WORD FORMATION STRUCTURE

• Morphological theory


  Interested in the two processes of word formation: affixation and compounding. Also interested in reduplication and cliticization
• Morphological processes can be classified into two distinct classes: those that are responsible for creating new words (or lexemes), and those that are responsible for creating different forms of existing words
• Lexeme


  An abstract word
• Word-form


  A specific instance of a lexeme
• Citation form


  The most frequent word-form from a paradigm used to represent the lexeme
• Word family (or lexeme family)


  A set of related lexemes
• Compounds


  • Lexical items produced by combining two independent lexical items
  • The grammatical category of the compound is determined by the right-hand member (the head)
• Endocentric compounds


  Compounds that have a head
• Compounding is recursive - the process can be repeated over and over again with no limit to how long a compound can be
• Derivational affixes


  Affixes that create new lexemes
• Inflectional affixes


  Affixes associated with creating new word-forms
• Unitary Base Hypothesis


  Affixes of a particular type attach to stems of a given type
• Affixes in English


  • -ness attaches to adjectives
  • -less attaches to nouns
  • -ment attaches to verbs
  • an- (meaning "not") attaches to adjectives and adverbs
• Reduplication


  The process of duplicating (or repeating) all or part of the base of a lexical item to make a new word
• Reduplication in other languages


  • Stem reduplication in Chichewa to intensify or qualify the meaning
  • Whole word reduplication in Setswana to form adverbs
• Reduplication is uncommon in English, but can be seen in expressions like "I'll be with you now-now"
• Productivity in word-formation


  The degree to which a process can be used to form new words, which can change over time
• Blocking


  When certain words are prevented from being formed due to the prior existence of another word with the same meaning
• Blocking can be motivated by phonological, morphological, or semantic factors
• Knowing a language involves knowing the rules of word formation, including identifying meaningful units, creating new words, and understanding unfamiliar words
• Conversions


  Changing one word from one category to another without the use of affixes (zero derivation)
• Conversions


  • Stress shift often occurs in English
• Clipping


  The shortening of a longer form to derive a new form
• Clipping


  • fax
  • porn
  • blog
• Why is it 'blog' and not 'eblog'?
• Blends


  Blends two words together
• Blends


  • smog
  • brunch
  • absotively
• Backformation


  Reanalysis of possible affix to form backwards the root into a new form (that didn't really exist)
• Backformation


  • burglar - burgle
  • editor - edit
• Cliticization


  Clitics must be attached to another word (host)
• Cliticization in English


  • I'm leaving now
  • They're here now
• Cliticization in French


  • Jean t'aime
• Clitics are not like affixes because they belong to their own lexical category (verb, noun, etc.) different from their host