Word formation is a means of deriving linguistic units in order to create a new one-word name having a semantic and formal connection with the original unit. It is an important means of supplementing vocabulary and forming specialized terms. According to Nordquist (2020) word formation refers to the ways in which new words are formed on the basis of other words or morphemes. This is also known as derivational morphology. Word formation can denote either a state or a process, and it can be viewed either diachronically (through different periods in history) or synchronically (at one particular period in time). Word formation comes in various forms, e.g., derivation and combination and in this blog, I am going to throw more light on compounding.

Compounding is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make a longer word or sign. Many compounds are nouns, but they may also be other parts of speech. Hyphens are often used when writing compounds formed from three or more separate words, such as merry-go-round. There are two types of compounds, namely, exocentric, and endocentric compounds. Compounds with a head are called endocentric compounds. The term ‘endocentric’ means that the category of the whole construction is identical to that of one of its constituents. There are also exocentric compounds for which this is not the case. (Booij, 2005). Wikipedia (2021) defines slang as a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. Slangs are formed by either combining or shortening words to create new and catchy words which have interesting pronunciations and meanings and so in this case with compounding, two words joined together will now form one main slang. Some examples are: air head, pissed off, eye-popping, couch potato, deep-pockets, fender-bender, idiot box, all- nighter, big guns, kick-back.

 

Booij, G. E. (2005). The grammar of words: an introduction to linguistic morphology (2^nd Ed.) Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0199691835, 9780199691838

Nordquist, Richard. (2020, August 27). Types of Word Formation in English. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/word-formation-1692501

Wikipedia contributors. (2021, December 7). Slang. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:59, December 13, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slang&oldid=1059100888

After going through the available topics, I still feel like I cannot outrightly choose one out of the lot and this is due to the fact that I feel I would not be able to get much information to write on. I first thought of writing on endocentric and exocentric words for my final paper where I could maybe throw more light on their meanings, how they differ from one another and perhaps examples as well as how they can be written in bracket or tree form, but I still think that would not make the cut based on the total lack of ideas. I really do enjoy writing papers and can say I am very good at it considering way complex ones I have written in the past, but I personally believe I won’t have much to write on using these topics. I also came across the topic of compounding which seems like a good one to write about because here I could also talk about how compounding came about, how words are created using compounding, the types of compound words etc. I have not been able to select the sources I will be using for the final paper simply because I am not certain about what to write on but hopefully if I decide, I will use the CSI library so I can get access to peer reviewed articles. Also, the textbook will come in handy. I will still be going through the other topics to see if I can actually find one to write on but all the same a quiz will be very much appreciated.

1. Chickpea- endo – [[chick]n [pea]n] N
2. Apple sauce- endo- [[Apple]n [sauce]n] N
3. Cornbread- endo- [[Corn]n [bread]n] N
4. Cupcake- endo- [[cup]n [cake]n] N
5. Meatloaf -exo- [[meat]n [loaf]n] N

1. Verbs to Nouns

-ment, [[X]v ment] n

Govern –> government, state –> statement, commence –>commencement

 

2. Noun to verbs

-ed, [[X]n ed] v

message–> messaged, eye –>eyed, chair –>chaired

 

3. Output word in (1) as the input to process in (2)

Government –> governmented, statement –> statemented ,commencement –> commencemented. Looking at the words I have created from using outputs and inputs from different categories, I first of all do not think they are well formed words, also they do not look and sound like already existing words. In my opinion I believe in order to change categories of words from one to another, you have to start with plain or standard words; words that have no affixes added to them and from there you can build on changing it into whatever otherwise a combination of two affixes sometimes clashes resulting in the word sounding odd.

 

 

 

From my understanding, simplex words are words which tend to stand on their own and make complete meaning out of themselves without any additional words added to them. These are usually words that cannot be broken down into other constituents. On the other hand, complex words are words that can be broken down into two constituents and do not have to be entirely meaningful. They can be made up of a simplex word too and other words which usually compliment them which are referred to as morphemes. From the list of words, we have here; forbid, forget, forgive, forgo, forswear; I believe they are complex words. This is because they can each be divided into two constituents to form morphemes. In this case, their prefix “for” is one morpheme while “bid”, “get”, “give” or “swear” is the second morpheme. Their suffixes tend to make meaning while they stand alone and can be called simplex words.