Word Formation Processes: Compounding and Types of Compounds

WORDS FORMATION

What is a word?

-Orthographic : idea about anything

-Semantic: denotes concepts or coherent ideas/words belong to different classes or categories

-prosodic: one main linguistic stress and /or primary stress

Ways of creating new words

-The first one is about new words are formed from existing words and parts

-The second one is about words which are borrowed from other languages for example: copying

-The last one is the words that we could made up from scratch

Words Formation Processes

Conversion

Affixation

Compounding

Clipping

Backformation

Acronymy

Blending

Refers to words that have to out together to firm

Verb + noun =Pickpocket

Preposition + noun =Outlaw

The compound stress rule

The main stress is on the first element, but not always as exceptions as, London Bridge or Penny Lane and also the stress can distinguish between compounds and phrases;

Greenhouse vs. The green house

Types of Compounds

Endocentric Compounds. - The second element defines the kind of thing and the word class where this compound belongs.

E.g. Steamboat: is a kind of boat

Exocentric Compounds. - The whole meaning is not just a combination of the meanings of its parts, it could belong to a different word class than the second element.

E.g., scarecrow: isn't a kind of crow

Copulative Compounds. - Both elements equally define the kind designated by the whole compound.

E.g. gardener-chauffeur is someone who is both a gardener and a chauffeur

English has a large inventory of derivational affixes to form new words:

Prefixes: mis-, un-, in-, etc.

Suffixes: ly-,-able, etc.

Inflectional: there 8 categories, third p past tense, continous , plural, past participle, possesive, comparative and superlative

Multiple Affixation. - Many complex words have more than one affix

Stress shift

Some affixes change the stress pattern of the stem and other affixes don’t change it.

. technology, technological

tɛkˈnɑləʤi, ˌtɛknəˈlɑʤɪkəl

use words from one category as members of another category

Shortening a word by deleting phonological material (not necessary morphemes) and without changing the meaning of the word

the derivational affix detaches from the base form of a word to create a new word.

are words derived from the initial sounds of several words, but they are pronounced like one

Is the process of making one word out of two other words taking the begging of one word and the end of another

E.g. Nouns into verbs

Google – to google

E.g. laboratory – lab

E.g. obsessive from obsess

TESOL – Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages

initialism. - are like acronyms expect that they are pronounced as a sequence of letters

e.g. AC/DC

there is a rule: AB+CD= AD

E.g. smoke + fog → smog