Form Five English: WORD FORMATION (Topic)

Word Formation: Understanding the Process of Creating New Words

Introduction to Word Formation

Word formation is a branch of morphology that studies the principles and processes governing the creation of new words in a particular language. This involves the combination of morphemes and other linguistic elements to build new words. Morphological processes play a significant role in this, where roots or stems receive inflectional or derivational elements (affixes) to form new words.

Morphology

Morphology is a sub-branch of linguistics that deals with the study of morphemes, their different forms (allomorphs), and how these units combine to form words. It also studies the structure and arrangement of words in a dictionary. Essentially, morphology is the study of word formation and dictionary use.

Key Definitions

1. Morpheme: The smallest grammatical or lexical unit in a language’s structure, which may form a word or part of a word.
   • Examples:
     • “nation” → “national,” “international,” “internationally,” “nationalization”
     • “kind” → “kindness,” “unkind,” “unkindness”
     • “take” → “takes,” “taken,” “taking”
     • “discuss” → “discussion,” “discussions”
2. Word: The minimal or smallest unit in a sentence structure, capable of constituting an utterance or sentence on its own. Words are typically formed by one or several morphemes.
   • Example: “Yesterday I met him at Tabata” (6 words)
3. Stem: The part of a word that exists before any inflectional affixes are added. It can take inflectional morphemes.
   • Examples:
     • “cat” → “cats”
     • “worker” → “workers”
     • “winne” → “winners”
     • “short” → “shorter”
     • “friendship” → “friendships”
4. Base: Any unit to which affixes can be added.
   • Examples:
     • “play” in “playful” and “playfulness”
     • “instruct” in “instruction,” “instructor,” and “re-instruct”
   • Note: All roots can be bases, but not all bases are roots.
5. Root: The basic part of a word that carries lexical meaning corresponding to a concept, object, or idea and cannot be split further. Roots can be joined to other roots or take affixes.
   • Examples: “man” → “manly,” “household,” “big”
6. Affix: A morpheme attached to a stem to form a new word, possibly changing its meaning or grammatical category. Affixes can be prefixes (added before the stem), infixes (added within the stem), or suffixes (added after the stem).
   • Examples:
     • Prefix: “disconnect,” “illogical,” “unhappy,” “empower”
     • Suffix: “mismanagement,” “beautiful,” “dismissal,” “kingdom”
7. Allomorph: Different forms of the same morpheme, representing various grammatical functions.

Classification of Morphemes

Morphemes are classified based on their occurrence, meaning, and function into two major types:

1. Free Morphemes: Can stand alone as separate words in a sentence.
   • Lexical Morphemes: Carry the content of the message (e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs).
     • Examples: “house,” “attend,” “large,” “tomorrow”
   • Functional Morphemes: Represent grammatical functions (e.g., pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions).
     • Examples: “he,” “under,” “and”
2. Bound Morphemes: Cannot stand alone and are attached to free morphemes.
   • Derivational Morphemes: Form new words with different meanings or grammatical categories.
     • Examples: “unhappy,” “illogical,” “impossible,” “empower”
   • Inflectional Morphemes: Change grammatical form without altering meaning or word class.
     • Examples: “finished,” “lorries,” “oxen,” “smaller,” “smallest”

Functions of Morphemes

Morphemes serve three major functions directly linked to their types:

1. Base-Form Function: Free morphemes form the bases or roots of words.
   • Example: “tree,” “after,” “along”

Task

1. Write ten words that are bases but not roots.
2. Identify the inflectional affixes, derivational affixes, roots, base, and stems in the following words: “faiths,” “faithfully,” “unfaithful,” “faithfulness,” “bookshops,” “window-cleaners,” “hardships.”

Understanding word formation and morphology is essential in studying language structure and development. This knowledge helps in comprehending how new words are created and how they function within the language.