The Islamia University of Bahawalpur Pakistan

Assignment No. 4

Submitted To. Dr. Shahid Nawaz

Submitted By. Adnan Haider
Subject. General Linguistics
Reg#. F20BENLT3M02025
Class. Mphil English Linguistics
Date 09-11-2020
Morphology and word formation process’s

Morphology

Morphology is the study of words. Morphemes are the minimal units of

words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are
two main types: free and bound. Free morphemes can occur alone and
bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An example of a
free morpheme is "bad", and an example of a bound morpheme is "ly." It is
bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be
attached to another morpheme to produce a word.

Free morpheme: bad

Bound morpheme: -ly
Word: badly

Branches of Morphology

A division is traditionally made of morphology into two branches, viz. (i)

Inflectional, and (ii) Derivational. In the former, we are concerned with the
variations or inflections that occur in words so as to show grammatical contrasts
in sentences, such as are found in singular/ plural numbers or present/past
tenses. For example, ‘apple’ and ‘apples’ are two forms of the same word, but
they differ in respect of number. Similarly, ‘live’ and ‘lived’ are two forms of the
same word, but they differ in respect of tense. The study of this difference
between the two words in each pair belongs to the field of grammar, and is thus a
concern of ’inflectional morphology’.  In ‘derivational morphology’, we study the
principles governing the construction of new words, without reference to the
specific grammatical role a word might play in a sentence. Words like ‘enjoyable’
from ‘enjoy’, ‘agreeable’ from ‘agree’ or ‘dislodge, from ‘lodge’ are formed with
their own grammatical properties. The study of the formation of words such as
these belongs to the field of derivational morphology’. In Inflections, class usually
remains the same as in: go-goes—going but in Derivations, class changes as in:
play-playful-playfullness. For Hockett:

“Inflection is that part of morphology which involves inflectional affixes. The

remainder of morphology is derivation”

Morphology operates on affixes which are the core of inflectional and derivational
morphology. Affixes can be of three kinds:  Prefixes are affixes that are added
initially to a root, or that precede it; Infixes are affixes added within a root; and
Suffixes are affixes that follow the stem or the root. When a suffix so occurs in a
word as not to allow any other suffix to follow it, it is called an inflectional suffix,
as when we add the suffix “ness’ to the root ‘kind’, we get the word ‘kindness’
which cannot take on another suffix. But when a suffix can be followed by some
other suffix (s), it is called a derivational suffix. For example, the suffix My’, added
to the root ‘kind’, may be followed by another suffix “ness’, and we have the word
‘kindliness’ which contains a derivational suffix Mi’ followed by another suffix
‘ness’. Prefixes may also be both ‘inflectional’ and ‘derivational’. For example, the
prefix ‘dis’ in ‘discount’ cannot take on another prefix, and is thus ‘inflectional’.
But the prefix ‘pre’ in ‘pre-meditated’ can take on another prefix ‘un’ so as to
form the word ‘unpremeditated’, and thus it is ‘derivational’. They help in forming
a new word.

Scope and significance of morphology

The aim of Morphology is to publish high quality articles that contribute to

the further articulation of morphological theory and linguistic theory in
general, or present new and unexplored data. Relevant empirical evidence for
the theoretical claims in the articles will be provided by in-depth analyses of
specific languages or by comparative, cross-linguistic analyses of the relevant
facts. The sources of data can be grammatical descriptions, corpora of data
concerning language use and other naturalistic data, and experiments.

Morphology publishes articles on morphology proper, as well as articles on

the interaction of morphology with phonology, syntax, and semantics, the
acquisition and processing of morphological information, the nature of the
mental lexicon, and morphological variation and change. Its main focus is on
formal models of morphological knowledge, morphological typology (the
range and limits of variation in natural languages), the position of morphology
in the architecture of the human language faculty, and the evolution and
change of language. In addition, the journal deals with the acquisition of
morphological knowledge and its role in language processing. Articles on
computational morphology and neurolinguistic approaches to morphology
are also welcome.

Word Formation process

Word Formation Process (also called Morphological Process) is a

means by which new words are produced either by modification of
existing words or by complete innovation, which in turn become a part
of the language.

Different types of word formation processes are employed to create new

words. However, all word formation processes basically bring either
inflectional or derivational changes. Therefore, inflection (also called
inflexion) and derivation are the two core processes of word formation.
Inflection differs from derivation to the following extent:

Inflection Derivation

Produces grammatical variants Produces a new word on the

of the same word. basis of an existing word.

Modifies a word to express

Changes the word class (also
different grammatical categories
called parts of speech; form
such as tense, mood, voice,
class; lexical class; syntactic
aspect, person, number, gender
category).
and case.

Does not change the meaning of Modifies the meaning of the

a word. For example:
root. For example: modern →
determine→ determines,
modernize (to make modern).
determining, determined.

Types of Word Formation

Processes
Compounding
Compounding forms a word out of two or more root morphemes.
The words are called compounds or compound words.In
Linguistics, compounds can be either native or borrowed.Native
English roots are typically free morphemes, so that means native
compounds are made out of independent words that can occur by
themselves.

Examples
mail carrier
dog house
fireplace
fireplug (a regional word for 'fire hydrant')
fire hydrant
dry run
cupcake
cup holder
email
e-ticket
pick-up truck
talking-to

Some compounds have more than two component words. These

are formed by successively combining words into compounds,
e.g. pick-up truck, formed from pick-up and truck , where the
first component, pick-up is itself a compound formed from pick
and up. Other examples are ice-cream cone, no-fault insurance
and even more complex compounds like top-rack dishwasher
safe.

There are a number of subtypes of compounds that do not have

to do with part of speech, but rather the sound characteristics of
the words. These subtypes are not mutually exclusive.

Derivation

Derivation is the creation of words by modification of a root

without the addition of other roots. Often the effect is a change in
part of speech.

Affixation (Subtype of Derivation)

The most common type of derivation is the addition of one or
more affixes to a root, as in the word derivation itself. This
process is called affixation, a term which covers both prefixation
and suffixation.

Blending

Blending is one of the most beloved of word formation processes

in English. It is especially creative in that speakers take two
words and merge them based not on morpheme structure but on
sound structure. The resulting words are called blends.

Usually in word formation we combine roots or affixes along their

edges: one morpheme comes to an end before the next one
starts. For example, we form derivation out of the sequence of
morphemes de+riv+at€+ion. One morpheme follows the next
and each one has identifiable boundaries. The morphemes do not
overlap.

But in blending, part of one word is stitched onto another word,

without any regard for where one morpheme ends and another
begins. For example, the word swooshtika ‘Nike swoosh as a logo
symbolizing corporate power and hegemony’ was formed from
swoosh and swastika. The swoosh part remains whole and
recognizable in the blend, but the tika part is not a morpheme,
either in the word swastika or in the blend. The blend is a perfect
merger of form, and also of content. The meaning contains an
implicit analogy between the swastika and the swoosh, and thus
conceptually blends them into one new kind of thing having
properties of both, but also combined properties of neither
source. Other examples include glitterati (blending glitter and
literati) ‘Hollywood social set’, mockumentary (mock and
documentary) ‘spoof documentary’.

Clipping

Clipping is a type of abbreviation of a word in which one part is

‘clipped’ off the rest, and the remaining word now means
essentially the same thing as what the whole word means or
meant. For example, the word rifle is a fairly modern clipping of
an earlier compound rifle gun, meaning a gun with a rifled barrel.
(Rifled means having a spiral groove causing the bullet to spin,
and thus making it more accurate.) Another clipping is burger,
formed by clipping off the beginning of the word hamburger.
(This clipping could only come about once hamburger was
reanalyzed as hamburger.)

Examples

1)advertisement – ad.

2)alligator – gator.

3)examination – exam.
4)gasoline – gas.

5)gymnasium – gym.

6)influenza – flu.

7)laboratory – lab.

8)mathematics – math.

9)memorandum – memo

10)photograph – photo

Acronyms

Acronyms are formed by taking the initial letters of a phrase and

making a word out of it. Acronyms provide a way of turning a
phrase into a word. The classical acronym is also pronounced as a
word. Scuba was formed from self-contained underwater
breathing apparatus. The word snafu was originally WW2 army
slang for Situation Normal All Fucked Up. Acronyms were being
used more and more by military bureaucrats, and soldiers coined
snafu in an apparent parody of this overused device. Sometimes
an acronym uses not just the first letter, but the first syllable of a
component word, for example radar, Radio Detection And
Ranging and sonar, Sound Navigation and Ranging. Radar forms
an analogical model for both sonar and lidar, a technology that
measures distance to a target and and maps its surface by
bouncing a laser off it. There is some evidence that lidar was not
coined as an acronym, but instead as a blend of light and radar.
Based on the word itself, either etymology appears to work, so
many speakers assume that lidar is an acronym rather than a
blend.

Examples

AIDS – Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

ASAP – As Soon As Possible

AWOL – Absent Without Official Leave

IMAX – Image Maximum

LASER – Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of

Radiation

PIN – Personal Identification Number

RADAR – Radio Detection and Ranging

SCUBA – Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely

TASER – Thomas A. Swift’s Electric RifleShe

WASP – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

Affixation It is a word formation process wherein an affix is attached

to a root (also called stem; base) to form a new word. A root is a
free morpheme (also called unbound morpheme) that can appear
alone. On the other hand, an Affix is a bound morpheme which
never occurs by itself, but is always attached to some free
morpheme and can be either inflectional or derivational. An
Inflectional affix modifies the form/grammatical category of a word,
i.e., tense, person, number, gender, case, etc. For example: rat →
rats. Contrariwise, a derivational affix modifies the parts of speech
of the root, while leaving the grammatical category unchanged. In
this way, there is a change of meaning of the root. For example:
write → writer.In English there are two types of affixations:
Prefixation: In this morphological process words are formed by
adding an affix to the front of a root. The type of affix used in this
process is referred to as prefix. For example: un + tidy →
untidySuffixation: In this morphological process words are formed
by adding an affix to the end of a root. The type of affix used in this
process is referred to as suffix.
Thank you sir