Linguistics Word Formation

1. MAIN TYPES OF WORD BUILDING
-Awais Raza Memon
Institute of English Language and Literature
University of Sindh, Jamshoro

2. Main Types of Word Building
•Inflection
•Derivation:
(Affixation, Conversation, Compounding)

3. Inflection
• Contributes a morpheme to ensure that word is appropriate for
the given grammatical context.
• Example:
In a case, when there is third person subject and present tense.
The verb agreeing with it must take the –s ending; anything else is
forbidden.
He likes to eat. ✔
He likeing to eat.❌

4. Inflection (cont’d)
• Another example of inflection:
Monosyllabic and disyllabic adjectives with weak second syllable
must take the comparative degree of suffix –er if it is followed by
‘than’ indicating comparision.
Monosyllabic Adjectives Disyllabic adjectives
Tall – Taller than Jane ✔ Thirsty – Thirstier than John ✔
Nice – Nicer than Jane ✔ Dirty – Dirtier than John ✔
Nicest/Tallest than Jane ❌ Thirstiest/Dirtiest than John ❌

5. Inflection (Cont’d)
Feature of Obligatoriness:
The application of it depends on syntactic conditions and not on
personal preference.
a) Verbal Suffix: Function: Examples:
-s 3rd person, singl. pres. He snore-s
-ing Progressive aspect He is snor-ing
-ed Past tense He snor-ed
b) Noun Suffix: Function: Example:
-s Noun plural maker Road-s
c) Adjective Suffix: Function: Examples:
-er Comparative (N/Adj.) Slow-er, Soon-er
-est Superlative (N/Adj.) Slow-est, Soon-est
In English,
suffixes are
seen to
bring
inflection in
words.

6. Derivation
• Drive to create new lexical items using pre-
existing morphemes and words.
• To create a new lexical item (vocabulary item)
out of pre-existing material.

7. Derivation (Cont’d)
• Forms of derivation:
(a) Affixation
(b) Conversion
(c) Compounding
Derivation can add new lexical items to open word-
classes (noun, verb, adjective, adverb)

8. Derivation (Cont’d)
• AFFIXATION:
• By adding affixes, new words are formed.
• Examples:
Co- = Co-operate
-ation = regulation
-er = teacher
Derivational
Prefixes
Derivational
Suffixes
Co-
Ex-
Mis-
Re-
Un-
-ation
-er
-ment
-al

9. Derivation (Cont’d)
• CONVERSION / ZERO DERIVATION
• It is done without changing or altering the word-form.
• The existing word may realize more than one lexical item.
• Example:
a. The goat will jump over the fence.
b. What a jump!
- In sentence a. ‘jump’ is a verb.
In sentence b. ‘jump’ is used as a noun.

10. Derivation (Cont’d)
• More examples of conversion:-
From Adjective to Noun:
#Green party
#Green
##Leather Jacket
##Leather

11. Derivation (Cont’d)
• COMPOUNDING:
• NEW LEXICAL ITEM IS FORMED BY COMBINING TWO BASES.
EXAMPLES: Noun + Noun Noun + verb Adjective+verb Adjective+noun
moonlight book keeper clear-sighted easy chair
keyboard watchmaker hardworking White House
sunlight housekeeper easygoing blueprint
inkpot heart broken newborn softball

12. Derivation (Cont’d)
• Most compound words are headed.
• Head is mostly on right side.
• Head is syntactically dominant.
• Easy chair = head = chair = noun.
• Usually, syntactic head is also the semantic head, such are called
Endocentric Compounds.
• Bulldog, bedroom = type of dog, type of room.

13. The End.