WORD FORMATION
QUANTITATIVE CHANGES
• new words
• changing the length (quantity) of the original word
• Abbreviations initialisms
acronyms
• Blending
• Clipping
• Consonantism
CLIPPING
• shortening of words to one of its parts → new form – independent l. u.
derivation, compounding; take functional suffixes
e.g. sci-fi, telemessage, nightie < nightdress; bike – bikes, ref‘s – referee‘s
• retained part not phonetically changed
spelling changes (e.g. fridge < refrigerator)
• productive, trend to monosyllabism, univerbation, language economy
e.g. always < all the day (the s was added later), albeit < all be it
• shortened words sound like native ones X longer prototypes
• loan word assimilation
CLIPPING
• subtraction of one or more syllables from a word
• Final clipping
• Initial clipping
• The middle – retained
• The middle – omitted
FINAL CLIPPING
• clipped on the right
• beginning of the prototype is retained
e.g. ad, advert < advertisement, lab < laboratory, gym <
gymnasium, vac < vacuum cleaner, photo, taxi, exam, memo, …
INITIAL CLIPPING
• clipped on the left
• the final part of the prototype is retained
e.g. phone < telephone, copter < helicopter, plane < aeroplane, bus, …
CLIPPING – middle is retained
• final plus initial clipping
• clipped on either side
e.g. Liz < Elizabeth, flu < influenza, tec < detective
CLIPPING – middle is omitted
• central clipping
e.g. fancy < fantasy (ME, shortened from fantasie),
maths < mathematics
BLENDING
• similar process to compounding but at least one constituent is fragmentary
• a new lexeme from parts of two or more other words
• process of economizing/reducing lexical material of the bases participating
in word formation
• the former morphological structure of the bases is lost, reduced and amalgamated
in the resulting moneme (a minimal and indivisible morphological unit)
as a new naming unit
• e.g. smog < smoke+gog, brunch < breakfast + lunch, scarecation < scare+vacation,
bit < binary digit, chunnel < channel tunnel, breathalyser < breath analyser,
electrocute < electro execute, heliport < helicopter airport, motel < motor hotel,
paratroops < parachute troops, …
GRAPHICAL ABBREVIATIONS
• INITIALISMS
• ACRONYMS
• CONSONANTISM & FACETIOUS FORMS
INITIALISMS
• spoken as individual letters – ALPHABETISM
• initial letters
e.g. TB (terabyte)
• two initial letters
e.g. Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)
• two first letters of the second element
e.g. GHQ (general head quarters)
ACRONYMS
• initialism which are pronounced as single words
• no periods
e.g. UNESCO, AIDS, NATO, UNPROFOR, laser, radar
CONSONANTISM AND FACETIOUS FORMS
• words formed by consonants with a minimum use of vowels
• used mainly in chats and mobile messaging (texting)
e.g. tgif = thank god it‘s Friday, btdt = been there done that, atw = at the weekend, 4u = for you, fm2u
= from me to you, ttyl = talk to you later, A3 = any time, any place, anywhere …
• Leetspeek (or 1337) is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses
character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other
resemblance.
•
hexspeak – a novelty form of variant English spelling using the hexadecimal digits created by
programmers,
e.g. Hexadecimal notation represents numbers using the 16 digits „0123456789ABCDEF“.
Using only letters „ABCDEF“ it is possible to spell several words. Further words can be made
by treating some of the decimal numbers as letters,
e.g. the digit „0“ can represent the letter „O“, „1“ = „L“, „l“, „5“ = „S“, „7“ = „T“, „12“ = „R“,
„6“ or „9“ = „G“ or „g“. Numbers 2, 4, 8 can be used in a manner similar to leet or rebuses.
LEETSPEAK
BACK FORMATION
• derivation of new words by subtracting a real or supposed suffix from
existing words
• based on analogy and misinterpretation of the word structure
• e.g. to butle < butler (analogy: to teach – teacher), to sculpt,
to baby-sit, to typewrite, to helicopt, …
• verbs < nouns by dropping –tion or –ion
e.g. donate (back-formation) < donation (several centuries older)