Lingua inglese - Talking about new words formation

Suffixes

Suffixes can be divided into four categories: nominal suffixes, verbal suffixes, adjectival suffixes, and adverbial suffixes.

The nominal suffixes are often used to derive abstract nouns from verbs, adjectives, and nouns. Some examples of nominal suffixes are: -age, -al, -ance, -ant, -ce/-cy, -dom, -ee, -eer, -er, -or, -(e)ry, -ess, -ful, -hood, -(i)an, -(e)an, -ing, -ion, -ism, -ist, -ity, -ment, -ness, and -ship. Words like voltage, arrival, absorbance, dispersant, convergence, kingdom, employee, mountaineer, mixer, bakery, handful, childhood, Anglican, running, personification, racism, fantasist, formality, treatment, etc. are generated by the addition of nominal suffixes.

Verbs can be formed by adding verbal suffixes such as -en, -ify, and -ize to other word categories, mostly adjectives and nouns. Examples of verbs formed in this way include quicken, humidify, and hospitalize.

Adjectives that come from the addition of adjectival suffixes to the root can be further subdivided into relational adjectives.

and qualitative adjectives. The adjectival suffixes are: -able, -al, -ary, -ed, -esque, -ful, -ic/ical, -ing, -ish, -ive, -less, -ly, -ous. Adjectives formed by the addition of this type of suffixes are: readable, cultural, complementary, wooded, picturesque, beautiful, historical, hopeless, curious, etc. There are two suffixes which derive adverbs from other categories, the adverbial suffixes –ly and wise, that generate adverbs as: hardly, shortly, crosswise, etc. When we talk of derivation we must say that not always when a suffix is added to a root we have a derivational phenomena, but this also could indicate an inflection such as the plural –s, the third person singular –s, the –ing form and so on. Some words born to derivation through the prefixation that is the addition of a prefix before root. In English exist different types of prefixes which we can classify in the following way: uni-, bi-, poly-, di-, multi-, omni-, semi-, Quantitative:micro-, macro-, hyper-. Theygenerate words as: bilateral, polysyllabic, semidesert, microwave, macrobiotic, etc. Circum-, counter-, endo-, inter-, epi-, intra-, iter-, para-, retro-, trans-. Circumnavigate, transcontinental, paramedic, interbreed, endocentric, are only some examples of words generated by locative prefixes. Ante-, pre-, fore-, post-, neo-. Words that express temporal notions are: antedate, premedical, postmodify, neoclassical, etc. A-, an-, de-, dis-, in-, non-, un-. For example, we can consider the words: achromatic, decaffeinate, inanimate, non-ability, uncritical, and so on. Mal-, mis-, and pseudo-, these are prefixes that form words like: malconduct, misperception, pseudopolitician, etc. Arch-, proto-, sub-, which generates: archbishop, protorebel, subred, and so on. Other words are born by the compounding of two or more different words, this is the case of words like luke-warm (luke+warm), newborn (new+born), outbid (out+bid), putup, etc.

Reduplication instead is a process of forming new words that happen by doubling an entire word or only a part. In English, the cases of reduplication are very rare. Some examples can be the words: papa, mama, so-so, goody-goody, etc.

Words like PC, RAM, SCUBA are acronyms or rather words formed from the initials of different words: Personal Computer, Random Access Memory, Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.