Word formation processes

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We’re going to divide the neological processes (new words appearing all the time) in two parts: the uncommon (difficult to happen) processes and the common (happen all the time) processes. Among the common processes, we discuss the syntactic ones (derivation and compounding); among the uncommon processes, we discuss other possibilities: phonological and semantic process, loanwords, etc.

The derivational processes in English happen through affixation (prefixation and suffixation). They’re extremely productive in the language and we can create new words almost indefinitely.

Individual words are joined to form a compound word. There are many possibilities of joining words in English:

Noun + Noun: Soccer field

Noun +Verb: Haircut

Preposition + Noun: Overdose

Noun + Preposition Passer-by

Verb + Noun: Washing machine

Verb + Preposition: Take-off

Preposition +Verb: Underfeed

Adjective + Adjective: Kindhearted

Adjective + Noun: Blackboard

Adjective +Verb: Dry-cleaning

Noun + Adjective: Heart broken

They can be written as single words (bathroom), hyphenated (ape-man) or separated by spaces (living room).

the compound has a new meaning, which can or can’t be related to the separated words.

There are also compounds with more than two words: bathroom towel-track