Keysalis' Class Diary: Morphology lesson: Word-formation

Instructions: Read this lesson thoroughly, analyze the concepts explained below and apply them in a short quiz provided at the end of the lesson.

Objectives: By the end of the lesson, the students:

will be able to correctly define the processes of word formation
will be able to accurately identify each of the types of word-formation processes.
will be able to adequately complete the quiz with the resources provided in this lesson

LET’S BEGIN!

First, let’s start by laying out some standard definitions about the concepts we will be looking at further on.

What is word-formation?

Word-formation is the process of creating a new word. It refers to the ways in which new words are made on the basis of other words or morphemes. Generally, there is semantic or syntactic changes in the process of forming new words. Word-formation is divided into two main seccions, concatenative (forming words by adding new morphemes) and non-concatenative (forming words without adding morphemes).

Types of word-formation:

Concatenative

1. Derivation- This process is used to change the grammatical categories of words.
Example:

The derivational morpheme -er is used to transform the verb bake into the noun baker.
The morpheme -ly changes the adjective quick into the adverb quickly.

2. Compounding- The process of forming a compound word. This process is achieved by putting together two or more root morphemes which may or may not have a change in the semantic aspect of the two words.

Example:

Sun+shine = sunshine (the resulting word has related meaning to the two root words put together)
lap+top = laptop (the resulting word has different meaning from the two root words put together)

Non-concatenative

3. Blending- part of one word is stitched onto another word. Speakers take two words and merge them based not on morpheme structure but on sound structure.

Example:

brunch (breakfast and lunch)
motel (motor hotel)
electrocute (electric and execute)

4. Clipping- a type of abbreviation of a word in which one part is 'clipped' off the rest, and the remaining word now means essentially the same thing as what the whole word means or meant.