1. Morphology, Part 3: Word-Formation Processes
January 31, 2012

2. Problem Set Review The unemployment controversy.
Esperanto + William Shatner

3. Gender-Free Quick Write
Is it feasible for speakers of English to create gender-free pronouns?

4. Gender-Free Quick Write
Is it feasible for speakers of English to create gender-free pronouns?

5. Gender-Free Quick Write
Is it feasible for speakers of English to create gender-free pronouns?

6. Gender-Free Quick Write
Is it feasible for speakers of English to create gender-free pronouns?

7. Find out more at:

8. More Word Formation Processes
So far, we’ve only looked at one type of word-formation process: affixation
= concatenating morphemes in a row
Prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation…
There are many different ways to make new words without concatenating morphemes together.
compounding
internal change
reduplication
blending, etc.

9. Compounding
In compounding, two or more free morphemes combine to make a new word
Ex: baseball, blackboard, lightbulb, podcast
Compounding is very common in the world’s languages.
German is particularly fond of compounding:
Donaudampfschiffahrtgesellschaft
Donau “danube”
Dampf “steam”
Schiff “ship”
Fahrt “excursion”
Gesellschaft “company”

10. Compounding Tests Stress Shifts blackbird vs. black bird
lightbulb vs. light bulb
Adverbs can’t modify compound nouns:
*extremely gentleman vs. extremely gentle man
*the very White House vs. the very white house
Note: it’s also possible to form verb and adjective compounds:
Verbs: dropkick, spoonfeed, whitewash…
Adjectives: nationwide, redhot…

11. Back Formations
Back formations: removal of an (incorrectly perceived) affix to form a new word
Ex: “edit”
“editor” perceived as /edit/ + /-er/
Other examples:
peddle (from peddler) swindle (from swindler)
burgle (from burglar) pea (from pease)
laze (from lazy) liaise (from liaison)
A “reverse” backformation:
Chinese (from Chinee + /-s/)

12. A Sipid Story of Requited Love
“It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella...when I saw her...She was a descript person...Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way.”
--from “How I Met My Wife”, by Jack Winter
Check out more at:
Or consider:

13. Reduplication Reduplication: repetition of all or part of the stem
Indonesian: (total reduplication)
rumah ‘house’ rumahrumah ‘houses’
ibu ‘mother’ ibuibu ‘mothers’
lalat ‘fly’ lalatlalat ‘flies’
Tagalog: (partial reduplication)
bili ‘buy’ bibili ‘will buy’
kain ‘eat’ kakain ‘will eat’
pasok ‘enter’ papasok ‘will enter’

14. Reduplication in English?
There are a few examples of reduplication in English.
Can you think of any?
Individual words/phrases: “bling bling”, “very very”, “teeny weeny”…
There is also one reduplicative process in English…
schm- reduplication:
fancy schmancy
tired schmired
football schmootball
Nobel Prize schmobel prize
...etc.

15. Internal Change
A (slightly) more common word-formation process in English is internal change.
= changing sounds inside a root creates a new word.
Also known as alternations
sing ~ sang present/past
drive ~ drove present/past
foot ~ feet singular/plural
mouse ~ mice singular/plural
import ~ import noun/verb
present ~ present noun/verb

16. By the way...
Some internal change processes have (limited) productivity in English
What’s the past tense of “sing”?
sang sung
ring?
rang rung
bring?
brang? brung?
brought? brought?

17. Roots and Patterns
An extreme form of “internal change” is found in Semitic languages, like Arabic and Hebrew
“Root and pattern morphology”
Arabic: /k-t-b/ root “write”
kitaab ‘a book’ kutub ‘books’
alkitaab ‘the book’ kaatib ‘author’
maktab ‘office’ maktaba ‘library’
kataba ‘to write’ kattaba ‘to make write’
kaataba ‘to correspond’ ?uktaba ‘to dictate’
ifkataba ’to make a copy’ kutubii ‘bookseller’
kuttaab ‘Koranic school’ miktaab ‘typewriter’

18. Conversion
Conversion = usage of an exising word in a new lexical category.
English makes use of this process a lot.
Examples:
to butter to nail (N  V)
a report a call (V  N)
to right (a wrong) to total (a car) (A  V)
Closer to home?
cookie: noun to verb (cookie-ize?)

19. Awkwardizations? Football Announcer-ese:
“Sanders defensed the pass.” (noun to verb)
“Urlacher lost weakside contain.” (verb to noun)
Corporate speak?
During Hurricane Katrina:
"We heard that there was a gentleman who was stuck in his boat just downstream from us so we are efforting to help rescue agencies to find him".

20. Conversion

21. Suppletion
Suppletion occurs when inflected forms of a word have different roots.
In English, this is rare:
go ~ went
be ~ were
compare with: walk ~ walked; cook ~ cooked
Portuguese:
ir “to go” comer “to eat”
vou “I go” como “I eat”
fui “I went” comi “I ate”
ia “I was going” comia “I was eating”

22. Child Verb Morphology
Patterns like the following are frequently found in child language acquisition:
Present Past
Stage 1: go went
Stage 2: go goed
Stage 3: go went
What’s going on here?
What is the child doing, as a language learner?

23. Clipping Clipping = shortening of an existing word.
demo from “demonstration”
condo from “condominium”
fax from “facsimile”
deli from “delicatessen”
lab from “laboratory”
taxicab from “taximeter cabriolet”
(cabriolet = horse-drawn carriage)

24. Blends Blending = melding together parts of two different words.
brunch from breakfast and lunch
smog from smoke and fog
spam from spiced and ham
telethon from television and marathon
chortle from chuckle and snort
motel from motor and hotel
chillax from chill and relax
bankster from banker and gangster
bricked from brilliant and wicked

25. The Remainders Coinage = completely making a new word up.
Example: snarky, dog
Eponyms
= naming words after people
ex: boycott, crapper, sideburns
Acronyms
Creating a word out of an abbreviation.
ex: scuba, radar, laser