Lecture 5: Word formation processes
Mental Lexicon
language is a stream of sounds and the only pauses are made for breathing. It is our knowledge of language and our mental lexicon that allow us to understand the sense of the sound flow
/mental lexicon – like dictionary with words in our mind/
sounds are a source of humour which/(with), Adelina Moore/(add a line more), Ineeda Czech/(I need a check)
Content words and function words
content words – nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs (bright, flower, flour)
They are open class words (można dodać jakieś nowe słowo, np. związane z rozwojem technologii t.j. Internet)
function words – conjunctions (and, but) prepositions (in, out) articles (a, an, the) and pronouns (I, she, he) – they specify grammatical relations and have little meaning
They are closed class words (nie można np. dodać nowych zaimków)
Words in our brain
our brain treats content and function words differently
Some brain-damaged patients have greater difficulty in using, understanding and reading function words even though they may have the same pronunciation as content words (e.g. in/inn, which/witch)
(nasz mózg umie rozpoznawać content i function words, różnicę między nimi)
Morpheme
is a minimal, meaningful unit that can’t be decomposed e.g.
un – happy
im – possible
The study of internal structure of words is called morphology (morph – ology (prefix – suffix))
girl 1
girlfriend 2 ile tu jest morfemów
boyish 2
gentlemanliness 4
Free and bound morphemes
free morphemes: are words themselves (boy, girl)
bound morphemes: are always part of words and never words themselves, they affixes: prefixes (pre-mature) and suffixes (fly-ing). Infixes are morphemes that occur in other (abso – bloomin – lutely from “My Fair Lady”). Circumfixes occur around stems or roots.
Roots and stems
morphologically complex words consist of a root and stems
root = a content morpheme that cannot be analysed into smaller parts (“paint” in “painters”)
stem = a root morpheme combined with an affix (chomsky-an, un-system-atic)
Word formation rules / morphological rules (examples)
adjective + ify = verb
pure – purify, false – falsify, simple – simplify
verb + (c)action = noun
simplify – simplification, falsification
bound morphemes: ify and c(ation) are called derivational morphemes and they are used to form derived words
some morphological rules are very productive – they can be used freely to form new words
Words coinage
coined words are words created to fit some purpose (Kleenex, Kodak)
eponyms words coined from proper names (e.g. sandwich was coined from Earl of Sandwich)
Back formations
words may be formed in the course of incorrect morphological analysis
back formation produces “reduced” words (verbs hawk, suindle come from hawker, suindler)
Compounds
are two or more words joined together (bittersweet, landlord)
Blends
are also words joined together but additionally the words are reduced (smoge = smoke + fog, brunch = breakfast + lunch, motel = motor + hotel)
Reduced words: clipping, acronyms, alphabetic abbreviations
clipping – abbreviation of longer words (prof for professor, gym for gymnasium)
acronyms – words derived from the initials of several words
(UFO – unifentified flying object,
NHS – National Health System)