About Word Formation
As an English learner, everyone of us knows the importance of the vacabulary we have acquired.Although we know where the problem is ,vocabulary is stilla big chalenge for most of us. Although we had been given
a great many suggestions of how to expand our vocabulary, problem is still
problem. Then at some time, we were tought the word formation, actually I did not think good of it until I learned it in detailedly in the course of Linguistics.
After learning that, I know more clearly about the ways of word formation.
As a subject, word formation is a branch of lexicology which studies the patterns on which a language, in this case, the English, coins new words. In its restricted sense, word formation refers to the process of how words are formed.
Vorious ways of forming words can be classified on the basis of frequency of usage, into major processes or minor processes. The major processes are compounding, derivation. There are 7 minor processes, namely, invention, blending, abbreviation, acronymy, back-formation, analogical creation and borrowing.
The term COMPOUND refers to those words consists of more than one lexical morpheme, or the way to join two separate words to produce a single form,such as windmill, brainwash, maneating, throughout. DERIVATION, different from compunds, refers to the process by which new words are formed by the addition of affixes to the roots, stems, or words. For example, hospital + ize----hospitalize; speech + less----speechless; deaf + en----deafen; non + smoker----nonsmoker; il + logical----illogocal; dis +obey----disobey and so on.After learning derivation, we know, in most cases, prefixes change the meaning of the base whereas suffixes change the word-class of the base.
Word forms that come from compounding and derivation are relatively large and potentially open.
Like mentioned above, there are several minor processes to creat new words. Firstly, invention means that some words which come from modern technologies and economic activities, such as Kodak, Coke, nylon, and others to satisfy the new situations. Sencondly, blending is a relatively complex form of compounding. For example smoke + fog----smog. Thirdly, abbreviation and acronym are two frequent-used ways, for instance, bicycle abbreviated to ad, World Bank breviaried to WB.Fourthly, back-formation is an unusual abnormal way of wordformation. For example, gangling----gangle, editor----edit, and so on.
Analogical creation’s principle can account for the coexistence of two forms, regular and irregular, in the combination of some English verbs. For instance, the word work, its old past tense is wroght, and the new one is worked. Last borrowing like tofu from Chinese, China-town from Spanish and Chinese repectively,etc.
The two major types together with those minor types are the means by which new words are created in English language .
A knowledge of word formation is one of the most effecctive aids to the expanding of one’s vocabulary, and is of great value in inferring word meaning.。