1. Morphology: Word Formation Processes (Yule, 2003 & Jarvie, 1993) M.C. Rafael Velasco Argente Linguistics Spring 2012

2. What’s Morphology? Morphology refers to the study of how words are created in a language There are two processes involved in Morphology: Inflection and Word Formation

3. What are Inflection and Word Formation? Inflection refers to the change in the base form of a word (root or stem) The base form of a noun is the singular form (e.g. cat); for an adjective the base form (old) and for a verb the base form is the infinitive or imperative (speak)

4. Examples of Inflection Apple apples House houses Sad sadder saddest Big bigger biggest Learn learned learning

5. What about word formation? The word formation processes consists on the following ones: –Etymology –Coinage –Borrowing –Compounding –Blending –Clipping –Backformation –Conversion –Acronyms –Affixation (prefixes, suffixes and infixes) –Compound processes

6. Coinage This refers to the creation of totally new terms into a language. Most of them come from the name of the inventors, the products’ names or the company’s name. –Kleenex –Nylon –Zipper –Aspirin –Rotoplas

7. Borrowing This process refers, as the name claims, when a language ‘borrows’ terms from other languages. –Alcohol (Arabic) –Boss (Dutch) –Piano (Italian) –Yoghurt (Turkish) –Robot (Czech)

8. Compounding It It refers to the joining of two separate words to produce a single word. The two words don’t lose their individual sounds. –Bookcase –Fingerprint –Sunburn –Doorknob –Basketball

9. Blending Similar to compounding, blending refers to the joining of two terms; however, in this case one (or both) word(s) lose a sound. –Motel (motor-hotel) –Telecast (television-broadcast) –Spanglish (Spanish-English) –Modem (Modulator-demodulator)

10. Clipping Clipping a synonym of reduction. In this process a word that has more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form –Celular (cel) –Brassiere (bra) –Fanatic (fan) –Situation Comedy (sitcom) –Facebook (el Face)

11. Backformation This occurs when a word of one type (usually a noun) is changed to another different type of word (usually a verb) –Donation(n) -donate (v) –Option(n) -Opt (v) –Babysitter(n) -Babysit (v) Hypocorisms: the reduction of a long word to a single syllable and the –y and –ie are added to the end. Television-telly Barbecue-barbie Breakfast -breakie

12. Conversion This is the change of the function of the word. For example when a noun comes to be used as a verb. –Butter –Bottle –Water –Print out (a printout) –Want to be (wannabe)

13. Etymology Etymology refers to the origin of several words. Usually these words are originated from Latin or Greek. Some of them are not necessarily complete words but prefixes or part of blendings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_and_Lati n_roots_in_English

14. Affixation Affixation is the process where we take a base form word and we add a prefix, infix or suffix. A prefix is an affixation process that includes adding a morpheme at the beginning of the word A suffix is a segment that we add at the end of the words. An infix is what goes between the prefix and the root

15. Prefixes (examples) http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/prefixtext.htm

16. Suffixes These are the responsible for making words change their function. There are: –Noun suffixes –Adjective Suffixes –Verb Suffixes –Adverb Suffixes As a reading, writing or listening recognition strategy, despite of not having the exact meaning of a word, just by looking at the suffix we now the function of the word.

17. Suffixes (Examples) http://www.scribd.com /doc/441225/English- suffixeshttp://www.scribd.com /doc/441225/English- suffixes

18. Infixes They are not very common in English. When they appear is because they are usually in an exclamation word. Unfuckingbelievable! Absogoddamlutely!

19. Acronyms Sometimes words are created because of acronyms. Acronyms are abbreviations pronounced as if they were words. They have proloferated. Spanish –SIDA (Sindrome de Inmuno-Deficiencia Adquirida) –OVNI (Objeto Volador No Identificado) English –Radar (Radio Detecting and ranging) –UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization)

20. Analogies It’s when you use a word to compare the person. Technobabble Telethon Smart cookie

21. Compound Processes Sometimes in order to form a word we can combine some of the previous processes. –For example: Deli (borrowing from German Delicatessen/Clipping) Yuppie (Young Urban Professional (Acronym+ie(hypocorsim)

22. Morphemes A morpheme is the minimal unit of a word. There are different types of morphemes –Free Morphemes –Bound Morphemes –Lexical –Functional –Derivational –Inflectional –Allomorphs

23. Free Morphemes These are morphemes that stand by themselves as single words, for example –Open –Tour –Teach

24. Bound morphemes The bound morphemes are those that are attached to a free morpheme to have a meaning. All prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes. –Un-dress-ed care-less-ness –Ex: reduce, receive and repeat (bound stems)

25. Free Morphemes-Lexical & Functional Lexical morphemesLexical morphemes are usually free morphemes. They carry their full meaning in the word itself. –Nouns, adjectives and verbs Functional MorphemesFunctional Morphemes are words that bring a function inside of them. They assist lexical morphemes to add details to the meaning. –Conjunctions (and...) prepositions, articles, pronuouns

26. Bound morphemes-Derivational and inflectional Morphemes Derivational morphemes:Derivational morphemes: They refer to those bound morphemes that create new words out of/with a free morpheme. –Pay-ment –Quick-ly –God-ess

27. Inflectional morphemes.Inflectional morphemes. These are morphemes that help the words to change their grammatical function. They are suffixes Car-cars Do-Done Cold-Coldest Bound morphemes-Derivational and inflectional Morphemes

28. Morph and Allomorphs A morph is a modification of a morpheme. The basic example of it is the plural ‘s’. Bus-Buses Girl-Girls Baby-babies Sheep-sheep The allomorph is the set of morphs