The frameworks of English

PART III: WORD FORMATION

The area of linguistics which is concerned with the internal structure of words is morphology. Morphology is normally divided into two branches – lexical morphology (or derivational morphology) and inflectional morphology. Inflectional morphology deals with the way words are adapted in different grammatical contexts.

When considering word formation, we can divide words into two broad categories: simple words and complex words. Simple words are those which cannot be analysed into smaller units of meaning. Complex words, on the other hand, can be subdivided into smaller units of meaning.

Examples:

• Simple word: Pinter
• Complex word: pint + er

Examples:

• Simple word: Unfortunately
• Complex word: un+ fortun(e) + ate + ly

We know intuitively that the above examples are made up of smaller units because we have many others words in our mental lexicons that follow similar patterns. There are many nouns that end in –er where this ending denotes the performer of the action to which is attached. Similarly, we know of many

instances where un-at the beginning of a word has the effect of oppositeness and we can form new words by using the same pattern. The –ate element in unfortunately is found on the end of several adjectives and many adverbs are formed by adding –ly to an adjective.

3.2 Some terms and concepts

One of the aspects of word construction is the position of particular units of construction: some units only occur at the beginning of a word and others only at the end. When discussing the beginning of a word, we can say that an element is word-initial and, by contrast, an element at the end of a word is word-final. Very occasionally, we may wish to refer to an element positioned within the word and we would refer to this as word-medial.

Many words are complex in their construction and can be broken down into smaller units of meaning. The smallest unit of meaning in a word is a morpheme. Morphemes themselves can be subdivided into two types: free morphemes and bound morphemes. A free morpheme is

One that can stand alone as a word in its own right. Any morpheme which cannot stand alone is a bound morpheme.

It is helpful to make a distinction between simple words, compound words and complex words. A compound word is constructed from two free morphemes while a complex word is constructed from a root morpheme (free or bound).

The prefixes in-, il-, ir-, and im- are used to express the opposite of what follows. We would see that il- only occurs when the following morpheme begins with /l/, an ir- only occurs when the following morpheme begins with /r/, while im- only occurs before /b/ and /p/. All these are not four distinct morphemes but different forms of the same bound morpheme, so they are all allomorphs of the in- morpheme.

The root or root morpheme is the part of a complex word which is at the heart of the word's construction and its meaning.

A base is a unit to which other morphemes may be added to create a new word or words.

3.3 Word formation strategy

Many words are constructed by the addition

of bound morphemes either word-initially or word-finally. This process is known as affixation and is the most productive of the strategies used to form words. Two further strategies which are also very productive are compounding and conversion.

3.4 Affixation

Affixation is the process by which bound morphemes are added to bases, either word-initially or word-finally, to form new words. A bound morpheme which is added in this way is an affix. An affix which occurs word-initially is more specifically termed a prefix, while one which is added word finally is a suffix. In some languages, the word-formation process may employ an infix – a bound morpheme which is inserted within the word.

It is important to make a distinction between prefixes and suffixes. One particular difference is that a prefix will not normally change the class of a word (agree, verb – disagree, verb). A prefix, then, is normally class-preserving. By contrast, a suffix may be class-preserving (king, kingdom – nouns).

but also class-changing. For instance, the addition of the suffix –ly to the adjective sad results in an adverb (sadly). There are many prefixes which can be added to at least two word classes whereas suffixes tend to be word-class specific. For example, the prefix dis- is found in nouns, adjectives and adverbs derived by these adjectives. By contrast, most suffixes occur with a specific class of words only. Furthermore, no morpheme which functions as a prefix can also function as a suffix. A general observation which we can make about both prefixes and suffixes is that some are far more productive than others. Another feature of affixes is that any one word may include more than one prefix and more than one suffix. However, prefixes and suffixes do not combine freely. There can be both semantic and morphological restrictions on word formation.

Both nouns and adjectives can be formed by the addition of –ed. When a new word is formed by adding –ed to a noun, the result word is

always an adjective. However, when –ed and –ing are added to verbs, a new noun or adjective may result, or an inflectional form of the verb may be produced. A noun occurs after the definite article. This form is referred to as a deverbal noun as it derives from a verb.

When the –ed forms occur attributively we are dealing with adjectives. These adjectives can be referred to as deverbal adjectives, again to indicate they derivate form verbs.

3.5 Compounding

Construction consists of two roots and in fact two pre-existing words. Compound words are often written as one element as in lipstick or hyphenated as in child-friendly, but they can be written as two separate elements such as world power.

Compounding, as affixation, is a very productive way of forming words in English. Compounding is typically the result of joining nouns, adjectives and verbs. Compound verbs are rare and are the result of back-formation or conversion. However, there is a very large group of multi-word verbs.

formed by the combination of the verb with an adverb or preposition.

3.6 Multi-word verbs

Whereas compound verbs are relatively rare, multi-word verbs (or phrasal verbs) are very common in contemporary English. A multi-word verb is a combination of two or three elements:

• Verb + preposition
• Verb + adverb
• Verb + adverb + preposition

Their meaning is partly or wholly idiomatic. This means that the meaning cannot be fully deduced from the individual meanings of the elements which constitute the multi-word verb.

3.7 Conversion and back-formation

Conversion is another productive method for creating new words by a change of word class without any alteration to the form of the word itself. Conversion is a particularly productive way of creating verbs from nouns and nouns from verbs. However, it is not unusual for adjectives to be converted to nouns. Of course, it is not always possible to tell which word came first without checking in an etymological dictionary.

3.8 Other word formation strategies

An acronym

is an economical way of expressing a phrase since the first letter (or letters): CID (Criminal Investigation Department). This type of acronym is known more specifically as an initialism. Sometimes a word can be a combination of an acronym and an initialism as in CD-ROM, where CD is an initialism (for compact disk) but ROM (read only memory) is an acronym.

Clipping involves shortening a word, usually by removing some of the letter part, as mobile (instead of mobile phone).

A blend is a kind of compound although the base words are not joined in their entirety (brunch = breakfast + lunch/ smog = smoke + fog).

Eponymy is the use of a proper name to refer to an object or action. Often. The object in question is an invention of the person after whom is named. 35

Onomatopoeia is when a noun or verb refers to a sound (such as crash) and imitates that sound. Onomatopoeic words are, though, the only words in any language where there is a strong correlation between the sound of a word and its meaning.

A handful

Words are formed by the process of reduplication, which involves the doubling of the first element of the word. Reduplicative words are often used when speaking to very young children but speakers will sometimes use reduplication when being patronising or sarcastic.

Loanwords or borrowings are words which are adopted into English from another language. A very large portion of English words have their origin in Latin, French, Norse, and Greek. Most of these words have been anglicised, meaning they have been adapted to sound or look English. Borrowing is relatively common; it includes food words such as sushi from Japan or tortilla from Spain.

An aspect of word meanings which has some relevance both in terms of range of meanings and in terms of context and formality is the contrast between denotation and connotation. A word's denotative meaning is normally the person, object, quality, idea, action, or state to which a word refers. This is known as its referent.

So the referent or denotative meaning of pig is a particular farm animal. However, many words also have connotative meanings and these refer to the emotions or attitudes which a particular word may evoke.

A hypernym is a name for an overarching category. Under a hypernym, we see various elements which belong to that category. Each of this category is a hyponym.

Pairs which express opposites are known as antonyms. Pairs such as dead/alive are also complementary to each other, because they are in a converse relationship.

Not always, the same affixes have the same function. For example, the suffix –ee not always denotes the person who is having something done (ex: absentee, devotee and amputee).

A typical or habitual combination of lexemes is known as a collocation. Collocations differ from compounds in that the combination do not result in new lexemes. Our awareness of these typical combinations is further evidence of the sophistication of our lexical knowledge which was referred to above.

PART

IV: INFLECTIONS

4.1 Inflection as an aspect of grammar

Grammar is the set of rules of any language that enables us to construct any sentence in that language which we recognise to be well-formed. The rules of grammar essentially deal with two aspects of language construction. On the one hand, they deal with the principles of stringing words together to form larger units of construction such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. This aspect of grammar, which is concerned with word order, is called syntax.

There is another set of rules which tell us how to adapt words according to the grammatical context in which they occur. For instance, the plural form endings such as the pl