Chapter 10 : Pragmatics

 Chapter 5: The Word Formation

Source: The Study of Language(book)

Introduction:         Language , as a whole , never stops evolving and keeps on adding new contents to itself . English is no exception , adding new words as time goes on . The problem is words, new words as one and every word as whole , will need to be pronounced and wrote down at some points, but for now we will stress the pronounce part.

•  Neologisms 

     Around 1900, in New Berlin, Ohio, a department-store worker named J. Murray Spangler invented a device that he called an electric suction sweeper. This became very popular among people worldwide. And it could have been made a new entire set of words belonging to the " spangler " branch . However, none of that happened. Instead, Mr. Spangler sold his new invention to a local businessman called William H. Hoover who later changed the previiuosly known "spangler" into the now known " hoover " or " hoovering " .

•  Etymology 

      The study of the origin and history of a word is known as its etymology , a term which, like many of our technical words, originated from Latin but further rooted in Greek (étymon “original form” + logia “study of”), and is not to be confused with entomology with the same origin of Greek .Greek and Latin are the sources of many English words, often providing alternative ways to describe things, such as mono- from Greek (mono-cycle) and uni- from Latin (uni-cycle). The other major source, Germanic, provides an alternative form one- (one-wheeled cycle)

        Looking back , we would see many weird ways that a word became a word in a language. Back then a lot of words in daily use today were, at one time, considered barbaric misuses of the language. It is difficult now to understand the views expressed in the early nineteenth century over the “tasteless innovation” of a word like handbook, or the horror expressed by a London newspaper in 1909 over the use of the newly coined word aviation.

        Rather than act as if the language is being debased, losing its own culture , viewing the constant evolution of new words and new uses of old words as a vital insurance , a creative way of enriching and shaping language to the needs of the users.

• Borrowing

         The most common sources of new words in English is the process simply labeled borrowing, is basically taking over of words from other languages. Throughout its history, the English language has adopted a vast number of words from other languages, including these examples: 

                Sometimes a new sound comes along along with new wordsThe voiced fricative /ʒ/ became part of English through borrowed French words such as meas ure and rouge .

Of course, other countries borrow terms from English, as in the Japanese use of suupaa or suupaamaaketto (“supermarket”) and taipuraitaa (“typewriter”).

                In Brazilian Portuguese, the English words up and nerd have been borrowed and turned into verbs for the new activities upar (“to upload”) and nerdear (“to surf the internet”)

•     Loan-translation

                A special type of borrowing is described as loan-translation or calque (/kælk/). In this process, there is a direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language.The English word superman is thought to be a loan-translation of the German  " Übermensch ".The term loanword itself as well is believed to have come from the German " Lehnwort ".

•   Compounding

             In some of the examples we have just considered, there is a joining of two separate words to produce a single form.Thus, Lehn and Wort are combined to produce Lehnwort in German. This combining process, technically known as compounding , is a very common practice in variuos languages such as Spain or French

            

              Common English compounds are bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket and waterbed. All these examples are nouns, but we can also create compound adjectives (good-looking, low-paid) and compounds of adjective (fast) plus noun (food) as in a fast-food restaurant or a full-time job.

                This very productive source of new terms has been well documented in English and German, but can also be found in totally unrelated languages, such as Hmong (spoken in Laos and Vietnam), which has many recently created compounds.

• Blending

                    The combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term is also present in the process called blending . Blending, we typically take only the beginning of one word and join it to the end of the other word.Some common examples of blending are bit (binary/digit), brunch (breakfast /lunch), motel (motor/hotel), telecast (television/broadcast), Oxbridge (Oxford/Cambridge) for both universities considered together and the Chunnel (Channel/tunnel) connecting England and France.

In a few blends, we combine the beginnings of both words, as in terms from information technology, such as telex (teleprinter/exchange) or modem (modulator/demodulator).

• Clipping

                     The element of reduction that is noticeable in blending is even more apparent in the process described as clipping .This occurs when a word of more than one syllable  is reduced to a shorter form , usually beginning in casual speech. The term gasoline is still used, but most people talk about gas, using the clipped form. English speakers also like to clip each other’s names, as in Al, Ed, Liz, Mike, Ron, Sam, Sue and Tom. There must be something about educational environments that encourages clipping because so many words get reduced, as in chem, exam, gym, lab, math, phys-ed, poly-sci, prof and typo...

• Hypocorisms

                         A particular type of reduction, favored in Australian and British English, produces forms technically known as hypocorisms . In this process, a longer word is reduced to a single syllable, then -y or -ie is added to the end, making words such as movie (“moving pictures”) and telly (“television”) or  Aussie (“Australian”), barbie (“barbecue”), bickie (“biscuit”), bookie (“bookmaker”), brekky (“breakfast”).

• Backformation

                          A very specialized type of reduction process is known as backformation . Typically, a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (usually a verb). A good example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into use and then the verb televise was created from it.

                        One very regular source of backformed verbs in English is based on the common pattern work – worker. The assumption seems to have been that if there is a noun ending in-er (or something close in sound), then we can create a verb for what that noun-er does.

• Conversion

                          A change in the function of a word, as for example when a noun comes to be used as a verb (without any reduction), is generally known as conversion. Other labels for this very common process are “category change” and “functional shift.” These forms are readily accepted, but some conversions, such as the noun impact used as a verb, seem to impact some people’s sensibilities rather negatively.  Such examples are bottle, butter, chair and vacation have come to be used, through conversion, as verbs: We bottled the home-brew last night; Have you buttered the toast?; Someone has to chair the meeting; They’re vacationing in Florida.

                         The conversion process is very productive in Modern English, with new uses occurring frequently .The conversion can involve verbs becoming nouns, with guess, must and spy as the sources of a guess, a must and a spy. Also phrasal verbs (to print out, to take over) also become nouns (a printout, a takeover). One complex verb combination (want to be) has become a new noun, as in " He isn’t in the group, he’s just a wannabe ".

                            Verbs (see through, stand up) can also become adjectives, as in see-through material or a stand-up comedian.A number of adjectives, as in a dirty floor, an empty room, some crazy ideas and those nasty people, have become the verbs to dirty and to empty, or the nouns a crazy and the nasty

                             Some compound nouns have assumed other functions, exemplified by the ball park appearing in a ball-park figure (as an adjective) or asking someone to ball-park an estimate of the cost (as a verb).