University Technical Of
Cotopaxi
Team:
Mauricio Vilaña
Nelly Silva
Pamela Chicaiza
Fernanda Ullaguari
Teacher: Gina Venegas
Level: Fifth´´B´´
WORD-FORMATION
WAYS OF FORMING ENGLISH WORDS
It is the system of derivative
types of words and the
process of creating new
words from material
available in the language
after certain structural and
semantic formulas and
patterns.
Word-derivation
Affixation
Words consisting of a root and an affix or several affixes are called
derived words.
Example:
Attractive
Faceless
Conversion
It is the process of making new words by changing one category of parts of
speech from words of another.
Example:
Hope (n) – the feeling of trust or expectation that something will
happen.
To hope (v) – the act of trusting or expecting something to happen.
Word-composition
It is the conbination of two or more existing words to create a new word.
Example:
Badtempered Bluebird
AFFIXATION
Affixes are the words that, when added to a base form of a word, give the word an entire new meaning.
They can also create new words. An affix sometimes does not have any proper meaning of its own.
• Incredible
• Beautiful
• Disappointed
The affixes “in”, “ful” and “dis” cannot stand alone as words in the English language.
SUFFIXATION
Is the formation of words with the help of suffixes.
The main function of suffi xes in Modern English is to form one part of speech from another one,
the secondary function is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech
Classification
ness (the suffix of quality or state)
er/or ( the do-er suffix)
ill — illness
dance — dancer kind — kindness
work — worker
collect — collector ance/ -ence (the suffix of state)
invent — inventor important — importance
different — difference
tion (the suffix of process)
collect — collection verb-forming suffixes, such as -ize (computerize), -fy (satisfy)
invent — invention adverb-forming suffixes, such as: -ly (singly), -ward (eastward)
numeral-forming suffixes, such as -teen (sixteen), -ty (seventy).
ing (gerund)
suffer — suffering
warn — warning
mean — meaning
Semantic classification
Suffixes changing the lexical meaning of the stem can be subdivided into groups
LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL CHARACTER OF THE STEM.
Suffi xes which can be added to certain groups of stems are subdivided into:
PREFIXATION
Is the formation of words by means of adding a prefix to the stem.
In English prefixes are more independent than suffixes. The main
function of prefixes in English is to change the lexical meaning of
the same part of speech.
SEMANTIC CLASSIFICATION
Semantically prefixes can be divided into monosemantic, the prefix has only one meaning,
ex-boxer, exboyfriend
Word-composition
Word-Composition or compounding is one of the
productive ways of word-building when a new word is
formed by joining two or more stems.
Examples:
Types of composition
Neutral Morphological Syntactic
Syntactic compounds
compounds compounds compounds
Are joined by means of
Two stems are joined Are joined by a
form word stems with
together without any linking element (‘o’,
connecting elements. the help of linking
‘i’, ‘s’).
Examples: elements represented by
Examples: prepositions or
scarecrow,
videophone, conjunctions.
goldfish, and
microchip, Examples:
crybaby
tragicomic, here-and-now, free-for-
handicraft, and all, hide-and-seek, and
craftsman. do-or-die.
ABBREVIATION
The process or result of representing a word or group of
words by a shorter form of the word or phrase.
1.Initial shortening: Initializes are the way of making the
new words from the initial letters of the word-group and
their sound form are called acronyms.
Examples:
NASA - National Aeronautics Space Administration
GAD - Gobierno Autónomo Descentralizado
RAE - Real Academia Española
BBC – the British Broadcasting Corporation
www - World Wide Web
2. Clipping: Is when you reduce a word by taking away some of it.
Examples:
Math ( Mathematics)
Hippo (Hippopotamus)
Gym ( Gymnasium)
Fan (Fanatic)
3. Blending: Is a type of word formation in which two or more
words are merged into one.
Examples:
Emoticon ( Emotion + icon)
Internet ( International + network)
Smog (Smoke + fog)
Heliport (Helicopter + aeroport)
Non-productive ways of Word Building
SOUND INTERCHANGE is the formation of a word due to an alteration in
the phonetic composition of its root. Sound-interchange falls into two
groups: vowel-interchange (or ablaut).
Example:
full − to fill
blood − to bleed
food – to feed.
STRESS INTERCHANGE can be mostly met in verbs and nouns of Romanic
origin: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last
syllable
Example:
As a result of it we have such pairs in English as: to af`fix -`affix, to
con`flict- `conflict, to ex`port -`export, to ex`tract - `extract etc
BACK FORMATION OR ONOMATOPOEIA is the way of word-
building when a word is formed by dropping the final morpheme to
form a new word.
Example:
thought-reading n — * thought-reader n —> thought-read v;
air-conditioning n —> air-conditioner n —» air-condition v;,
SOUND IMITATION – is the way of word-building when a word is formed by
imitating different sounds. There are some semantic groups of words formed
by means of sound imitation
Example:
a) sounds produced by human beings, such as: to whisper, to giggle,
to mumble, to sneeze, to whistle etc.
b) sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, such as: to hiss, to buzz,
to bark, to moo, to twitter etc.
c) sounds produced by nature and objects, such as: to splash, to rustle,
to clatter, to bubble, to ding-dong, to tinkle etc.
Thank You
