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This is the most comprehensive book to date on word formation in terms of scope of topics, schools and theoretical positions. All contributions were written by the leading scholars in their respective areas.
A series to meet the need for books on modern English that are both up-to-date and authoritative.For the scholar, the teacher, the student and the general reader, but especially for English-speaking students of language and linguistics in institutions where English is the language of instruction, or advanced specialist students of English in universities where English is taught as a foreign language
Although the illustrative material is drawn principally from English, general points are illustrated with a variety of languages to provide a new perspective on a confused and often controversial field of study.
This textbook provides an accessible introduction to the study of word-formation, that is, the ways in which new words are built on the bases of other words (e.g. happy - happy-ness), focusing on English. The book's didactic aim is to enable students with little or no prior linguistic knowledge to do their own practical analyses of complex words. Readers are familiarized with the necessary methodological tools to obtain and analyze relevant data and are shown how to relate their findings to theoretical problems and debates. The book is not written in the perspective of a particular theoretical framework and draws on insights from various research traditions, reflecting important methodological and theoretical developments in the field. It is a textbook directed towards university students of English at all levels. It can also serve as a source book for teachers and advanced students, and as an up-to-date reference concerning many word-formation processes in English.
Volumul de față este unul de referință pentru studiul morfologiei engleze, realizând o integrare sintetică și relevantă a celor mai importante curente care au definit domeniul.
The book attempts to enhance the language competence of all. In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word, word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word’s meaning. Word formation can also be contrasted with the formation of idiomatic expressions. It gives equal importance to the terminology and sentence structure for acquiring linguistic proficiency in expressing oneself. Since the book deals with different parts of speech and their usage in sentence construction, it is of tremendous help to you in the selection of appropriate words to express your ideas accurately and effectively. This book will be extremely useful to students, aspirants of competitive exams, professionals and of course, learners of English language.
Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1.0, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine" (English Linguistics), course: English Word-Formation, language: English, abstract: This paper will discuss recent trends in English word formation. To elaborate on the subject it starts to define what word formation is and how it fits into morphology, the part of linguistics dealing with words and their basic units. In the first part it will discuss basic terms and promote the necessary understanding of word analysis. We will discuss what productivity is and what constitutes a new word. Included is also a short introduction in the theory of the lexicon, where the so called lexemes are stored. The second part will go on with the introduction of recent neologisms that I found interesting, using the circumstance to discuss the basic patterns of word formation. It is not a complete list of recent neologisms, nor is it a statistical analysis of corpora. I will elaborate on certain aspects of word formation patterns with chosen examples. Most neologisms dealt with in this paper can be found in Maxwell (2006); few exceptions can be found the internet. We will also look for irregularities and ask ourselves whether there are any cases in which new words refer to old words. In the last part of the paper I will have a look at the sources of word formation. Are there any fields in which new words are especially frequent? Are those fields easy to distinguish from each other? Why are these fields important? The intention of this paper is to give a summary of recent development concerning new words and what such a development might mean to us.
Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, 11 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The drumper went on drumping until the drumperism lets him get drumpish.Every time we can form new words with the help of word formation processes. There are many different processes which lead to many different new words. But how can we form such new words? The sentenceThe drumper went on drumping until the drumperism lets him get drumpishconsists of four new or unknown words. I formed these words with the help of a very productive word formation process, called 'derivation'. But what does 'productive' actually mean? Productive in the content of word formation processes means that these processes are responsible for the large part of neologisms (Kortmann 1999: 58). Productive may be also described as “a pattern, meaning that when occasion demands, the pattern may be used as a model for new items.” (Adams 1973: 197). Some processes are more productive than others. This research paper deals with the most productive word formation processes of the English language, namely 'derivation', which includes 'prefixation', 'suffixation' and 'infixation', 'compounding' and 'conversion'. The word formation process 'back formation' is regarded as a borderline case, i.e. it can be counted as a member of the most productive word formation processes or as a member of the so called secondary word formation processes (Schmid 2005: 87). Because of the relation between compounding, especially compound verbs, and back formation I will treat the process in this research paper too. After an introduction of some basic morphological terms as well as a definition of the term 'word formation' I will present the different stages a new formed word has to pass until it can be regarded as a member of the vocabulary because not every new formed word will become established. Afterwards, in the main part of this research paper, I will present these most productive word formation processes named above and give suitable examples in each case. Finally the term 'blocking' will be introduced, i.e. there are some words which just cannot be formed because there is already another word which carries the appropriate meaning and thus 'blocks' the new word (Schmid 2005: 117). In the conclusion I will give an outlook for the secondary word formation processes and a review of words which are included in the dictionary newly.
Seminar paper from the year 1998 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3 (B), University of Cologne (English Seminar), language: English, abstract: I. Aronoff, Selkirk and Lieber on the structure of the English lexicon and the nature and use of word-formation rules. In the wake of Chomsky's "Remarks on Nominalization" (1970), in which Chomsky makes a strict distinction between syntax and derivational morphology, Aronoff (1976) proposes a word based theory of the lexicon. This lexicon is a separate component of the grammar in which derivational word formation processes are dealt with. This hypothesis is called strong lexicalist hypothesis. Aronoff suggests that inflection and compounding are not taking place in the lexicon but in the syntax (Spencer 1991: 82). As to the nature of the listed lexical items Aronoff does not go along with Halle who in 1973 assumed that the lexicon is made up of three lists: a list of morphemes, a list of actual words, and a list of words that are regularly formed but are non-existent (McCarthy 1992: 25). In his theory Aronoff reduces the three lists to one single list, stating that it could only be words that are listed in the lexicon, not morphemes. A reason for this assumption is that morphemes, other than words, are not persistent in meaning and sometimes they do not seem to have any meaning at all. A good example for meaningless morphemes are the so-called cranberry morphemes. [...]
