WORD FORMATION
MODULE 1
1.1
WHAT IS WORD FORMATION ???
⚫ Did you all see the movie Namaste England??
⚫ Well in the movie there is a portion where Akshay
kumar claims that most words in english are actually
derived from sanskrit. Well if not most but quite a few
words in english are derived from sanskrit.
⚫ The words that we use in our day to day
communication entered the language in many ways.
⚫ What I want to say is that every word that we use has a
history of its own…and I am not just talking about the
english language. It’s the same for any language we
speak. Isn’t that interesting??
⚫ The study of the origin or history of a word is called
Etymology and today we are going study how words in
english are most commonly formed.
Types of word formation
BORROWING CLIPPING COMPOUNDING
COINAGE DERIVATION BLENDING
CONVERSION
Today we are going to discuss a few of
the types of word formation
⚫ Borrowing
⚫ Clipping
⚫ Componding
⚫ Coinage
BORROWING
⚫ Definition: Borrowing is the process of taking or
borrowing words from other languages.
⚫ For e.g.: Fest, Kindergarden, Rucksack ( German)
⚫ Macho, plaza (Spanish)
⚫ Karaoke, Karate (Japanese)
⚫ Paparazzi (Italian)
⚫ The list is endless….
Infact Look at this chart and you will get an idea of how
many words we use in english.Here Other Languages would
basically mean Sanskrit, Arabic.
CLIPPING
⚫ Definition: It is a process of forming new words by
omitting some part of a word. Or shortening a word
without changing its meaning.
⚫ For E.G.:
⚫ Examination: exam
⚫ Gymnasium: gym
⚫ Refrigerator: fridge
⚫ Mathematics: math
Now clipping can be further divided into two parts
⚫ We can clip a word in two ways
⚫ 1. Hypocorism 2. back- formation
⚫ Well Hypocorism means simply reducing a longer
word to its shorter form.
⚫ Backformation is reducing a word in such a way that
the part of speech changes. For example:
⚫ Babysitter: This is noun
⚫ Now we reduce this to babysit: but this is a verb.
COMPOUNDING
⚫ Definition: It is a process of combining two or more
words to form a new word.
⚫ For example:
⚫ Water + Proof = waterproof
⚫ Girl + Friend = Girlfriend
⚫ Lock + down = lockdown
⚫ Up + load = upload
COINAGE
⚫ This is a process through which new words are
created.either deliberately or accidentally.
⚫ There are basically three process under coinage.
⚫ 1. Abbreviations 2. Acronyms 3. Eponyms
⚫ Abbreviations are a way in which a word or a phrase is
shortened. This is mainly used in written language
⚫ For example: april: apr
⚫ Doctor: dr. ( when you say doc it becomes an example
of clipping)
⚫ In spoken language some abbreviations that we
commomly use are:
⚫ VIP: very important person
⚫ A.m.: ante meridium( in the morning)
⚫ ACRONYMS
⚫ A process of word formation with the initial letters of
two or more words or phrase
⚫ Example: NASA: National Aeronautics and Space
Administration
⚫ ISRO: Indian Space Research Organisation
Coming to the last one
⚫ Eponyms
⚫ This is a word formed from the name or a real or
ficticious person.
⚫ Example: Sandwich,Atlas, Cereals, Boycott etc
⚫ Well today we will end here.
⚫ Why don’t you check the word sandwich and how it
got its name. I am sure you will come yp with some
interesting facts.
Today we are going to discuss the other
three forms of word formation
⚫ CONVERSION
⚫ BLENDING
⚫ DERIVATION
CONVERSION
⚫ This is a process of word formation where a word of
one grammatical form (e.g. noun, verb, adjective,
adverb) becomes a word of another grammatical form
or parts of speech without any changes to spelling or
pronunciation.
⚫ EXAMPLE:Did you empty the box?( here the word
empty is used as a verb)
⚫ I need an empty box. ( Here the word empty is used as
an adjective)
BLENDING
⚫ Definition: Blending is a word formation process in
which parts of two or more words combine to create a
new word .
⚫ EXAMPLE: Smoke + Fog = Smog
⚫ Breakfast + Lunch = Brunch
DERIVATION
⚫ Definition: This is a process of word formation where
a new word is formed from an existing word often by
adding suffixes or prefixes to the root word.
⚫ So, the new terms here is suffix, prefix, root word.
⚫ Lets first explain these.
⚫ So when we talk of a word it can basically be divided
into the following
prefix Root word
suffix
⚫ So, in any word we must have a root word with which
a suffix, or a prefix is added.
⚫ Root words: It can stand on its own as a word.It has a
complete meaning.
⚫ It can come either at the beginning, middle or sometimes at
the end of a word.
⚫ Affixes : A group of letters that are attached before or after
a root word.
⚫ When these groups of letters are atteached at the front of
the root word it is called prefixes
⚫ When these groups of letters are attached at the end of the
root word it is called suffixes.
⚫ Most of the time prefixes change the meaning of the root
word whice suffixes change the parts of speech of the root
word
EXAMPLE
⚫ WRITE ( ROOT WORD)
⚫ RE( PREFIX) + WRITE = REWRITE ( CHANGE IN
MEANING – TO WRITE AGAIN)
⚫ WRITE (ROOT ) (VERB) + ER ( SUFFIX) =
WRITER (NOUN)(CHANGE IN PARTS OF
SPEECH )
⚫ We also have a special group of letters that ere added
in the middle of a root word. This is called infix but
they are very rare especially in english languagei. Not
as common as other affixes like prefix and suffix.
Now many of these root words or affixes
have been borrowed from other languages
into english language.
Example : Geology = Geo (root ) + Logy(suffix)
This term ‘geo’ has been borrowed from greek
language.
