The wholesale invention of a new word

True coinages are rare

COINAGE
Many coinages come from inventions (trademarks
become ‘genericized’)

Example: zipper

taking words from other languages

BORROWING
Example: waffle (Dutch), K-drama (Corean)

A ‘loan translation’. The idea behind an expression

is copied from another language, but using existing
words.
CALQUING
Example: xi nao (chinese) --> brainwashing

Patching existing words together.

Example: carpark

May sometimes be hard to distinguish from a case

where two words stand next to each other.
COMPOUDING ONLY PREDICTABLE FROM CONTEXT
Compound vs multi-word construction

Compounds typically have stress on the first syllable Example: a GREENhouse / a green HOUSE

Compounds have internal structure: ‘big cat

researcher’

ACRONYMS (e.g., AIDS = acquired immune deficiency symptom // “prezzle” = Professional Skills for Linguists // radar = radio detecting and raging)

combining word parts

BLENDDING
Example: twist + jerk → twerking // Britain + exist → Brexit

shortening of a word to make a smaller one

CLIPPING
Example: telephone → phone, fanatic → fan

Longer word is reduced to a single syllable and then

–y or –ie is added.
HYPOCORISM
MORPHOLOGY Example: television → telly // Aussie hypocoristics add -y or -o

(Words formation
process) Change in word class without change in form

Example: dust (n.) → dust (v.) // table (n.) → to table

CONVERSION (v.) // to throw (v.) → a throw (n.)

Conversions often involve change in stress Example: IMpact (n.) // to imPACT (v.)

The process of forming a new word from an existing

word

They are bound morphemes, which means that they

cannot stand by themselves.

Morphemes that can stand on their own,

independently of other morphemes (require no
additional affixes) are known as FREE MORPHEMES.

Morphologically ‘simplex’ (cannot be divided into

smaller parts) or ‘complex’ words (contains more
than one morpheme)

Same morpheme (meaning),

ALLOMORPHY
but different pronunciation.
They are MORPHEMES, which are the smallest
meaning-bearing units of language.

AFFIXES We can 'parse' (= decompose) morphologically complex words into trees that
visualize the internal structure of words. This also helps us highlight cases of
MORPHOLOGYCAL AMBIGUTY
morphological ambiguities, cases where the same word form has multiple
possible ways of being decomposed.

Truly ambiguous tenses

- Suffixes, affixes that are added to words.

Types - Prefixes precede the word

DERIVATION
- Infixes, inserted into words (inserts itself into the
root)

And for morphologically complex words that involve

Affixes attach to STEAMS. multiple morphemes, such as disagreements, there
are multiple stems.
First, the suffix -s attaches to the stem disagreement. Then, we can split off the suffix -ment, which
attaches to the stem disagree. Finally, we can split off the prefix dis-, which attaches to agree. The
last stem we also call the ROOT (cannot be reduced any further and may be free of bound).

“...created by removing perceived affixes from an

existing word. In this case, the original word looks as
if it was derived from a simpler word, but it
BACKFORMATION wasn’t.”
Example: orientation - to orientate

creates new words (create new meanings) or change

lexical class.
DERIVATION

own dictionary entry

doesn't really create a new word (do not create new

meanings) or change class

NO separate dictionary entries

INFLECTION Generally involves modification with respect to grammar (inflects the

words with respect to syntactic requirements), such as:
- Tense (changes in time for verbs)
- Grammatical number (changes in number for nouns)
- Comparison (comparing properties for adj)

Only slightly alters the meaning to fit the context

DERIVATION vs INFLECTION

Order

Morphological patterns that can be used to create

new words are called productive.

Productivity
- Derivational affixes are often more restricted
- Some derivational morphemes are more productive than others
- English has only a small number of inflectional suffixes
- The list of English derivational morphemes is much longer…
- Irregularity in inflection, e.g. irregular past tense