Types of Forming Words

1. TYPES OF FORMING WORDS Word-formation is the process of creating new words from the material available in the word- stock according to certain structural and semantic patterns specific for the given language. Driver = v+-er (a verbal stem + the noun- forming suffix –er). The meaning of Driver - the meaning of the stem drive- ‘to direct the course of a vehicle’ and the suffix -er meaning ‘an active agent’: a driver is ‘one who drives’ (a carriage, motorcar, railway engine, etc.).  

Classification of English Word-Building Morphological word-building which is characterized by a change in morphological structure Syntactico-morphological word-building is the one where both morphological and syntactical features of the word are changed. Syntactical word-building is the one where a combination of words semantically and structurally isolated is used to form a word without any changes in the syntactico- semantic relations.

Morphological word-building 1) affixation (e.g. lucky – unlucky; happy – unhappy); 2) morphological compounding (e.g. speedometer, hogshead – большая бочка); 3) shortening (e.g. fantasy – fancy, vacation – vac, MP, СIS); 4) sound-interchange (e.g. live– life, blood – bleed, sing – song);

Morphological word-building 5) stress-interchange (e.g.´ present – pre´sent, ´conduct – con´duct); 6) back-formation (e.g. baby-sitter > baby- sit); 7) reduplication (e.g. murmur, bye-bye, blah-blah); 8) blending (e.g. blue + green > bleen, crazy + drunk > crunk); 9) onomatopoeic words (e.g. a snake > hiss)

Syntactico-morphological word-building 1) juxtapositional compounding (e.g. girl-friend, snow-white); 2) substantivation of adjectives (e.g. the poor, the rich); 3) lexicalization of the plural of nouns (e.g. lines = poetry); 4) conversion (water – to water; garden – to garden, wine – to wine).

Syntactical word-building 1.Syntactic compounding: bread-and-butter, Jack-of-all-trades, forget-me-not, melt-in-the-mouth (cookies) 2. Mondegreen a napron / an apron 3. Oronym The good can decay many ways. The good candy came anyways.

PRODUCTIVITY Highly-productive (affixation, compounding, shortening, conversion, substantivation) Semi-productive (back-formation, reduplication, blending, lexicalization of the plural of nouns, sound- imitation) Non-productive (sound-interchange, stress-interchange).

Affixation Affixation is commonly defined as the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to stems. Affixation includes prefixation, i.e. forming new words with the help of prefixes, and suffixation, i.e. forming new words with the help of suffixes. Affixation, or derivation, has been productive at every period of development of the English language.

AFFIXATION Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes, which usually modify the lexical meaning of the base and transfer words to a different part of speech. Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes, which are derivational morphemes, affixed before the derivational base.

PRODUCTIVE AND NON-PRODUCTIVE AFFIXES The word-forming activity of affixes may change in the course of time. Thus, productive affixes are those used to form new words in this particular period of language development.

Some productive affixes Noun-forming suffixes: -er (manager), -ing (playing), -ness (darkness), -ism1 (materialism), -ist (parachutist), -ism (realism), - -ancy (redundancy), -ry (gimmickry), -or (reactor), - ics (cybernetics). Adjective-forming suffixes  -y (tweedy), -ish (smartish), -ed (learned), -able (tolerable), -less (jobless), -ic (electronic). Adverb-forming suffixes -ly (equally) Verb-forming suffixes -ize/-ise (realise), -ate (oxidate), -ify (qualify). Prefixes un- (unhappy), re- (reconstruct), dis- (disappoint)

Non-productive affixes are the affixes which are not able to form new words in this particular period of language development Noun-forming suffixes  -th (truth), -hood (sisterhood), -ship (scholarship). Adjective-forming suffixes -ly (sickly), -some (tiresome), -en (golden), - ous (courageous), -ful (careful) Verb-forming suffix -en (strengthen)

FREQUENCY OF OCCURRENCE the existence in the vocabulary of a great number of words containing the affix in question. An affix may occur in hundreds of words, but if it is not used to form new words, it is not productive, for instance, the adjective suffix –ful.