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Word formation II
Other word-formation processes
28 November 2007
Other wordword-formation processes
In addition to inflection,
inflection derivation and
compounding, there are other wordformation processes in English. We shall
discuss in turn CONVERSION,
BLENDING, ACRONYMS and
SHORTENINGS.
Conversion
y
y
y
Co ve s o iss a pprocess
Conversion
ocess by w
which
c a wo
word be
belonging
o g g to
one word class is transferred to another word class
without any change of form, either in pronunciation or
spelling.
Conversion is a highly prolific source for the production
of new words since there is no restriction on the form
that can undergo conversion in English.
English
Conversion is sometimes also called FUNCTIONAL
SHIFT because in such cases words are converted from
one grammatical function to another without any
change in form.
Conversion
y
y
y
y
y
Conversion mayy involve a change
g within the same word class as in
the change from one type of noun to another or one type of verb
to another. For example, the use of uncountable nouns as countable
and vice-versa:
S
Some
beer/coffee/sugar
b / ff /
– uncountable
bl
Two beers/coffees/sugars – countable
Even proper nouns can be easily used as common nouns, as in
“Which Hilary do you mean?”. Similarly, intransitive verbs are often
used as transitive verbs: e.g. How long can a pigeon fly non-stop? Or
Can this little boy fly a kite?
Th first
The
fi t is
i intransitive
i t
iti and
d the
th second
d iis ttransitive.
iti
Conversion
y
y
y
y
y
Co ve s o most
Conversion
ost o
often
te involves
vo ves a change
c a ge from
o one
o e
word class to another. The major kinds of conversion
are:
nounÖverb: to bottle
bottle, to commission
commission, to ee-mail,
mail to data
databank...
verb Önoun: a call, a command, a guess, a spy, a doubt...
adjective Önoun: the poor, the rich, a daily, a convertible...
adjective Överb: to better, to empty, to wrong, to dirty...
Conversion
y
y
Adverbs,
ve bs, prepositions,
p epos t o s, conjunctions,
co ju ct o s, interjections
te ject o s aand
even affixes can all act as bases for conversion as in to
up prices, the hereafter. Furthermore, many of these
word classes can undergo conversion into more than
one other class.
It should be noted that even a whole phrase may
undergo conversion and act as a noun
noun,e.g.
e g a forget-meforget me
not, a has been, a don’t know, a know-how; it may also act
as an adjective as in Monday morning feeling, a not-to-bemissed opportunity.
o ort nit
Blends
y
y
A lexical blend is a new lexeme built from parts of two
(or possibly more) words in such a way that the
constituent parts are usually easily identifiable, though in
some instances,
i
only
l one element
l
may be
b identifiable.
id ifi bl
Blends may also be referred to as portmanteau words,
and this term was used by Lewis Carroll
Carroll, since he used
many literary blends in his works. Portmanteau is an
archaic word for a suitcase designed for carrying on
h
horseback.
b k
Blends
Eg
E.g.
BREAKFAST + LUNCH → BRUNCH
CHANNEL + TUNNEL → CHUNNEL
MOTOR + HOTEL → MOTEL
HELICOPTER + AIRPORT → HELIPORT
SMOKE + FOG → SMOG
DOVE + HAWK → DAWK
SLANG + LANGUAGE → SLANGUAGE
Blends
In most cases, the second element is the one which controls the
meaning of the whole. So BRUNCH is a kind of lunch, not a kind of
breakfast.
y Blends tend to be more frequent in informal style in the registers
off journalism,
j
li
advertising
d
i i and
d technical
h i l fields.
fi ld In
I most cases,
blending results in the creation of new morphemes or in the
addition of new meanings to old ones.
y E.g.
E g automobile , taken from French,
French was originally a combination of
Greek autos “self” and Latin mobilis “movable”. The element auto
became productive as evidenced by the words autobiography,
g p , autobus... The second element also acquired
q
a combiningg
autograph,
function as in bookmobile, bloodmobile...
y
Blends
y
y
Similarly, hamburger was blended so often with
Similarly
other words (cheeseburger, steakburger,
chickenburger,
g , vegeburger)
g
g ) that the form burger
g
acquired the status of an independent word.
In the field of chemistry,
y, developing
p g rapidly
p y in
the 19th century, new compounds and chemical
substances required new names, which were
chiefly blends.
Acronyms
Acronyms are a special type of blend or shortening. A typical acronym
takes the first sound from each of several words and makes a new word
from those initial sounds. If the resulting word is pronounced like any
other word it is a true acronym.
y True acronyms are,
are e.g.
e g NASA (National Aeronautics and Space
Administration), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), LASER (Light
Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), RAM (Random Access
Memory), ROM (Read only memory), UNESCO (United Nations Education
Scientific and Cultural Organisation).
Organisation)
y Often, however, to make an acronym pronounceable, we take not just the
initial sounds but, e.g. the first consonant and vowel together. Thus RADAR
comes from radio detecting and ranging, SONAR is from sound navigation
and ranging. MODEM
O
was formed
f
from
f
modulator-demodulator.
y When an acronym becomes fully accepted as a word, it often comes to be
spelled with lower-case letters, like other words.
y
Reverse acronyms
y
An interesting
te est g pphenomenon
e o e o in recent
ece t yea
years,
s, a sort
so t o
of
political offshoot of normal acronymic coinage, has been
the rise of reverse acronyms – the creators start with a
word they want as their name (e.g. CORE),and then
they work from those four letters to find four words
which represent something like the idea they want to
be associated with
with. CORE is the acronym for Congress
of Racial Equality, NOW is the acronym of the National
Organization of Women, MADD is the acronym of
Mothers Against Drunk Drivers...
Drivers
Shortenings
Under the title of shortenings
g we consider the followingg wordformation processes: clipping, backformation, initialisms and aphetic
forms.
y Clipping involves the type of word-formation device in which only
part off the
h stem is
i retained.
i d The
Th beginning
b i i may be
b retained
i d as in
i lab
l b
(from laboratory), the end as in plane or phone (from aeroplane and
telephone), the middle part as in flu (from influenza).Very often, the
clipped form completely supplants the original full form.
form Thus bra,
bra
bus, car, and mob supplanted brassière, omnibus, motorcar and mobile
vulgus respectively.
y Other examples:
p zoo from zoological
g
gardens,
g
, ad from
advertisement, gin from geneva (juniper), quiz from inquisitive,
whiskey from Gaelic uisge beatha, and so on.
y
Backformation
y
y
y
y
y
Backformation is the makingg of a new word from an older word
which is mistakenly assumed to be its derivative. Backderivation is
characterised by the fact that it involves the shortening of a longer
word by the subtraction of a morpheme.
E Edit
E.g.
Edi comes ffrom editor,
di
where
h
the
h final
fi l –or is
i wrongly
l analyzed
l d
as a suffix (like the –er of worker, builder) and is therefore treated
as removable.
To burgle , from burglar,
burglar is formed in the same way
way.
Most examples of backformations are no longer transparent.
Other examples: peddle from peddler, and televise from television.
Initialisms
Initialisms constitute an extreme kind of clipping
pp g since onlyy the
initial letters of words, or sometimes initial syllables, are put
together and used as words. Usually, the motivation for initialism is
mostly brevity or catchiness, but sometimes also euphemisms.
y When
Wh initialisms
i i i li
are pronounced
d with
i h the
h names off the
h letters
l
off
the alphabet, they may be called alphabetisms or abbreviations.
Examples are: BP (British Petroleum),VIP (very important person).
y America seems to have been the great breeding ground of
initialisms. They are rare in English before the 20th century. Other
examples: UFO, FCC, IRS, NBC, CBS, BBC, DOD.
y
Aphetic forms
y
Aphetic
p
forms are a special
p
kind of shorteningg characterized byy the
omission of the initial unstressed syllable as in ‘scuse me, and ‘cause
for excuse me and because. This phenomenon has often resulted in
g g e.g.
g Fenderthe introduction of two different words in the language:
defender, fence-defence, cute-acute, sport-disport.