new concept. Examples of blends that have
attained full lexical status in English are:
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Smog from smoke and fog
Motel from motor and hotel
Urinalysis from urine and analysis
Telecommunication from telephone and communication
Brunch from breakfast and lunch
Transistor from transfer and resistor.
REDUPLICATION
This is a form of compounding that involves the process of forming a
compound word with two or more elements which are either identical or only
slightly different. For examples:
Dilly-dally
Hanky-panky
Willy-nilly
Goody-goody
BACKFORMATION
Back-formation occurs when a real or supposed affix (that is, a prefix or suffix) is removed
from a word to create a new one. For example, the original name for a type of fruit was
cherise, but some thought that the word sounded plural, so they began to use what they
believed to be a singular form, cherry, and a new word was born. The creation of the verb
enthuse from the noun enthusiasm is also an example of a back-formation.
(Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/etymology.htm)
CALQUING
This is a process in which a borrowed word or phrase is translated from one language to
another. They are also referred to as root-for-root or word-for- word translations.
For example, the following common English words are calqued from foreign languages:
 beer garden – German – Biergarten
 blue-blood – Spanish – sangre azul
 commonplace – Latin – locus commūnis
 flea market – French – marché aux puces
 free verse – French – vers libre
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 loanword – German – Lehnwort
 long time no see – Chinese – hǎo jiǔ bu jiàn
 pineapple – Dutch – pijnappel
 scapegoat – Hebrew – ez ozel
 wisdom tooth – Latin – dēns sapientiae
Calques are also referred to as root-for-root or word-for-word translations.
Calquing is a major type of contact-induced linguistic transfer as it occurs between two
languages which are in direct contact with each other. Calquing may also be known as
replication. Calquing is “the transfer of lexical or grammatical meaning from a MODEL
LANGUAGE into a REPLICA LANGUAGE whereby the latter replicates a formal
expression typically via translation.” There are two subtypes: lexical and grammatical
calquing. Borrowing and lexical calquing are often confused with each other, however, both
terms describe two similar but different phenomena in linguistics.
Lexical calquing, which is also known as loan translation, uses single words or phrases
which are already existent in the target language and allocates new meaning and/or structure
to them. This way concepts from the model language enter into the target language. Lexical
calques are lexemes of the target language which have taken on the new meaning (in addition
to their old meaning). Consider these three examples:
(1) This road is very busy. (Standard English)
(2) Diese Straße ist sehr belebt. (Standard German)
(3) Diese Straße ist sehr beschäftigt. (Namibian German)
The English (1) expression cannot be translated adequately into German since the Standard
German equivalent for busy (i.e. beschäftigt) is not acceptable in this context. Instead,
speakers of Standard German use belebt which is equivalent to English animate or alive.
However, because of a loan translation the third example is acceptable for speakers of
Namibian German, since beschäftigt has taken on the additional meaning of English busy
and/or Afrikaans besig.
Lexical calquing can be either a new combination expressing a new concept or it can solely
be a broadening of a meaning. In this case the model lexeme functions like a template for an
equivalent lexeme in the target language which takes on a new aspect of meaning that was
present in the model lexeme but not in the target lexeme.
The range of lexical items which may be included in lexical calquing comprises single
lexemes as well as whole phrases. For example: Charles Darwin’s Struggle for Life finds its
counterpart in the German loan translation Kampf ums Dasein .This replica is clearly related
to its English model, as this combination was not used before in German.
Once a word is borrowed through the process of lexical calquing the word is usually
“nativized”. This means we pronounce the sounds of the language from which we are
borrowing in a way that can be articulated in our own language. Thus, when the word rouge
is borrowed from French, English speakers do not have the French “r” sound, which is a velar
fricative. So, we pronounce the “r” as an “English r”.
(Source: http://dstmte.net/lgcs101/readings/hock&joseph_borrowing.pdf)
(Source: http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~mu65qev/wikolin/index.php?title=Calquing)
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NOUNCE WORDS
These are new words formed through any word formation process with the
resulting word meeting a lexical need that is not expected to recur. In other
words, they are created for a single occasion.
For example, the following list of words provides some nonce words with definitions as
identified in the Oxford English Dictionary.
 cotton-wool – to stuff or close (the ears) with cotton-wool.
 jabberwock – The name of the fabulous monster in Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky.
Hence in allusive and extended uses, especially "incoherent or nonsensical expression." So
jabberwocky is invented language, meaningless language, nonsensical behavior; also
nonsensical, meaningless, topsy-turvy.
 touch-me-not-ishness – having a "touch-me-not" character; stand-off-ish.
 twi-thought – an indistinct or vague thought.
 witchcraftical – The practices of a witch or witches; the exercise of supernatural power
supposed to be possessed by persons in league with the devil or evil spirits. Power or
influence like that of a magician; bewitching or fascinating attraction or charm.
Note that although most nonce words come in and out of use very quickly, some nonce words
catch on and become everyday words. For example, Lewis Carroll coined the word chortle, a
blend of chuckle and snort, for the poem Jabberwocky in the book Through the LookingGlass and What Alice Found There; unlike most nonce words, however, chortle has gained
acceptance as a legitimate blended word.
(Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/etymology.htm)
EPONYMS
These are words formed by the process in which a new word is created from the
name of a real or fictitious person.
For example:
 atlas – Atlas
 boycott – Charles C. Boycott
 cardigan – James Thomas Brudnell, 7th Earl of Cardigan
 cereal – Ceres
 dunce – John Duns Scotus
 guillotine – Joseph Ignace Guillotin
 jacuzzi – Candido Jacuzzi
 luddite – Ned Ludd
 malapropism – Mrs. Malaprop
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 mesmerize – Franz Anton Mesmer
 mirandize – Ernesto A. Miranda
 narcissistic – Narcissus
 nicotine – Jean Nicot
 pasteurization – Louis Pasteur
 poinsettia – Noel Roberts Poinsett
 praline – César de Choiseul, Count Plessis–Praslin
 sadistic – Marquis de Sade
 salmonella – Daniel Elmer Salmon
 sandwich – John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich
 volcano - Vulcan
Source: http://www.brighthubeducation.com/esl-teaching-tips/59719-forming-new-wordsabbreviations-acronyms-and-eponyms/
CONCLUSION
The processes of word formation help us to understand the syntactic functions
of words as well as the grammatical forms that different words can take. We can
also recognise recurring patterns in language such as the allomorphs of the past
tense morpheme as well as the plural morpheme.
An adequate grasp of the different ways in which words can be formed will help
us as second language learners to understand the fundamental concepts and
relations between words in grammatical structure. In addition, it will help us to
build up our vocabularies by exposing us to the expressive possibilities of the
frontiers of language.
Finally, the knowledge of word formation processes in English enables the
language to be susceptible to adoptions and indigenisation processes. No
wonder the English language is daily gaining global currency as the devices for
forming new words allow the language to adapt to the sensitive nature of the
cultural heritage of those using it as a second language. Word formation
processes also restore form-based instruction in the handling of English
structure.
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