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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
Running head: Word formation in English and Vietnamese
Word formation in English and Vietnamese: a contrastive analysis
Pham Thi Hong Ly
HCMC University of Pedagogy
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
Abstract:
Language is a principal mean used by human beings to exchange information
and communicate with each other. We use language to discuss a wide range of topics
which distinguishes us with animals. In other words, language is a vital tool of
communication. In order to share ideas and feelings effectively besides using gestures,
intonation in speech…; a large vocabulary is also considered as a useful way. The more
vocabularies you have, the clearer and more accurate ideas you express. And one of
the most common ways to enrich vocabulary is word formation. It is a study of words,
dealing with construction or formation of words in a certain language. As a learner of
English and an English teacher in the future, I do this research to mention the
similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese word formation. And then,
some common errors that Vietnamese learners often make are discussed. I hope that
the information in this paper will be helpful in getting a deeper look about word formation
in the two languages, English and Vietnamese.
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
Literary review:
According to Oxford Dictionary, a word is a single unit of language which means
something and can be spoken or written. According to Nguyen Thien Giap, word is the
smallest unit of language, independently in meaning and form. Another definition of
word is that “A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or
more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic
value” (Wikipedia). For this definition, it is simply said that word is formed from
morphemes, the smallest units of meaning that a word can be divided into. There are
two kinds of morphemes in English and Vietnamese words. They are free morpheme
and bound morpheme. Free morpheme can occur on their own as an independent word
such as man, lamp, green, black…in English or nhà, đẹp, đi, tốt in Vietnamese... Bound
morpheme can not stand alone without attached to other morphemes. However, there
are differences in Vietnamese and English bound morphemes. In English, bound
morphemes are suffixes such as -ly, -ed, -ity… or prefixes like un-, im-, anti-… On the
contrary, Vietnamese bound morphemes are separate words serve as either
compounding or reduplicative elements, for example, tắc kè, bàng bạc, ăng ten… if we
split them off they still has their own meaning but it is not related to the meaning of the
whole compound word. In other words, adding bound morphemes into an English word
can form a new word whose meaning is related to the original one, but it is unlike in
Vietnamese.
In short, there are many differences in word formation in English and Vietnamese
though both of them are formed by morphemes.
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
Word formation in English
There are some ways to build a new word. They are affixation, compounding,
and other devices like conversion, clipping, blend and reduplication.
Affixation
Affixation is a method in which an affix is attached to a root. English words
consist of two elements: root which is considered obligatory and carries lexical meaning
and affix which is optional and carries grammatical meaning or supplemental- lexical
meaning. Let us take the word “teacher” as an example. In the word “teacher”, “teach” is
the root which means “educate or train” and “-er” is the affix that cannot stand alone.
When attached to the root, “-er” supplements to the root with meaning of “a person”.
There are many kinds of affix. It can be divided into two kinds in terms of
position. According to Megginson, they are prefix and suffixes. Moreover, even the
words prefix, suffix and affix are all formed from “fix” by the use of prefixes:
ad- + “fix” (attached) = “affix”
pre- + “fix” (attached) = “prefix”
sub- + “fix” (attached) = “suffix”
Prefix is an affix which is attached to the beginning of the root so that it can
modify or change meaning of the word. The prefixes can be divided semantically into
these following groups: quantity prefixes, locative prefixes, temporal prefixes, negation
prefixes (see Appendix). However, in one such study (Ingo Plag 134), it is found that
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
numerous prefixes do not belong to any of the four groups above. For example, prefixes
express diverse notions, such as “wrong, evil” (mal-, malfunction, malnutrition), “badly,
wrongly” (mis-, misinterpret, mistrial), “false, deceptive” (pseudo-), “together, jointly”
(co), “in place of” (vice-)… One more type of affix is suffixes. Unlike prefixes, suffix is an
affix which is attached after the root. There are four types of suffixes: nominal suffixes,
verbal, adjectival and adverbial suffixes. (see Appendix)
Compounding
Compounding is the most productive type of word formation process in English.
A compound is a word that consists of two elements, the first of which is either a root, a
word or a phrase, e.g. biochemistry, systems analysis, over- the- fence gossip…; the
second of which is either a root or a word (Ingo Plag 183). Most of compounds are
interpreted in such way that one element, head, is modified by others. And the
compounds inherits most of it semantic and syntactic information from its head (Ingo
Plag 183).
There are three types of compounds: open compound, hyphenated compound
and solid compound. An open compound consists of two or more words written
separately, such as salad dressing, Boston terrier, or April Fools’ Day... A hyphenated
compound has words connected by a hyphen, such as age-old, mother-in-law, forcefeed... A solid compound consists of two words that are written as one word, such as
keyboard or typewriter (The American Heritage book of English usage).
Compounds are divided into four types in terms of word class: nominal,
adjectival, adverbial and neoclassical compounds. First, let us explore noun compound
or nominal compound. Most compound nouns in English are formed by nouns modified
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
by other nouns or adjectives such as book cover, salesman, blackboard…
(learnenglish). In compound noun, the first part modifies or describes the second one to
tell us kind of object or person and its purpose; and the second part identifies the object
or person in the first one. For example, in the word “book cover”, the first part “book”
gives us information about the type of object; and the second part is “cover”.
Compound nouns can also be formed using the following combinations of words:
Patterns
Examples
Noun + Noun
toothpaste, car park
Adjective + Noun
monthly ticket, good- fellow
Verb + Noun
swimming pool, skating- rink
Preposition + Noun
underground, overdose
Noun + Verb
haircut, manhunt
Noun + Preposition
hanger on, timeout
Adjective + Verb
dry-cleaning, good- living
Preposition + Verb
output, input
In addition, a compound may be classified as permanent or temporary. A
permanent compound is fixed by common usage and can usually be found in the
dictionary, whereas a temporary compound consists of two or more words joined by a
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
hyphen as needed, usually to modify another word or to avoid ambiguity. In general,
permanent compounds begin as temporary compounds that become used so frequently
they become established as permanent compounds (The American Heritage book of
English usage).
Another type of compounding word is adjectival compound. Compound adjective
is a complex and challenging formation. It modifies the noun, with the two or more
worded adjective phrase, to create a new adjective. The adjective phrase is usually
written in with a hyphen (-). Its meaning is usually clear from the words it combines
(Muthusami, par.3). There are many ways to build a compound adjective.
Patterns
Examples
adjective + noun
second- hand, hi- tech, long- distance
adjective + noun + “-ed”
blue-eyed, light- hearted, clear- sighted
adjective + past participle
low-paid, cold-blooded, high- handed
adjective + present participle
good-looking, long- acting, easy-going
noun + adjective
world- wide, sugar- free, knee- deep
noun + present participle
time-consuming, heart- breaking, labor- saving
noun + past participle
hand- operated, handmade, manmade
adverb + past participle
ill-equipped, well-behaved, well- prepared
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
adverb + present participle
newly- born, low-flying, well- known
number + noun (sing)
seven- year- old (boy), four- bed- room (flat)
With this kind of word formation, it will be easier and more convenient to express
more accurately and lively our ideas and feelings.
Next type of compounding is compound verb. A compound verb or complex
predicate is a multi-word compound that acts as a single verb (Wikipedia).
Sometimes compound verbs and phrasal verbs make us confused. In fact, there are
some differences between them. If we can add an object between two words, it is
phrasal verb. For instance, it is safe to say “He takes his hat off.” but it is impossible
to say “He ill his dog treat.” Another difference between phrasal verb and compound
verb is that the second component of phrasal verb is a preposition, whereas it can
be a noun or a verb for compound verb. And following table is some common ways
to form a compound verb:
Patterns
Examples
noun + verb
hand- feed, baby- sit, proof- read, chain- smoke
verb + noun
do-time, go public, dry- nurse
verb + verb
dry- clean, stir- fry, freeze- dry
adjective + verb
double- check, broadcast, ill-treat
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
adverb + verb
outdistance, overdo, under-act
Derivation without affixation
We have just dealt with some affixational word formation process and
compounding. However, there are some more ways to build a new word without
affixation. They are conversion, clipping and blending.
Conversion
Conversion is particularly common in English because the basic form of
nouns and verbs is identical in many cases. According to Ana and Gustavo,
conversion is extremely productive to increase the English lexicon because it
provides an easy way to create new words from existing ones. There are four main
types of conversion: noun to verb, verb to noun, adjective to verb and adjective to
noun. (see Appendix)
Clipping or truncation
According to Ingo, truncation is a process in which the relationship between a
derived word and its base is expressed by the lack of phonetic material in the derived
word. (156)
For instance:
Mike (  Michael)
lab (  laboratory)
Rob (  Robert)
math (  mathematics)
Andy (  Andrew)
demo (  demonstration)
Blending
Blending is a way of forming word from parts of two other words. It is often the
first part of the first elements combined with the second part of the second element
(Igno Plag 166). We can form a rule with A, B, C and D as parts of elements:
AB + CD  AD
For example:
motor + hotel  motel
goat + sheep  geep
breakfast + lunch  brunch
smoke + fog  smog
Sometimes, it is possible to combine the first part of the elements together.
For instance:
modulator + demodulator  modem
cybernetic + organism → cyborg
Reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a repetition of a syllable, a morpheme or a word,
e.g chit- chat, murmur, hush- hush, ping- pong…. Most of reduplication in English
imitates the sound. However, it is really an interesting phenomenon in which it is used
as informal expressive vocabulary.
Word formation in Vietnamese
Words in Vietnamese are the smallest meaningful unit that functions as a mean
of naming things, can be used and occur independently in speech to build a sentence
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
(ngonngu.net). To some extents, word formation in Vietnamese is different from the way
words built in English. Words in Vietnamese are not formed by adding affixes as in
English. These are some familiar ways to form words in Vietnamese: compounding,
conversion, clipping, blends and reduplication. It is the same to words in English.
Compounding
Based on relation of components, compound words in Vietnamese can be
divided into two types: coordinated compound words (từ ghép đẳng lập) and principaland-accessory compound words (từ ghép chính phụ). Coordinated compound words
are words in which elements are equal of meaning. That coordinated compound words
express general and synthetic meaning is a feature making them different form
principal- and- accessory compound words. Let us take the word “ăn nói” as an
example. “ăn” and “nói” have their own meaning when they stand alone. And they are
on the same level of meaning. So we can combine it to create a new word “ăn nói” as a
coordinated compound word. On the contrary, principal- and- accessory compound
words are words in which components depend on each other. The accessory element
classifies and modifies the principal one. For example, in the word “cà chua”, “chua” is
the accessory element that modifies “cà”. So “cà chua” is a kind of “cà” and its feature is
“chua”.
Similar to compound words in English, compound words in Vietnamese is also
divided into three types in terms of word class: compound nouns, compound adjectives
and compound verbs. Most of compound nouns in Vietnamese are built based on Han-
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
Viet words. Or they can be the combination of two Nôm words, or Han- Viet words plus
Nôm words.
Patterns
Examples
Han Viet + Han Viet
ái quốc, ám muội, thi sĩ
Nom + Nom
quần áo, nhà cửa, ruộng vườn
Han Viet + Nom or Nom + Han Viet
nhân nghĩa, súng trường
Conversion
One more similar method of creating a new word in Vietnamese is conversion.
Conversion means to create a new word with the same spelling but different meaning to
the original one. According to Nguyen Thien Giap, liguistics discovered essential
phenomena of conversion: enlarge or narrow the meaning of a word; metaphor and
metonymy; changing word-class (84).
For example:
chân vịt (leg of a duck)
chân vịt (a screw )
ốc ( snail- a kind of animal)
ốc ( a nut in technical field)
diêm ( sunphur- a kind of chemical)
diêm (match)
Above words are examples of enlarging meaning of words that is a process of
develop meaning of a word from particular to general, from specific to abstract, e.g.
adjective “đẹp” is used in certain field of form but later “đẹp” is also used in domain of
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
sense and relation such as “đẹp lòng”, “đẹp nết”… And these following are examples of
narrowing meaning of words that is a opposite process to enlarging meaning of words.
For instance, “Miếng thịt này có mùi rồi.”. “mùi” in this sentence means “smell bad or
putrid”.
Another method of conversion is metaphor which is a process of changing
meaning of words based on the similarities of things taken to compare together, e.g. a
ugly girl is called “Thị Nở”, a person who is always jealous in love is called “Hoạn Thư”
or “Otenlo”… One more method is metonymy that is a method of changing meaning of
words based on logic relation of things, e.g. “Nhà có năm miệng ăn.” means “Nhà có
năm người ăn.” or “Anh ta là một chân sút xuất sắc.” means “Anh ta là một cầu thủ
xuất sắc.” In these examples, a part of body represents the whole body.
Similar to conversion in English, Vietnamese new words can be formed by
changing their word class.
e.g.
“thơ” (noun)

“rất thơ”/ “thơ lắm” (adjective)
“đỏ” (adjective)

“đỏ ra” (verb)
“(mua) cuốc” (noun) 
“cuốc (đất)” (verb)
In brief, with method of conversion, the treasure of vocabulary is increasing
ceaselessly and the speech will become more vividly.
Clipping
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
Clipping in Vietnamese and in English are the same. It is a way of shortening a
long word to a short one. For example, we can say “ kí lô/ ki lô” instead of “kilogram” or
“Đảng” instead of “Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam”… The speakers may use this kind of
word formation on the purpose of saving.
Blend
Blend is a method in which we can break the structure of words by adding some
more words in. This method in Vietnamese is the same in English. For instance:
khổ sở

lo khổ lo sở
ngặt nghẽo

cười ngặt cười nghẽo
danh lợi + ham chuộng

ham danh chuộng lợi
tìm hiểu

tìm mà không hiểu
đánh đổ

đánh mà không đổ
This kind of word formation is varied and for common purpose of playing on words to
create many new and interesting words.
Reduplication
Reduplication in Vietnamese is similar to reduplication in English. According to
ngonngu.net website, the minimum length of reduplication in Vietnamese is two words
and maximum is four words. However, the first one is the most typical. For two words,
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
there are three types of reduplication. The first one is two elements are completely the
same, e.g. “cào cào”, “khăng khăng”, “đùng đùng”… The second type is reduplication in
tone, e.g. “phơi phới”, “thoang thoảng”, “hau háu”… The last one is reduplication in
syllable, e.g. “bập bẹ”, “chan chát”, “anh ách”…In short, reduplication creates a large
number of words in Vietnamese. And it is often used in music and poem.
Common errors
As non-native speaker and Vietnamese leaner of English, making errors when
transforming ideas from mother tongue into foreign language and vice versa is obvious
and unavoidable. In this part, I classify learners’ errors in three common types: errors
with affixation, with compound words, with conversion and errors with clipping and
blend.
Errors with affixation
Since many prefixes and suffixes whose meaning is the same, learners will be
confused which one goes with which word. For instance, prefixes “un-”, “il-”, “im-” mean
“not or the opposite of”, but we must use “uninteresting”, “illogical” or “impossible”…
One more difficulty for learners is unclear understanding about meaning of prefixes and
suffixes. For example, the words “misuse” and “disuse” have different meaning but
learners may not understand clearly the meaning of “dis-” and “mis-”. Therefore, they
assimilate these two words and think that they have the same meaning while “misuse”
means using something in wrong purpose and “disuse” means no longer being used. To
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
solve this problem, the teacher must make students notice in the meaning of some highfrequently used prefixes and suffixes.
Errors with compound words
Learners of English often make many mistakes with compound words. The
difficulties of students are the order and meaning of compound words. First, about the
order, in Vietnamese, students always say “bãi đậu xe”, “lực lượng lao động”…so when
they translate them into English, they might say “park car” or “force labor” instead of “car
park” and “labor force”. Secondly, about the meaning of compound words, it is easy for
learners to give wrong meaning of compound words because they misunderstand
compound words and phrases. For example, to the words “greenhouse” and “black
ball”, they may say that “green house” is “ngôi nhà màu xanh” instead of “nhà kính” and
“black-ball” is “quả bóng màu đen” not “phiếu chống/ phiếu đen” in an election. Thus,
the solution for this error is that when teaching, the teacher should give clear distinction
between compound words and phrases by marking stress. For example:
noun compound
noun phrase
‘blackball
a black ‘ball
phiếu chống
quả bóng đen
‘greenhouse
a green ‘house
nhà kính
ngôi nhà màu xanh
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
One more error that students likely make is that they often forget to omit “-s” in a noun
to create a compound adjective. So they might say “five-minutes (break)” not “fiveminute (break)”.
Errors with conversion
Word class in Vietnamese and in English is somehow different. That also leads
Vietnamese students to make mistakes while interpreting their ideas into English. In
Vietnamese, it is safe to say “Cô ấy hát không hay.” but it is impossible to say “She
sings not good/ beautiful.” as some students often do. Or we cannot translate the
sentence “Đá bóng là sở thích của tôi.” into “Play football is my hobby.” because it
makes no sense in grammar.
Errors with clipping and blend
Using clipping and blend in English too much may cause students to forget the
spelling of the original words so they tend to use the clipped or blended ones.
Conclusion
Word formation is a method of creating a new words so that it make our treasure
of vocabulary enrich. In English and in Vietnamese, there are some similar ways of
building new words: compounding, conversion, clipping, blend and reduplication.
However, in each certain method, many differences occur on process of word formation.
In addition, new words in English can be formed by adding affixes, but it is impossible to
do this in Vietnamese.
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
In general, to master a language, learners must have thorough grasp of how
words are formed and how to use it effectively.
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
References
(1996). The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Ana I. Hernández Bartolomé and Gustavo Mendiluce Cabrera. (2005). Grammatical
Conversion in English. Retrieve December, 20, 2009, from
http://accurapid.com/Journal/31conversion.htm.
Compound noun. Retrieved December, 18, 2009, from
http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/nouncompound.htm
Compound verb. Retrieve December, 18, 2009, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_verb.
Megginson, David. (2007). Word formation. Retrieved December, 20, 2009, from
http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/wordform.html.
Muthusami. (2008). Compound Adjectives in English: A brief overview. Retrieve
December, 20, 2009, from
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1135622/compound_adjectives_in_eng
lish_a_brief.html?cat=4.
Nguyen, T.G. (2006). Dan luan ngon ngu hoc. Ha Nam: Education Publishing
House.
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
Plag, Ingo. Word-formation in English. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press,
2003
Tu trong tieng Viet. Retrieve December, 20, 2009, from
http://ngonngu.net/index.php?p=207 .
Word. Retrieved December, 20, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word.
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
Appendix
Prefixes
1. Quantity prefixes:
Prefixes
meaning
Examples
uni-
one
unilateral, unification
bi-
two/ twice
bilateral, bifurcation
multi-
many
multipurpose, multicolor
semi-
half
semiannual, semi- desert
2. Locative prefixes:
Prefixes
Meaning
Examples
intra-
inside
intracellular, intrados
inter-
between
interbreed, intergalactic
trans-
across
transmigrate, transcontinental
epi-
on/ over
epiglottis, epi-central
3. Temporal prefixes:
Prefixes
Meaning
Examples
pre- / fore-
before
pre-determine, forefather
post-
after
post-modify, postmodern
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
4. Negation prefixes:
Prefixes
meaning
Examples
dis-
not/ opposite of
disable, dishonest
ir-
not
irregular, irrelevance
im-
not
impossible, imperil
un-
not
unreal, uninteresting
Suffixes
1. Nominal suffixes:
suffixes
meaning
Examples
-ity
quality/ state/
solidity, formality
property
-ment
process/ result
assessment, treatment
-ship
state/ condition
friendship, membership
-ant
person
contestant, assistant
2. Verbal suffixes:
suffixes
Examples
-ize
randomize, characterize
-en
broaden, blacken
-ify
identify, solidify
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
3. Adjectival suffixes:
Suffixes
Examples
-able
readable, acceptable
-ish
childish, selfish
-ful
beautiful, colorful
-less
careless, homeless
4. Adverbial suffixes:
Suffixes
Examples
-ly
carefully, daily
-wise
lengthwise, crosswise
Conversion
1. Noun to verb
the file
to file
the water
to water
the Google
to google
2. Verb to noun
to call
a call
to dump
a dump
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Word formation in English and Vietnamese
to guess
a guess
3. Adjective to verb
4. Adjective
light
to light
empty
to empty
open
to open
to noun
poor
the poor
rich
the rich
blind
the blind