Linguistics Morphology Word Formation Processes Yule 2003 Jarvie

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: – – – 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. – – – 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

Exercises