Lexis. Word Formation Features in English. Prefixation, Suffixation, And Compounding

7/25/2019 Lexis. Word Formation Features in English. Prefixation, Suffixation, And Compounding.

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UNIT 10

LEXIS. WORD FORMATION FEATURES IN

ENGLISH. PREFIXATION, SUFFIXATION, ANDCOMPOUNDING.

OUTLINE

1. INTRODUCTION.1.1. Aims of the unit.1.2. Notes on bibliography.

2. A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF VOCABULARY.2.1. The status of

vocabulary in ancient times.2.2. The development of lexicography:

dictionaries up to date. 2.3. Vocabulary and language teachingmethodologies.2.4. Word-formation within a linguistic theory.

3. ENGLISH LEXIS: GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 3.1. On defining

the term lexis.3.2. Lexicography: on the organization of lexis.3.3.

Lexicology: the study of lexis and key terminology.

3.3.1. On defining word, lexeme, and word-form. 3.3.1.1. Whatisaword?

3.3.1.2. Whatisalexeme?3.3.1.3. Whatisaword-form?

3.3.2. The grammatical word: morpheme, morph, and allomorph. 3.3.2.1.

Whatisamorpheme?3.3.2.2. Whatisamorph?3.3.2.3. Whatisanallomorph?

. 3.3.3. Free vs bound morphemes.

. 3.3.4. Types of morpheme structure: root, stem, and base.

. 3.3.5. Inflectional vs derivational morphology.

. 3.3.6. The notion of word-formation.

4. WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES. MAIN FEATURES.

4.1. AFFIXATION. 4.1.1. Prefixes.

4.1.1.1. Negative prefixes.4.1.1.2. Reversative or privative prefixes.


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1. INTRODUCTION.

1.1. Aims of the unit.

This study on English lexis is aimed to know more about the way

vocabulary works. It attempts to provide the background knowledge

necessary for the readers to make informed choice about

vocabulary and word formation. By the time this study is finished, you

should be aware of the major issues in the field of lexis and word

formation, and equipped to read more advanced writings on them if you

so wish by the bibliography provided at the end of this presentation for

further exploration.

The structure of this study can be divided into four main sections.Chapter 2 provides a historical background on lexis in an attempt to

review (1) the status of vocabulary in ancient times, (2) the development

of English lexicography up to present-day trends, and (3) how different

language methodologies have dealt with vocabulary over the ages.

Chapter 3 provides an introductory and elementary account of the term

lexis regarding (1) its definition, (2) the organization of lexis by means

of lexicography, and (3) the study of lexis regarding key terminology so

as to prepare the reader for the linguistic background which is analysedin next chapter.

Key terminology includes several basic concepts required in the study of

word formation at a morphological level in order to provide the

necessary background to describe word-formation processes with

precision. So this section reviews (a) the definition of word, lexeme, and

word-form, (b) the definition of morpheme, morph, and allomorph, (c)

the duality free versus bound morphemes, (d) types of morphemes: root,

stem, and base, and (e) finally, word-formation processes: inflection andderivation, including the notions of affixes (suffixes and prefixes).

Chapter 4 provides, then, a theoretical approach to the word-formation

process in which the main tenets on this issue are examined and analysed

with respect to its main features and organisation. Thus, (1) inflectional


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which includes (a) prefixation, and (b) suffixation; and (2) derivational

processes which include (a) compounding. Other minor devices in word-

formation are also included.

Chapter 5 accounts for lexical implications on the field of languageteaching, and Chapter 6 examines future directions on this issue. From

all these chapters we shall draw some conclusions in Chapter 7, and

finally, bibliography will be listed in Chapter 8.

1.2. Notes on bibliography.

In order to offer an insightful analysis and survey on lexis and word

formation in English, we have dealt with the works of relevant figures in

the field. For instance, an approach to the nature of vocabulary and

lexical knowledge in second language teaching is provided by Norbert

Schmitt in his work Vocabulary in Language Teaching (2000), since he

represents one of an active group of scholars whose research has put

vocabulary at the forefront of contemporary applied linguistics.

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Another reference book, still indispensable, is that of Valerie Adams, An

Introduction to Modern English word formation (1973) in which we are

presented careful considerations to the many complex kinds of regula r

patterns in word-formation, including its history and traditions.

Another essential reading on this field is Bauer, English Word-Formation

(1983), and other classic references of interest are those of Aitchinson,

Words in the mind: An introduction to the mental

lexicon (1994); McCarthy, Vocabulary (1990); Nelson, The English

language (1974); Payne, Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology (1995);

Quirk & Greenbaum, A University Grammar of English (1973); and

again Schmitt & McCarthy, Vocabulary: Description, acquisition, and

pedagogy (1997). Besides, other influential works on the origins and

development of vocabulary are Algeo & Pyles, The origins and

development of the English language (1982); Baugh & Cable, A History

of the English Language (1993), and Crystal, Linguistics (1985). Finally,


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for more information on educational implications, see B.O.E. (2002), and

for future directions in vocabulary assessment, see Assessing Vocabulary

(2000) by John Read. He is a scholar who has devoted many years to the

study of vocabulary in the context of second and foreign language

learning, teaching, and assessment. In fact, John Read is at the forefrontof recent work in the area, and as a language teacher, he offers a familiar

approach to the challenges faced by students acquiring vocabulary and

using it in a second language.

Three good places for vocabulary research on the Internet are: (1)

http://www.swan.ac.uk/cals/calsres.html; (2) http://www1.harenet.nejp/-

waring/vocabindex.html; and (3) http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course.

2. A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF VOCABULARY.

In order to better understand the current state of vocabulary and word-

formation processes, as discussed in subsequent chapters, we will first

briefly review the status of vocabulary in ancient times, and then, we

shall offer an account of some of the historical influences that have

shaped the field as we know it today. Therefore, we shall review the

numerous different approaches to language learning, each with a

different perspective on vocabulary, which at times have given

vocabulary pride of place in teaching methodologies, and at other timesneglected. Finally, a historical background to word-formation processes

will lead us to a theoretical grounding on lexis and key terminology in

Chapter 3.

2.1. The status of vocabulary in ancient times.

The status of vocabulary in ancient times in undoubtely related to

language teaching since people have constantly attempted to learn second

languages for more than two thousand years. In fact, the earliest evidencewe have of interest in vocabulary traces back to the fourth century B.C.

in a work carried out by Panini in Sanskrit in the form of a set of around

4,000 aphoristic statements about the

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languages structure, known as sutras. In one of those chapters, Panini

provided a detailed description of word-formation processes.

Later on, records of the importance of vocabulary extend back at least tothe time of the Romans in the second century B.C., when students were

taught the art of rethoric. In fact, at this point in time, this Greek art was

highly prized, and would have been impossible for Roman children to

study Greek without a highly developed vocabulary. In early schools,

students learned to read by first mastering the alphabet, then progressing

through syllables, words, and connected discourse. For this purpose,

before reading a text, lexical help was provided either alphabetized or

grouped under various topic areas (Schmitt, 2000).

A similar work to that of Panini, took place later, around the seventh

century A.D., in connection with the Koran and Arabic studies. It was

less influential due to the fact that the Koran was not to be translated, but

to be literally interpreted, promoting considerably the study of Arabic,

both as a native and as a foreign language. Therefore, in subsequent

centurie, this religious stimulus promoted developments in lexicography,

that is, dictionary-making, the study of pronunciation, and language

history (Crystal, 1985).

Later, in the medieval period, under the aegis of the Church, Latin

became the medium of educated discourse and largely because of this,

the study of grammar became predominant. Throughout this period, there

was a high standard of correctness in learning, and mistakes were heavily

punished in Latin classes. Language instruction during the Renaissance

continued to have a grammatical focus, although some reforming

educators rebelled against the overemphasis on syntax.

In the seventeenth century, two scholars, William of Bath and John

Amos Comenius, attempted to raise the status of vocabulary by

promoting the idea of contextualized vocabulary. They suggested the

direct use of the target language in translation, getting away from rote

memorization, and avoiding the grammar focus. Thus, in 1611 William


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wrote a text that concentrated on vocabulary acquisition through

contextualized presentation. In his work, he presented 1,200 proverbs

that exemplified common Latin vocabulary. On the other hand,

Comenius created a textbook with a limited vocabulary of eight thousand

common Latin words, which were grouped according to topics andillustrated with labelled pictures.

The notion of a limited vocabulary was important and was to be further

developed in the early twentieth century as part of a current language

teaching methodology called Vocabulary Control Movement, which is

aimed to systematize the selection of vocabulary. Unfortunately, the

emphasis of language instruction remained firmly and many grammars

were written based on Latin models, which received general acceptance,

and helped prolong the domination of grammar over vocabulary. Thispreoccupation filtered over to English as well, and it was reflected in the

standardization of vocabulary in the eighteenth century by means of

grammar books and dictionaries.

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2.2. The development of lexicography: dictionaries up to date.

Regarding dictionaries, this section reviews the development of Englishlexicography from the earliest evidences of dictionaries to the phase of

standardization in the eighteenth century up to present-days. Moreover,

we shall review the contributions of well-known lexicographers which

helped the English language be standardized, that is, be ascertain,

refined, and fixed as we know it today.

Historically speaking (Howatt, 1984), the earliest attempt in the

development of lexicography was a bilingual lexicology that dates from

around 2500 B.C., and later on, in medieval times, several compilationsof Latin manuscripts were found. In the seventeenth century, the earliest

English dictionaries followed the tradition of lists of hard-words of

difficult comprehension. Mainly, two works are to be mentioned: first,

Robert Cawdreys Table Alphabeticall (1604) which was compiled with

the purpose of providing the interpretation [...] by plaine English words


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[...] whereby they may the more easily and better understand many hard

words. Second, Henry Cockerans The English Dictionarie: or, An

Interpreter of Hard English Words (1623). It was divided into three basic

parts: (1) simple language definitions, (2) elegant equivalents, and (3)

mythological names in Latin terms.

There is evidence of other attempts within this tradition, but quite often

the same definitions were copied from one compiler to another and no

new information was added. Here are some of them: John Bullokars

English Expositor (1616); Thomas Blounts Glossographia: or a

Dictionary, Interpreting all such Hard Words (1656); Elisha Coles An

English Dictionary, explaining the Difficult terms that are used in

Divinity, Husbandry, Physick, Philosophy, Law, Navigation,

Mathematicks, and other Arts and Sciences (1676); and the anonymousGazophylacium Anglicanum (1689).

However, the eighteenth century English linguists attempted to ascertain,

refine and fix the language, according to the rationalistic spirit of the

period. With this purpose in mind, the creation of an English Academy

was proposed in 1617 by the linguist Edmund Bolton, although finally

the project did not succeed. Nevertheless, important dictionaries and

grammar books were composed in order to provide a new standard with

the minimal variation in form, reducing it to rule and fixing it

permanently so that change and corruption did not affect the language.

The second half of the seventeenth century and the early years of the

eighteenth century saw the progressive inclusion of general vocabulary

and definitions of common uses in dictionaries. They gradually

incorporated further information on the etymology, grammar and history

of each word. Among the dictionaries which reacted against the

Latinized tradition of preceding years we may mention the following. (1)First, John Kerseys A New English Dictionary (1702) which was the

first English dictionary to include grammatical information whose

purpose was to provide a collection of all the most proper and

significant English words. (2) Second, Nathan Baileys Dictionarium

Britanicum Or, a more Compleat Universal Etymological English


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Dictionary Than

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any Extant (1730). It was the first dictionary to include etymologies or

cognate words and entensive encyclopedic information.

However, although many others followed, we must trace back to the

eighteenth century to meet the man who changed English lexicography.

He was Samuel Johnson, and his work Dictionary of the English

Language soon became a standard reference in 1755. He reacted against

the hard-word tradition which was very easy to copying and plagiarism.

His work is directly related to the typical aims of the period:

ascertaining, refining and fixing the language.Johnsons most important contribution was the establishment of the

inductive principle, that is, definitions based on particular instances of

usage from which meanings were drawn inductively. Moreover, he

introduced a new standard to English lexicography by bringing together

the features we recognize in dictionaries today: definitions in context by

means of quotations taken at that time from literary works of the

Elizabethan period; etymologies in square brackets; and numbered

meanings.

However, one of the problems with this dictionary was the absence of

information on pronunciation, except for stress assignment in compound

words. So his success lay not only in his utilization of contemporary

pronunciation and usage to guide his spellings and definitions, but also in

elegantly combining witty and, sometimes cutting, definitions with

backed up written evidence. Only in ambiguous cases did he resort to

arbitrary decisions based on logic, analogy, or personal taste.

Following Schmitt (2000), the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

brought the Age of Reason where people believed that there were natural

laws for al things and that these laws could be derived from logic.

Language was no different. Latin was held up as the language least

corrupted by human use, so many grammars were written with the intent


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of purifying English based on Latin models. These grammars received

general acceptance, which helped prolong the domination of grammar

over vocabulary.

With the exception of printing in general, Johnsons dictionary did moreto fix standard spelling and lexical usage than any other single thing in

the history of English. Anyway, the inductive path opened by Johnsons

Dictionary was continued throughout the second half of the eighteenth

century. The result was a dictionary that would remain unchallenged in

influence until Noah Webster published an American version in the

following century. Until then, the only innovation worth commenting is

the inclusion of phonological transcriptions, as in John Walkers A

Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language

(1791) or Thomas Sheridans General Dictionary of the EnglishLanguage(1780).

Noah Webster was Americas answer to Samuel Johnson. He wanted to

produce a dictionary which would reform American spelling

phonetically, and in fact, the spelling changes he proposed, such as

catalog, color, humor, and program became the American standard.

Webster was seventy when his

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greatest dictionary was eventually published in 1828, and the sober

clarity of his definitions rapidly made his work be well-known

throughout the United States, and subsequently the world.

In continental Europe, the increasing interest in the world of nature

forced changes in lexicography since technical words, originally known

only to specialists, needed to be familiar and accepted in general use.

Biologists, chemists, geographers, and others gradually demanded thegeneral adoption of scientific terminology. Therefore, scholars begun to

apply similar techniques to their study of language, and in 1879, a British

schoolmaster called James Murray took up the challenge of preparing a

dictionary so as to offer the history and meaning of the vocabulary of

English throughout the world with scientific exactness. Murrays work,


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previously called A New English Dictionary, and later, Oxford English

Dictionary was published in regular instalments between 1884 and 1928.

In the twentieth century, two celebrated lexicographers are worth

mention: Eric Partridge and Robert Burchfield, both New Zealander.First of all, the New Zealander Eric Partridge devoted his life to writing

about the vagaries and curiosities of language, and compiling dictionaries

on it. In 1937, he published his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional

English and later he published the lesser-known Dictionary of the

Underworld which reads about a analytical listing of the cant and slang

of convicts, mobsters, and other specific marginal groups. Secondly,

Robert Bruchfield, considered to be one of the leading lexicographers

nowadays, brought the Oxford English Dictionary into the twentieth

century, and paved the way for the comprehensive ongoing revisionwhich the dictionary is currently undergoing.

Finally, regarding contributions in the twenty-first century, it is worth

mentioning that the area of computers and, therefore, the use of corpora

in vocabulary studies has been one of the most significant developments

in lexicography or dictionary writing. Lexicography has been

fundamentally affected since the four major learner dictionary publishers

all relying on corpus input to set their word definitions and examples. In

recent years, databases of language have revolutionized the way we view

language, particularly because they allow researchers, teachers, and

learners to use great amounts of real data in their study of language

instead of having to rely on intuitions and made-up examples.

Further comments on this area shall be offered in chapter 6, in which

future directions on lexis and word-formation will be provided.

Moreover, a definition of lexicography and its main features is included

in chapter 3.

2.3. Vocabulary and language teaching methodologies.

When dealing with vocabulary in the field of language teaching, we

acknowledge that among the numerous methodologies in the more than

two thousand years of second language instruction, just a few have been


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interested in vocabulary as part of the learning process. Therefore, before

placing word-formation in a linguistic framework, it is relevant to offer

an brief review of the status of

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vocabulary over the ages in order to understand why word-formation

seems to be emerging from a fallow period, and why it is suddenly of

central interest to theoretical linguists in the twentieth century. For

historical background in this section, we shall mainly follow Howatt

(1984) and Schmitt (2000).

Following the spirit of previous centuries, the beginnin g of the

nineteenth century saw Grammar Translation as the main languageteaching methodology. This approach, originally reformist in nature, was

an attempt to teach through explicit grammar rules and translation from

L1 (first language) into L2 (second language), or viceversa, as language

practice. This method grew into a very controlled system, with a heavy

emphasis on accuracy and explicit grammar rules.

Since the content focused on reading and writing literary materials, the

obsolete vocabulary of the classics was highlighted. In fact, the main

criterion for vocabulary selection was often its ability to illustrate agrammar rule, and besides, students were largely expected to learn the

necessary vocabulary themselves through bilingual word lists, which

turned into a list of items for translation purposes. As a result, the

bilingual dictionary became an important reference tool.

However, the method proved incresingly pedantic, and its weaknessess

came up to the surface. First, it focused on the ability to analyze

language, and not the ability to use it, and second, it did little to promote

an ability to communicate orally in the target language. Therefore, a newpedagogical direction was needed, and by the end of the nineteenth

century, new use-based ideas had coalesced into what became known as

the Direct Method.

The Direct Method emphasized oral skills, with listening as the primary


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skill. There was no need to translate since meaning was directly related

to the target language, and explicit grammar teaching was down-played,

trying not to use L1 in order to make the process more natural. This

method attempted to imitate the natural learning process of a native

speaker with listening first, then speaking, and only later reading andwriting.

Vocabulary was thought to be acquired naturally through the interaction

during lessons, and connected with reality as much as possible.

Therefore, initial vocabulary was simple and familiar (e.g., bedroom

objects or food) and concrete vocabulary was explained with pictures or

through physical demonstration. Only abstract words were presented in

the traditional way of being grouped according to topic or association of

ideas.

Yet, like all other approaches, this method had its weaknesses. Since the

focus was squarely on use of the second language, teachers were required

to be proficient in the target language, which was not always the case. It

mimicked L1 learning, but it was not taken into account that L1 learners

had abundant exposure to the language, whereas learners of a second

language typically have little, usually only a few hours per week for a

year or two.

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During the first half of the twentieth century, in the United States

relatively few people travelled internationally, and this situation was

actually transferred to the educational field. Since oral skills were not

needed nor considered an ultimate goal in schooling, writing skills were

given a place of pride. Then, the 1929 Coleman Report took this limited

instruction into account, and concluded that it was not sufficient to

develop overall language proficiency, but also to teach how to read in a

foreign language. Therefore, reading and writing were considered the

most useful skills that secondary students could take, and consequently,

vocabulary was needed as a main tool.

At the same time, in Britain, the Michael West was also stressing the


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need to facilitate reading skills by improving vocabulary learning. The

result was an approach called the Reading Method, and it held sway until

World War II, along with Grammar-Translation and the Direct Method.

However, during the war, the American military needed people who

were conversationally fluent in foreign languages, and once more, theweaknesses of all of the above approaches became obvious, and there

was needed a means to quicly train its soldiers in oral/aural skills.

Back to America, a program was being developed by American structural

linguists which consisted of a mixture from principles borrowed from the

Direct Method, and behaviourism, for mostly mature and highly

motivated students to build good language habits through drills. From the

Direct Method, this program drew especially its emphasis on oral skills

(i.e., listening and speaking ). From behaviorism, it borrowed therationale that language learning was a result of habit formation.

This Army Method came to be known as Audiolingualism and it had

such a dramatic success that it naturally continued after the war. Because

the emphasis in Audiolingualism was on teaching structural patterns, the

vocabulary needed to be relatively easy, and so was selected according to

its simplicity and familiarity. New vocabulary was rationed, and only

added when necessary to keep the drills viable. This method tried to lead

to an increased vocabulary by means of good language habits and

exposure to the language itself, so no clear method of extending

vocabulary later on was spelled out.

A similar approach was current in Britain from the 1940s to the 1960s. It

was called the Situational Approach, because of its grouping of lexical

and grammatical items according to what would be required in various

situations (e.g., at the train station, at the shop, at a restaurant).

Consequently, vocabulary started to be treated by the SituationalApproach in a more principled way than Audiolingualism.

In the late 1950s, the behaviorist underpinnings of Audiolingualism were

attacked by Noam Chomskys cognitive approaches to language

learning. This attack proved decisive, and Audiolingualism began to fall

out of favor. Language, then, was seen as governed by cognitive factors,


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particularly a set of abstract rules that were assumed to be innate.

Yet, vocabulary gained importance in 1972 when Hymes coined the

concept of communicative competence , which highlighted

sociolinguistic and pragmatic factors. This meant that field-specificvocabulary was important to maintain communication successfully. This

also helped to swing the

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focus from language correctness (accuracy) to how suitable language was

for a particular context (appropriateness ).

The approach that developed from these notions emphasized using

language for meaningful communication, and a new methodologyemerged in this field, the so-called Communicative Language Teaching

(CLT). The focus was on the message and fluency rather than

grammatical accuracy, and besides, on the negotiation of meaning by

means of different strategies (i.e. grammatical, strategic, discourse,

sociolinguistic ).

Once again, one would expect vocabulary to be given a prominent place

since this is a meaning- based approach. However, vocabulary was given

a secondary status, this time to issues of mastering functional language

(e.g., how to make a complaint, how to make an apology) and how

language connects together into larger discourse. The Communicative

Language Approch gives little guidance about how to handle vocabulary,

other than as support vocabulary for the functional language use

mentioned above. As in previous approaches, it was assumed that L2

vocabulary, like L1 vocabulary, would take care of itself.

Fortunately, in the twenty-first century, the current status of vocabularyin language teaching has recently changed in our educational framework

due to the development of new technologies and educational and

personal needs in society (i.e. business, international relationships,

educational purposes, computers). It has been realized that mere

exposure to language and practice with functional communication will


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not ensure the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary or an adequate

grammar, so current best practice includes both a principled selection of

vocabulary, often according to frequency lists, and an instruction

methodology that encourages meaningful engagement with words over a

number of recyclings.

2.4. Word-formation within a linguistic theory.

As stated before, the earliest evidence of interest in vocabulary, and in

particular, word-formation traces back to the fourth century when a

detailed description of word-formation was provided by Panini in

Sanskrit. However, since then, many questions on this issue in the

seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have had no answer, and

in many ways the subject of word-formation has not until recentlyreceived much attention from descriptive grammarians of English.

As Adams (1973) points out, this is mainly because of two reasons, first,

its connections with the non-linguistic word of things and ideas, and

second, due to its inequivocal position as between descriptive and

historical studies. Actually, the nineteenth century was a period of

exciting discovery and advances in historical and comparative language

studies, comparable in its methods with those of natural sciences at that

time. Therefore, word-formation processes were thought to be subject torandom, and sound change laws to be irregular. Then, word-forms lost

their validity since linguistic relations could only be established

historically by extralinguistic evidence (Adams 1973).

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However, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that

Ferdinand de Saussure changed directions in linguistic studies by

establishing the dichotomy between synchrony and diachrony in hiswork Course in General Linguistics (or Cours de Linguistique Gnrale)

published in 1916, three years after his death. Since then, his influence

has been unparalleled in European linguistics and has shaped language

studies even after his publication.


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His work was a clear reaction to the totally historical view of the

previous hundred years where he emphasized the importance of seeing

language as a living phenomenon from two distinct views. First, the

diachronic view, also called external linguistics, which deals with the

evolution of language through history, and second, the synchronic view,also called internal linguistics, which deals with the study of language

system and rules at a particular point of time.

However, it was internal linguistics, stimulated by de Saussures work

that was to be the main concern of twentieth-century scholars and within

it there could be no place for the study of the formation of words, due to

its close connections with the external world and its implications of

constant change. At that moment, any discussion of word -formation

processes meant the abandonment of the strict Sausserean distinctionbetween history and the present moment.

Yet, although some scholars like Jespersen succeeded in merging

synchronic and diachronic approaches in their study of word-formation

in his work A Modern English Grammar on historical principles (1942),

most linguists supported the neglecting Saussurean view towards word-

formation. They did it from a totally synchronic point of view, such as

Harris and Leonard Bloomfield who, in their respective works Structural

Linguistics (1951) and Language (1933), considered language as a fixed

state of affairs at a particular point of time, or from a totally diachronic

view such as the German scholar Koziol who, in his work Handbuch der

englischen Wortbildungslehre (1937), reaffirmed the productivity of

language through history and culture.

Until the nineteen-fifties, phonology and morphology were the main

concerns of American structuralism, and therefore, in the 1940s and

1950s interest was not centred on the word, but in units smaller than theword. Thus, the isolating of minimal segments of speech, the description

of their distribution relative to one another, and their organization into

larger unit were given prominence in structuralist theory.

So, once again, attention to word-formation was precluded from the

linguistic field since the fundamental unit of grammar was not the word


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but a smaller unit, the morpheme. However, in 1957 the linguistic

situation of word-formation research would radically change by the

publication of Noam Chomskys Syntactic Structures. Chomsky stated

that the idea of productivity, or creativity, previously excluded from

linguistics, was seen to be of central importance. But still word-formation remained a topic neglected by linguists since Tranformational

Generative Grammar was interested in units larger than the word, that is,

syntax and the structure of phrases and sentences. Words as such played

no real role.

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Although Chomsky made the distinction between linguistic competence

(knowledge of language; grammar) and performance (the use of languagein concrete situations), Pennanen, in his work Current Views of Word-

Formation (1972), states that it is an obvious gap in transformational

grammars not to have made provision for treating word-formation, since

the ability to make and understand new words is obviously as much a

part of our linguistic competence as the ability to make and understand

new sentences.

This approach was standard in the majority of transformational studies

and, as Bauer (1983) points out, this dispute brought the data of word-formation into the centre of linguistic interest. For instance, just a few

linguists approached the problem in word-formation, such as

Marchandss monumental work The Categories and Types of Present-

Day English Word-Formation (1969). The study of word-formation

within the Transformational Generative tradition seems to have become

more widespread since it was partially inspired by Chomsky (1970).

Further works dealt with the basic assumption that the words formed

were special kinds of sentences whose internal shape was determined by

the phonology. Based on an American tradition of morphophonemics,

Generative Phonology is mainly concerned with specifying rules which

generate all the surface shapes of a morpheme. This is the closest

Transformational Generative Grammar really came to dealing with word-

formation.


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The study of word-formation seems to be the point at which various

theoretical facets of linguistics come together, such as diachrony and

synchrony, morphology and phonology, syntax and semantics. Despite

the lack of accepted doctrines on the issue, the study of word-formation

is expanding day by day thanks to more theoretically linguists which areconsidered to be more eclectic than those of Transformational Generative

Schools.

Following Bauer (1983), in more recent years, word-formation has

thrown light on other aspects of language, such as syntax, phonology,

morphology, semantics and pragmatics. Moreover, from these different

approaches it is drawn that a growing number of linguists are interested

first and foremost in how word-formation reflects la nguage in general in

present society.

3. ENGLISH LEXIS: GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

In this chapter, we shall approach first (1) the concept of lexis in terms of

its definition, and then we shall examine two related issues, such as (2)

lexicography on the organization of lexis, and (3) lexicology, on the

study of lexis, where we shall offer a description of key terminology in

order to clarify and make the reading of following chapters accessible

and coherent straightforward for the reader. This introduction is intendedto provide, together with the historical background, a basic linguistic

background for next chapter, in which a theoretical approach to word

formation features is offered.

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3.1. On defining the term lexis.

From a linguistic theory, the term lexis is to be found in the frameworkof language as a system together with other language levels, such as

phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and more recently, society,

culture, and pragmatics. It is worth noting that, since the major purpose

of language is to communicate, all these levels are interrelated to convey

meaning to speech, and therefore, when focusing on the study of lexis,


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word changes are directly related to all those interrelated fields again.

The term lexis refers to the stock of words a language consists of, and

it may be used interchangeably with the term vocabulary. These two non-

count nouns, when addressing individual items, are referred to as lexicalitems or vocabulary items. Another term related to lexis is that of lexicon

which can be used in two main ways. Firstly, as a more technical version

of the term lexis, andsecondly,asasynonymtorefertoa dictionary.

The science which studies lexis or vocabulary is to be called lexicology,

and means the study of words, from Greek lexiks (words) and logia

(study). In general, it may be defined as an area of language study

concerned with the nature, form, meaning, history and use of words and

word elements, and often also with the critical description oflexicography. Both lexic ography and lexicology will be examined for

our purposes in the present study.

3.2. Lexicography: on the organization of lexis.

Accordingly, lexicography accounts for the way in which lexical items

can be organised and it is defined as the procedure of arranging,

describing, and compiling lexical items in such works as dictionaries,

encyclopaedias, glossaries, thesaurus, synonym guides, pictorialdictionaries, and usage guides, in libraries and more recently,

computers. This meticulous work is carried out by the writers of

dictionaries or lexicographers, who are in charge of finding out the

correct meaning of a word and listing it in their dictionaries as

accurately and objectively as they can.

The most common ways to organise vocabulary are (1) alphabetical

listing, by which items in dictionaries and encyclopaedias are listed in

alphabetical order under headwords with an entry; (2) word class, bywhich lexical items are classified according to parts of speech, that is,

nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and so on; (3)

frequency, by which lots of texts are collected in corpora (or corpus) and

it is possible to group words into frequency bands in order to make

distinctions between common words and obscure words; (4) grouping by


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acquisition level for graded reading, by which vocabulary is selected

and categorised in terms of frequency, prominence, universality, and

utility for teaching purposes. Hence, the Longman Structural Reader.

Moreover, we find (5) lexical fields, by which vocabulary is grouped in athesaurus according to its semantic field, for instance, feelings, colour

terms, social class, houses, or means of transport; (6) associative fields,

by which the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure made a distinction

between paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations in 1916. Paradigmatic

relations involve lexical choice at

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different points in the sentence at a vertical level (i.e. The little girlplayed with her doll, rejecting the choice for another noun like person,

woman, or lady) whereas syntagmatic relations involve the co-occurring

of the lexical item within the other units in the sentence (i.e. definite

article the, adjective little, verb played, etc).

Finally, (7) other ways of organising vocabulary are on the levels of

formality (i.e. very formal, formal, neutral, informal, colloquial),

specialisation (i.e. medical, scientific, business, etc), geography (i.e.

British versus American English, Spanglish, etc), and eventually, on thesource of the lexical items (i.e. Roman, Germanic, Scandinavian, etc).

3.3. Lexicology: the study of lexis and key terminology.

Since lexicology is the study of lexis in terms of its nature, form,

meaning, history and use of words and word elements, this section is

mainly an introduction to some of the terminology required in the study

of vocabulary, and therefore, it covers morphology as a whole. Then,

much of the terminology used is, in fact, common to all morphologicalstudy, and will offer an elementary background to help place word-

formation in its broader framework. In doing so, we shall mainly follow

Adams (1973), Bauer (1983), Crystal (1985), McCarthy (1990), and

Schmitt (2000).

During the writing of this study, we shall retain the terms vocabulary and


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word as much as possible in favour of terms like lexicon or lexis and

lexical item or lexical unit, respectively, in order to

adopt a much broader conception of the terms than the traditional ideas

about vocabulary. However, it is necessary to keep the broader view inmind, especially in the light of current and likely future comments in this

study.

3.3.1. On defining word, lexeme, and word-form.

When we speak of the vocabulary of a language, we mainly refer to the

words of that language. The term word is usually taken for granted, and

never offers any difficulty until we try to state precisely what we mean

by it. In fact, a major problem for linguistic theory has been, for a long

time, to provide a definition for the term word since it has proved to be

conditioned by the way speakers of a language organize their linguistic

reality.

Actually, studies carried out in general linguistics within the framework

of different fields, for instance, grammar, semantics, phonetics, or socio-

cultural among others (Saussure 1916, Sapir 1921, Hymes 1972, van Ek

2001) have shown, first, that the word across languages can only be

defined with respect to a particular language, and secondly, that rules ofword formation depend on the genealogical method of classification a

given language (chapter 4).

For instance, Sapir stated in his work Language (1921) that a word-like

unit is equally central and unmistakable for speakers of very diverse

languages. It means, then, that every speaker can easily

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determine word by word in a sentence whereas difficulties may be

found when learning to break up a word into its constituent sounds.

Thus, in Latin, Eskimo, and Maori languages we find sentences

structured by word meaning (i.e. in Maori, i means past tense); other

languages are agglutinative, that is, ruled by stress patterns, such as


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Icelandic, Polish, and Turkish, where words are delimited by stress; note

also the case of Japanese language, where the same word has different

meanings depending on where the stress is placed. With respect to Indo-

European languages, and to a large degree English, word formation

processes involve mainly affixation, derivation, and compounding, whichare easily predictable under universal rules.

3.3.1.1. What is a word?

As we can see, the term word is too general to encapsulate the various

forms vocabulary takes. Anyway, for our present purposes, we shall

think of words as freestanding items of language that have meaning by

themselves (McCarthy 1990). This means that a word is the smallest unit

of syntax that has distinctive me aning and can occur by itself at thephrase level and above (i.e. verb, noun, adjective, adverb, preposition,

conjunctions, and so on). Sometimes, in a hierarchy of grammatical

units, a word is sometimes placed, above the morpheme level and below

the phrase level.

The term word is considered to be identifiable according to such criteria

as (1) being the minimal possible unit in a reply; (2) having certain

features such as, firstly, a regular stress pattern, and secondly,

phonological changes conditioned by or blocked at word boundaries; (3)being the largest unit resistant to insertion of new constituents within its

boundaries; and (4) being the smallest unit that can be moved within a

sentence without making the sentence ungrammatical.

On examining the subtlety and magic of lexis, we refer to Schmitt

(2000), who considers the case of six items which are synonymous, and

are made up of from one to four words (i.e. die, expire, pass away, bite

the dust, kick the bucket, give up the ghost). These examples show that

there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between a meaning

and a single word (i.e. as in die and expire), and that, very often,

meanings may be represented by multiple words (i.e. phrasal verbs or

idioms: pass away, bite the dust).

3.3.1.2. What is a lexeme?


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In order to handle these multiword units, we shall use the term lexeme

(also called lexical unit or lexical item) to refer to six different lexemes

with the same meaning. The term lexeme, then, is defined as an item that

functions as a single meaningful unit, regardless of the number of words

it contains (Schmitt 2000). They refer not to the particular shape that aword has, but to all the possible shapes that the word can have in a given

paradigm.

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For instance, the words fly, fle w, flown, flying, flies, flight are all

subsumed under the lexeme fly , comprising each not only the lexeme

fly but also the representations of the various inflectional categories

attached to that lexeme. Moreover, when they appear in an utterance on aparticular occasion, and it is not the lexeme that is under study, but the

particular shape that a word has, we refer to the term word-form.

3.3.1.3. What is a word-form?

A word-form is defined as an item which represents or realizes the

inflectional paradigm of lexemes by means of phonological and

orthographical shape. This means that a word-form is the smallest unit of

speech or writing which has distinctive meaning and can occur by itself(in most orthographies it is separated from other word-forms by a space).

It is worth noting that a word-form has a precise phonic and orthographic

form whereas a lexeme is considered to be a much more abstract unit.

For instance, in the example given above, the word- form flight is

referred to as the form of the lexeme fly.

At a phonological level, it is relevant to establish here a difference

between a word-form and a syllable since a syllable is considered to bethe smallest unit of pronunciation but has no inherent distinctive

meaning. Therefore, it cannot occur by itself unless it is sometimes

represented by a word-form in terms of a monosyllabic word (i.e. yes,

no, and hi).

3.3.2. The grammatical word: morpheme, morph, and allomorph.


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The term word has been defined above in lexical terms, that is, in written

form, but we need to consider other facets of knowing a word regarding

some grammatical aspects of vocabulary, namely, in morphological

terms. Therefore, we shall deal with the grammatical word at the level of

inflectional morphology, which deals with the various forms of lexemes.

For instance, if we take the example from the previous section, the form

flies represents both the verb form flies in third person singular and the

countable noun flies, in plural form. Thus it can be said that the word-

form flies represents two grammatical words, both of which are in the

paradigm of the lexeme fly . It is worth remembering that other forms of

the lexeme can be reconstructed from this (i.e. flying, flown, flight).

Since morphology deals with the internal structure of word-forms, weshall examine the basic units of analysis which are recognized in this

sub-branch of linguistics: morphemes, morphs, and allomorphs, which

are directly related, in phonological terms, to their counterparts phoneme,

phone, and allophone, examined in section 2.3.3.

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3.3.2.1. What is a morpheme?

First of all, a morpheme is defined as the smallest meaningful unit of

grammatical analysis in which a lexeme is segmented. This means that it

is the smallest unit of syntax that has a distinctive meaning, but cannot

occur by itself unless it is a monomorphemic word (i.e. be, was). In this

case, these constituents could only be described as combinations of

phonemes or phonetic features, and analysing the structure of

morphemes will lead you straight into the concept of morph and

allomorph in the field of phonology, since the notions of morpheme-

phoneme, morph-phone, and allomorph-allophone have a parallelrelationship in a linguistic theory.

Crystal (1985) defines the term morpheme as the smallest bit of language

which has a meaning. He distinguished two main features of it. (1)

Firstly, he said, if you add a morpheme to an utterance, or take one away,


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by definition you alter the meaning of that utterance. Thus words such as

nation, national, and nationalize mean different things. (2) Secondly, he

stated that when a morpheme is analysed into its constituents, it loses its

identity, and then they are seen as a sequence of meaningless noises, as

stated above. In fact, if you try to analyse a piece of speech into itsconstituent grammatical elements, there would come a time when you

could analyse no further.

Current approaches to morphology conceive of morphemes as rules

involving the linguistic context, rather than as isolated pieces of

linguistic matter. They acknowledge that (1) meaning may be directly

linked to suprasegmental phonological units, such as tone or stress, and

(2) that the meaning of a morpheme with a given form may vary,

depending on its immediate environment (Payne 1995).

It is worth remembering that each of these segments or minimal units has

its own form or set of forms, its own meaning, and its own distribution.

Yet, a morpheme can be viewed from a number of different angles in

terms of classification, identification and distribution, respectively.

Firstly, it is a formal, or physical unit with a phonetic shape. Secondly, it

has a meaning. And thirdly, it has a syntactic role to play in the

construction of larger grammatical units.

For instance, take a sentence like The two little girls played with a cute

puppy in order to identify different morphemes. The, two, little, with, a,

cute, and puppy are all minimal, meaningful, syntactically relevant units.

Girls and played have two each: take the s away from girls and we get a

distinct meaningful unit girl (i.e. the s carries the singular/plural

difference), and similarly, the ed can be removed from played to turn the

past tense into present.

Yet, although it is stated (Bauer 1983) that morphemes, like lexemes, are

actually abstract elements of analysis with their own form, meaning, and

distribution, we must take into account that what actually happens is a

phonetic or orthographic realization of the morpheme. This realization,

then, is manifested into smaller units that are called morphs, which may

appear as one or more in different environments.


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3.3.2.2. What is a morph?

As mentioned, when a morpheme is analysed into its constituents, you

end up with a sequence of meaningless noises which are combinations of

phonemes or phonetic features. When these meaningless phonetic

constituents are analysed in phonological terms, they are called morphs.

A morph is defined as the phonetic realization of a morpheme, and three

main types are featured: portmanteau morphs, zero morphs, and when it

appears in complementary distribution, allomorphs (to be examined in

next section).

Regarding the three main types of morphs, we shall discuss: (1)portamanteau morphs, (2) zero morphs, and (3) allomorphs. Firstly, (1) a

portmanteau morph is defined as a single morph which represents two

underlying morphemes when analyzed. For instance, the combination of

two specific prepositions and the definite masculine article both in

Spanish and French gives way to a new morpheme phonologically

conditioned. For instance, the Spanish sequences a + el or de + el

turn into al or del. Similarly, the French sequence + le or de +

le turn into au and du.

(2) Secondly, a zero morph is defined as a kind of morph with no

phonetic form, and it is often related to irregular plural forms which

have, therefore, no plurality marker (i.e. -s, -es) such as sheep, deer, fish,

and foot-feet among others. In some analyses, it is proposed as an

allomorph of a morpheme which is ordinary realized by a morph having

some phonetic form, that is, vowel changes in verbs or nouns (i.e. come-

came or tooth-teeth), or the masculine and feminine marker (i.e. -a and

-o) in Spanish and Italian. Another realization of zero morph is given by

the context.

For instance, the word-forms girls and kisses are easily handed in terms

of morph segmentation (i.e. girl-s and kiss-es), but what happens to

countable nouns like mouse-mice or man-men? These forms do not

really add anything at all but undergo a vowel change in which the vowel


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in the singular is replaced by the vowel of the plural.

In order to make irregular plurals be fit with the morpheme principle,

many solutions were proposed in the 1940s, and two possibilities were

open to this kind of problem in sentences like The sheep is coming andThe sheep are coming. (1) Firstly, the verb form is the only indicator of a

difference between the two sentences (i.e. is and are), where the first

sheep is singular and the second plural. (2) Secondly, since the verbs

influence is eliminated when we find identical verb forms (i.e. The sheep

came ), the plurality is said to be present in principle by means of context

(i.e. The sheep came in groups of twenty).

(3) Finally, the third type makes reference to allomorphs, which refer to

those morphs which undergo a phonetic change because of the influenceof environmental conditions (voiced, voiceless preceding sounds), and

therefore, they take on different forms. These variants of the same basic

morph, then, are called allomorphs whenever the phonetic shape of a

morpheme is altered because of the direct phonetic influence of the

sounds around it.

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3.3.2.3. What is an allomorph?

As stated before, an allomorph is defined as one of two or more

complementary morphs which a morpheme manifests in its different

phonological or morphological environments. This means that an

allomorph is a phonetically, lexically or grammatically conditioned

member of a set of morphs representing a particular morpheme since

they are derived from phonological rules and any morphophonemic rules

that may apply to that morpheme.

First of all, let us consider an example of a phonetically conditioned

allomorph in English. The plural morpheme, usually written as -s in its

regular forms, has three different phonological realizations. (1) Firstly, it

is realized as es /iz/ after sibilant consonants (i.e. alveolar fricatives /s,z/

as in horses and houses, palato-alveolar fricatives (i.e. washes, garages),


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and palato-alveolar affricates (i.e. churches, bridges). (2) Secondly, it is

realized as s (the alveolar voiceless fricative /s/) after any other

voiceless consonant, as in cats, books, and maps. (3) Finally, it is

realized as s (the alveolar voiced fricative /z/) after any other voiced

consonants, as in boys, dogs, and bones. Note that the grammaticalfunction of the s is constant whereas the phonetic shape is not.

Secondly, an example of a lexically conditioned allomorph in English is

that of the OE paradigm for plural nouns ending in en (i.e. ox-oxen,

child-children). These variants of the plural morpheme (oxen, children)

are conditioned by their lexemes (i.e. ox, child, brother) which,

historically speaking, underwent certain morphophonemic processes

(phonological and morphological) which shaped the morphologogy of

ME nouns.

Finally, regarding grammatically conditioned allomorphs, we shall deal

with the definite article (i.e. the) in English and the form of the genitive

singular definite article (i.e. des, der) in German. Again, historical

reasons shaped contemporary gramma r and syntax since in Middle

English there was a change from a synthetic system into an analytic one,

that is, from relying on case endings to mark the functions of words in

the sentence to rely on a relatively fixed word order established by

grammatical categories.

The general loss of declensional patterns (case, number, and gender) had

an influence on the morphology of this grammatical category. For

instance, the English definite article the followed a regular phonological

development from Old English to Middle English (i.e. the weaking of

vowels and the loss of inflectional endings) although it was finally

restricted by a morphological reorganization. Providing that specific

forms were no longer necessary for masculine, feminine, and neuter, itadopted the function of article, for all cases, genders and numbers. It

was, then, phonologically determined by usage and distribution, and

grammatically determined by word order and context.

Consider now the genitive singular of the contemporary genitive singular

form of the definite article in German (i.e. des, der) where these forms


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are still determined by declensional patterns which can be traced back to

their Old English ancestors of case, number, and gender. For instance,

the form des is used with a masculine noun like mann man or a neuter

form like kind child - meaning of

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the man and of the child (saxon genitive pattern with s)- whereas the

form der is used with a feminine noun like frau woman. We observe

here that the definite article is conditioned, not by the phonetic shape of

the noun or of any other word in the sentence, nor by specific lexemes,

but by a grammatical feature of the noun with gender.

3.3.3. Free vs bound morphemes.Once we have dealt with the internal structure of morphemes, morphs,

and allomorphs at the level of inflectional morphology, we shall go

deeper by establishing another relevant difference in word analysis, such

as the difference between free and bound morphemes. In next section

(2.3.4) we shall deal with further basic elements, such as root, stem, and

base.

In previous sections, the term morpheme has been defined as the smallest

meaningful unit of language in which a lexeme is segmented, unless it is

a monomorphemic word which cannot be segmented (i.e. hat-s and hat

respectively). It is worth remembering that in combinations which are

made up of two morphemes, one morpheme carries the main part of the

meaning of the whole, and the other is bound to appear in conjunction

with other morphemes.

Therefore, regarding types of morphemes, on the basis of word formation

characteristics, we distinguish between free and bound morphemes. Afree morpheme can occur in isolation and cannot be divided into smaller

units (i.e. dog, luck, strong), carrying the main part of the meanin g when

it is made up of two morphemes (i.e. teach-er) These specific morphemes

are capable of standing by themselves and of entering rather freely into

grammatical combinations. The second type of morpheme is called


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bound morpheme, and it refers to a morpheme which can only occur in a

word- form in conjunction with at least one other morpheme (i.e. philo-,

retro-, -ly, -able, -er, -s, -ed, -ing).

Yet, in some languages such as Latin, Spanish, or Italian, the morphswhich realize lexemes are regularly bound morphs. Thus in amo I love,

the morph which realizes the lexeme amo is am-, and can only occur

when bound to another element, which in this case is the portmanteau

morph o, realizing the morphemes of first person, singular, active,

present, and indicative. Here, the am- part is not further analyzable, and

therefore, it is considered to be a bound morph. Morphologically

speaking, when bound morphs do not realize unanalysable lexemes are

affixes.

In turn, following Bauer (1983) affixes can be divided into (1) prefixes ,

which are attached before a base (as in dislike, where dis- is a prefix), (2)

suffixes, which are attached after a base (as in freedom, where dom is a

suffix), and (3) infixes, which are attached inside a base. Infixation (the

use of infixes) is virtually known in English, and comparatively rar

throughout Indo-European. In English, prefixation is always derivational

while suffixation may be either derivational or inflectional.

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Thus in a lexeme like predetermined, we find three morphemes: pre-,

determine- d. The first morpheme refers to a prefix (derivational), the

second morpheme is of free type since it can occur in isolation and has

meaning by itself whereas the third morpheme refers to a bound type

since the ending ed can only occur if it is attached to other morphs.

Note that this analysis is characteristic of languages that depend heavily

on the use of inflections, either internal or suffixed (also calledsynthetic ).

3.3.4. Types of morpheme structure: root, stem, and base.

On the basis of word-formation, we must deal not only with the

distinction between free and bound morphemes, but also with the types


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of morpheme structure by which morphemes may be classified into the

following types: root, stem, and base, in order to accurately examine the

manner in which affixes are attached to the base forms of words. The

terms root, stem, and base are used in the literature to designate that part

of a word that remains when all affixes have been removed (Bauer 1983).

(1) First, a root is that part of a word that remains after removing all

inflectional and derivational affixes. It may, or not, be both free and

bound, free because it has a simple structure, and is made up of a single

morpheme, and bound because it is considered to be a basis for

compounding and affixation. In the form unforgettable , for instance, the

root is forget, to which have been added, first, a prefix (un-), and then, a

suffix (-able ). It is also possible to find two roots in the same word (i.e.

as in armchair: arm and chair).

(2) Second, a stem is that part of the word which remains after removing

all inflectional affixes. It differs from a root in that it has a complex

structure, and is made up of one or more morphemes. It may also be both

free and bound, for instance, free because it may contain derivational

affixes (i.e nation-al) and bound because it may contain more than one

root (i.e. red-skin). Moreover, it is only a basis for affixation and not

compounding, and only deals with inflectional morphology. For instance,

in a word like unforgettables, the stem is unforgettable, and in the form

armchairs, the stem is armchair although it contains two roots.

(3) Third, a base is defined as a form to which affixes are added, that is,

when rules of word- formation are applied. This means that it has a

simple structure to which prefixes, suffixes, and clitic forms are added (a

clitic is a kind of morpheme that is phonologically bound but

syntactically free). Both the terms root and stem can be called a base, but

a set of bases does not imply the union of roots and stems. For instance, abase functions as a derivationally analysable form to which derivational

affixes are added, that is, fortunately can act as a base for prefixation to

give unfortunately, but in this process fortunately cannot be referred to as

a root because it is analysable in terms of derivational morphology, nor

as a stem since it is not the adding of inflectional affixes which is in


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question (Bauer 1983).

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3.3.5. Inflectional vs derivational morphology.

In the previous section, we have made reference to inflectional and

derivational processes which, in a theory of language, are to be defined

as the two main processes by which morphology internally structures

words. They are important for an understanding of the distinction

between word- formation and syntax. Both processes account for the

internal structure of a word-form, which is internally realized by means

of lexemes, morphemes, morphs, or allomorphs although they deal with

the types of morphemes in different ways.Inflectional paradigms are only added to stems while derivational

paradigms deal with bases and roots. Why? Inflectional morphology and

derivational morphology (also called lexical morphology or word-

formation). Inflectional morphology deals with the various forms of

individual lexemes from given stems, whereas derivational morphology

or word-formation deals with the formation of new lexemes from given

bases or roots.

It is worth remembering at this point the classification of affixes when

added to bases or roots. So, again following Bauer (1983), affixes can be

divided into (1) prefixes, which are attached before a base (as in dislike,

where dis- is a prefix), (2) suffixes, which are attached after a base (as in

freedom, where dom is a suffix), and (3) infixes, which are attached

inside a base. Infixation (the use of infixes) is virtually known in English,

and comparatively rare throughout Indo-European. In English,

prefixation is always derivational while suffixation may be either

derivational or inflectional.

Derivational and inflectional processes alike involve a relation between

the members of a pair, consisting of the unmarked base form and the

marked affixed form. The function of inflections is to indicate

relationship between words: the addition of an inflection to a word in a


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sentence is not a matter relevant to that word alone. However,

derivational affixes are not dependent in this way on the form of other

words in the sentence: their function is to signal the formation of new

words.

3.3.6. The notion of word-formation.

As stated before, word-formation is defined as the morphological process

which deals with the formation of new or complex lexemes from given

bases or roots (but not stems). The formation of new lexemes involves

different processes, among which the most relevant are the addition of

affixes, mainly prefixes in derivational processes and suffixes in either

derivational or inflectional processes, and the notions of complex and

compound in order to classify new lexemes when there is a combinationof two or more lexemes (to be discussed in subsequent sections).

However, there are more factors than the morphological one to be taken

into account when dealing with the creation of new words, factors from

the past up to the present day. The coinage of new words in a language is

further justified by a cultural history of language at social, scientific,

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political, and technological levels, among others. English, as any other

language, has reflected over the centuries the revolutionary changes that

have affected the general development of humankind.

New words are constantly created parallel to external influences on the

language and society needs, for instance, the evolution of English in the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which reflected the widespread

contacts of English with other world languages. As a result from the

expansion of the language with the British Empire, many borrowingswere taken then from French, Italian, Spanish, German, and many other

languages.

Besides, other historical events may be mentioned in the enlargement of

English vocabulary, such as the growth of science in the fields of

medicine, physics, electronics, chemistry and biology, and astronautics


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and astronomy. More recently, the importance of mass-media and the

development of new means of communication (i.e. broadcasting,

transport, internet) has also favoured not only the coining of new words,

but have also contributed to accelerating the diffusion of different terms

coming from all fields of knowledge.

4. WORD FORMATION PROCESSES. MAIN FEATURES.

Once the notion of word-formation has been given a historical and

linguistic framework, we shall be ready to provide a theoretical approach

to word-formation processes. Therefore, in order to show how the

English language has enriched itself by using its own native internal

resources, we shall provide an account of the different processes

involved in the creation of new words, together with their characteristics,and recent contributions to this field.

The chief processes of English word-formation, by which the base may

be modified are mainly (1) affixation, (2) compounding, and (3)

conversion. Apart from these major word-formation processes, English

calls upon a number of minor devices, such as coinages which are the

creation of new words on the basis of old, such as (4) acronyms, (5)

blends, (6) clippings, (7) back formation, (8) folk etymology, (9)

eponyms, (10) onomatopoeic expressions, and finally, (11) wordmanufacture coinages.

We shall discuss the different processes on the basis of word-formation

main characteristics. Thus, (1) definition, (2) morphological forms, (3)

historical origin of the process, if necessary, (4) phonological

implications, if necessary, and (5) their grouping by means of meaning.

In order to do so, we shall follow the main authors: on defining terms,

Quirk and Greenbaum (1973); on morphology, Adams (1973) and Bauer

(1983); on historical origins, Algeo and Pyles (1982) and Howatt (1984);

on phonology, Celce-Murcia (2001); and finally, on grouping according

to meaning, again Bauer, Adams, and Quirk.

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4.1. AFFIXATION.

Traditionally called derivation, this process deals with the formation of

new lexemes by means of affixes, that is, by adding prefixes and suffixes

to a given base. Usually, suffixes undergo more interesting developmentsthan prefixed elements since most of English prefixes are of Latin and

Greek origin, and are much used in forming scientific words. However,

suffixes are more often of native origin, or have come into the language

via other languages, such as French, Italian, or Spanish, among others.

Many affixes were at one time independent words, as for instance the ly

of many adjectives, like manly, or homely, which has developed from the

Old English suffix lic, which originally meant something like having

the body or the appearance of, thus the literal meaning of manly washaving the body or form of a man. Other affixes have been particularly

popular during certain periods.

For instance, following Algeo & Pyles (1982) distinguish some of them,

like wise affixed to nouns and adjectives to form adverbs until the

1940s, and which was practically archaic, occurring only in a few well-

established words, such as likewise, otherwise, and crosswise. The form

type has enjoyed a similar vogue and it is on its way to being a freely

used suffix. With it, adjectives may be formed from nouns, as inCatholic-type, and Las Vegas-type. Finally, just mention the so-called

suffix ize, which became very productive in the 1950s, and dozens of

new creations have come into being: moisturize, glamorize, and

personalize; and other voguish affixes, such as the Latin non- and de- ;

the Greek -ismos andisma, and the Russian one nik.

Affixation is closely related to word accentual patterns in simple and

compound words since it is included within the main factors that

influence stress placement, together with the historical origin of a word.

One important difference between words of Germanic origin and those of

non-Germanic origin is the way in which stress is assigned. For words of

Germanic origin, the first syllable of the base form of a word is typically

stressed (i.e. father, yellow, twenty, hammer, water). Today, even

many two-syllable words that have entered English through French and


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other languages have been assimilated phonologically and follow the

Germanic word stress pattern (i.e. music, doctor, flower, foreign,

manage).

According to Gimson (1980), we may distinguish between simple andcompound words because they both undergo different stress patterns.

Words that have not been assimilated to the Germanic pattern have less

predictable word stress in their base forms, but stress is often predictable

if certain affixes or spellings are involved. Therefore in the following

sections we shall examine how affixation may affect stress on simple

words, depending on their historical origin.

4.1.1. Prefixes.A prefix is defined as an element placed before and joined

to a word or base in order to add or to

qualify its meaning (i.e. disability). Following Quirk & Greenbaum

(1973), when adding prefixes to 25/52

the base, they do not generally alter its word-class (i.e. pilot and co-

pilot), except for a special type called conversion prefixes, by which a

word-class change is forced (i.e. from noun to verb: calm, becalm).

Prefixes may be classified either in terms of the form class of the base to

which they are added, or in terms of groups of meaning. In this study,

prefixes are to be classified in terms of their meaning

(Quirk, 1973). However, their classification in terms of class-form

(Bauer, 1983:217) would be as follows: prefixes used exclusively with

(1) a noun base: arch-, mini-/-maxi-, step-, mal-, and pro- (i.e.

archbishop, minidress, maxicar, stepmother, malnutrition, proconsul); (2)

a verb base: de-, dis, and un- (i.e. deboost, discard, undo); (3) an

adjective base: a-, un- cis-, extra- (i.e. atypical, unpolitical, cislunar,extrasensory).

We may also find prefixes added to (4) nouns and verbs: fore-, re- mis-

(i.e. foreground, forewarn; rearrangemet, recycle; misfortune, mislead);

(5) nouns and adjectives: in- (also im- + p/b; im-in- +


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f/v; i- + m,n,l,r; in- + k/g; and in- +t,d,s,[ch],dj, j, vowels) as in the words

insane, improbable, infraction, illogical, irrational, innate, immediate,

incapacity, in-joke. Also, mid-, ex-, un- (i.e. mid- November, ex-

president, unfair); (6) verbs and adjectives: circum- (i.e. circumnavigate,

circumjacent); (7) nouns, verbs, and adjectives: counter- (i.e.counterculture, counterdemonstrate, counterattractive), dis- (i.e.

disinformation, disbound, disambiguate), and co- (i.e. co-author), inter-

(i.e. interdigital), and sub- (i.e. subwarden, subconscious).

As mentioned before, most prefixes survive from Old English times,

such as those of Germanic origin (i.e. a-, be-, fore-, mis-, and un-), but

according to Algeo & Pyles (1982), most English prefixes are of Latin,

Greek, and French origin, since English has had with them the closest

cultural contacts in earlier times. Besides, one of the most commonlyused prefixes of nonnative origin is Greek anti- against (i.e. antipathy,

antislavery, antiabortion). Also, pro- for and super- huge, great.

Productive prefixes, says Quirk (1973), normally have a secondary stress

on their first (or only) syllable whereas the primary stress falls on the

base. In fact, regarding phonological rules, those words, such as nouns,

adjectives, and verbs, containing prefixes tend to be strongly stressed on

the first syllable of the base or root element, with the prefix either

unstressed or lightly stressed (i.e. nouns: surprise, proposal, award;

adjectives: unhealthy, incredible; verbs: declare, forget) (Celce-

Murcia, 2001).

In English, prefixes tend to fall into one of two categories: (1) firstly,

prefixes of Germanic origin and (2) secondly, prefixes of Latinate origin.

Among (1) the Germanic prefixes we may mention: a-, be-, for-, fore-,

mis-, out-, over-, un-, under-, up-, and with- (i.e. awake, belief, forgive,

forewarn, mistake, outrun, overdo, untie, understand, uphold, andwithdrawn) and, as we may note, these words follow a general pattern by

which there is no stress on the prefix and strong stress on the base.

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It is worth noting that some of these prefixes (a-, be-, for-, and with-) are


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always unstressed in the words in which they occur whereas others

receive light stress in prefix + verb combinations (i.e. un-: ,undo,

,unhook; out-: ,outrun, ,outlast; over-: ,overlook, ,overtake; under-:

,understand, ,underpay). However, an exception to this general rule

occurs when the prefix functions as a noun and has the same pattern as acompound noun. As a result, the prefix tends to be strongly stressed (i.e.

forecast, outlook, overcoat, underwear, upkeep).

The second category is (2) prefixes of Latinate origin which usually

receive strong stress on the word base and not on the prefix. These

include a(d)-, com-, de-, dis-, ex-, en-, in-, ob-, per-, pre-, pro-, re-, sub-,

and sur- (i.e. complain, display, inhabit, persuade, subdivide, and so

on). We must note that, when added to verbs, unlike Germanic prefixes,

most of Latinate prefixes are unstressed when part of a verb. Among themost frequent we may mention com- (also co-, col-, con-, cor-) as in

command), dis- (i.e. disturb), pro- (i.e. protest), ex- (i.e. extend ).

Moreover, the sense-groups into which prefixes fall show a different

general pattern from the sense- groups of suffixes. According to Quirk &

Greenbaum (1973), the largest groups of prefixes in terms of meanings

are the expressions of: (1) negation, (2) privation, (3) pejorative words,

(4) degree or size, (5) attitude, (6) location, (7) time and order, and (8)

number. Other special types of prefixes include (9) conversion prefixes,

and (10) others.

4.1.1.1. Negative prefixes.

Among the most common negative prefixes, we shall mention: (1) un-,

which means the opposite of or not, and is added to adjectives and

participles (i.e. unfair, unexpected, unkind); (2) non- which means not,

and can normally be regarded as corresponding to clause negation (non-

smoker=a person who does not smoke). It is added to various classes, for

instance, nouns: non- smoker, adjectives: non-drip (paint) or verbs: non-

stop. (3) in- which has the same meaning as un-, and is added to

adjectives. It has different realizations: in- before /n/ (i.e. innate ) il-

before /l/ (i.e. illogical), im- before bilabials (i.e. impossible), and ir-

before /r/ (i.e. irrelevant). (4) dis- has the same meaning as un-, and is


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added to adjectives, verbs, and abstract nouns (i.e. disloyal, dislike,

disfavour). And finally, (5) a-, which means lacking in and is added to

adjectives and nouns (i.e. aside, asymmetry).

4.1.1.2. Reversative or privative prefixes.

Among the most common privative prefixes, we include : (1) un - which

means to reverse action and to deprive of which is added to verbs (i.e.

untie, undress); (2) de- which means to reverse action again, and is

added to verbs and abstract nouns (i.e. defrost, deforestation); and finally

(3) dis- which has the same meaning as the previous ones, and is added

to verbs, participles, and nouns (i.e. disconnect, disinterested,

discontent).

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4.1.1.3. Pejorative prefixes.

The most common pejorative prefixes are the following: (1) mis- which

means wrongly and astray, and is added to verbs, abstract nouns, and

participles (i.e. misunderstand, misconduct, misleading); (2) mal- which

means badly, is added to verbs, abstract nouns, participles, and

adjectives (i.e. malform, malfunction, malfromed, malodorous); (3)

pseudo- or quasi-, which means false, imitation is added to nouns,

adjectives (i.e. pseudo-intellectual). Other prefixes with pejorative

overtones are arch- (i.e. arch-enemy ), over- (i.e. overloaded), under -

(i.e. underminimalist), and hyper- (i.e. hypercriticized).

4.1.1.4. Prefixes of degree or size.

Among the most common prefixes of degree or size, we include: (1)

arch- which means highest, worst, and is added to nouns, mainly

humans (i.e. archduke, arch-enemy); (2) super- which means

above, more than, better, is added to nouns (i.e. superwoman,

supermarket) and adjectives (i.e. supernatural); (3) out- means to do

something faster and longer than, and is added to verbs,

Documents

Lexis. Word Formation Features in English. Prefixation, Suffixation, And Compounding