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TOPIC 10 – Lexicon. Characteristics of word-formation in English. Prefixation, suffixation and compounding.

Languages are complex systems of linguistic signs. As Noam Chomsky would say, they are composed of a limited set of rules which, in combination with the lexical categories, allow speakers and hearers to express a universe of meaning. In this unit, we will work on the lexical categories mentioned. However, lexicon is probably what is most particular to a language and, the word stock of a language is in constant change thanks to vocabulary gains and losses, to borrowings and calques, and to the process of word-formation are a synonym of language renewal and evolution. In this unit, a survey of different procedures for word-formation in English is proposed. The first section will deal with lexicon and, more precisely, with lexicography, the evolution of the modern dictionary and dictionaries in America. The second section will review a series of basic concepts is morphology and word-formation so as to analyse the word-formation processes implied in the creation of plurals, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. Then, the following three sections will be devoted to prefixation, suffixation and compounding.

Lexicography is the procedure which deals with arranging and describing items of vocabulary in such works as dictionaries, glossaries, thesauri, synonym guides and usage guides. Traditionally, lexicography has been divided into two types: alphabetic lexicography whose best product is the dictionary, and thematic lexicography which arranges words by topic. It is hard to ascertain what the first dictionary in history was, because we find lists of words as far back as the Middle Ages. But these lists of words were two-language dictionaries: Latin words with English translations. The first English dictionary (A table Alphabetical, by Robert Cawdrey) was published in 1603. It contained difficult words that readers might be expected to stumble over. In the second half of the seventeenth century frequent words were included too. But the great figure of lexicography in the eighteenth century was Dr. Samuel Johnson. His dictionary was intended to regulate the English language, so it contributed to the growth of lexicography and practiced separating and numbering word meaning. In the late eighteenth century, synonyms were added to the entries of dictionaries. However, the greatest lexicographical effort in England was

the Oxford English Dictionary in the nineteenth century with the inclusion of contextual evidence of the terms. In America, the great pioneer in lexicography was Noah Webster with An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).

Morphology is the domain that studies the internal construction of words. According to Plag (2002) it is the study of the ways in which new complex words are built on the basis of other words or morphemes. Brinton (2005) describes it as the means by which morphs combine or are altered to form new words. The rules by which words are construed are important for two reasons: in order to recognize the grammatical class of a word by its structure, and because they reveal a flexibility in the application of grammatical rules. According to several studies, a word is the smallest unit of syntax that has distinctive meaning and can occur by itself at the phrase level. This definition leads to the concept of word form which can be described as the concrete realization of the unit. In this sense, word form may also be used to refer to the lexeme which is the single meaningful unit regardless of the number of words it contains. A lexeme includes all inflected forms of a word. A morpheme is, according to Crystal (1985), the smallest bit of language which has a meaning. The morpheme may be equivalent to a word, but may be a smaller unit. The phonetic or orthographic realization of a morpheme is called morph. The main features of a morpheme are: it is internally indivisible, it has internal stability, it is transportable. According to the meaning we distinguish between lexical morphemes and grammatical morphemes. Lexical morphemes express lexical meaning, whilst grammatical morphemes express relations within the sentence. Focusing on form, we may classify them into free morphemes (which occur on their own) and bound morphemes (which are attached to others). The morphemes that must be attached before the central meaningful element of the word are called prefixes. The ones that follow the root are called suffix. To designate all bound morphemes, we speak of affixes. A distinction has traditionally been made between inflection and derivation. Plag (2000) summarises it in this way: “Derivation encodes lexical meaning (reduce > reduction); is not syntactically relevant; often changes the part of speech; is often semantically opaque; is often restricted in its productivity, and is not restricted to suffixation. On the other hand, inflection encodes grammatical categories (workers, works, picked); is syntactically

relevant; ca occur inside derivation, is semantically transparent; is fully productive and is always suffixational”. English, then, has several procedures for word-formation. Affixation and compounding (the combination of two bases) are the most frequent. However, there are other minor processes, which vary in their relevance: conversion (word class change), truncation or clipping (names are shortened). We also find blends, which are amalgamations of parts of different words (modem = modulator/demodulator). There are two main types of blends: acronyms (combination of the initial letters of compounds or phrases into a pronounceable new word), or abbreviations (a shortened form of a word or phrase). There is also backformation which is the reverse of affixation (editor > edit), as well as reduplicatives, eponyms, and onomatopoeic coinages. Sometimes, if not many, none of these procedures is applied, and a new word is taken up from a foreign language. Then, we speak of borrowing and loanwords. There are two numbers in English: singular, which denotes one and is also used for mass nouns and proper nouns, and plural, which denotes more than one (the dual case only remains in both, either and neither). Regarding the regular plurals, in speech, there are three different pronunciations, depending on the final sound of the base: /z/ after bases ending in sibilants (horse > horses), and after bases ending in vowels and voiced sounds other than /z/ (bed > beds). /s/ after bases ending in voiceless sounds other than /s/ (bet > bets). In spelling, the “-s” suffix is written after most nouns including nouns in silent “e” (college > colleges), but there are some exceptions such as the addition of “e” (the ending is spelled –es) after nouns ending in sibilants –s, -z, -x, -ch, -sh, -ze. Another exception is the treatment of – y: always “-ys” after vowels (day > days), and “-ies” after consonants (spy > spies). The third exception is the doubling of consonants in a few words: quiz > quizzes or in some abbreviations p-pp (pages). The regular plural suffix in “-o” has two spellings: “-os” and “-oes”. In compounds, the plural is formed in three different ways: it may be in the first element, in both first and last element, and plural in the last element. According to irregular plurals, we can classify them into five different categories: zero plural (fish, sheep, cereal), vowel alteration (woman > women), -en plural (children, oxen), foreign plurals (formulas or formulae, antennas or antennae), and voicings (bath > baths, calf >calves, house > houses). Nouns in English are formed by means of affixation (prefixation, suffixation), derivation, and compounding, as well as from other methods. Exclusive DENOMINAL prefixes are:

arch-, mini-, maxi-, step-, mal-, pro-. Nominal suffixes are often employed to derive abstract nouns from verbs (deverbal: -ing > begging, -ant > defendant, -ion > exploration) adjectives (deadjectival: -ity > curiosity, -ness > cleverness) and nouns (denominal: -ite > Israelite, -ist > violinist). Compounding has many possible combinations to form new nouns. The most frequent are: N+N (airplane, lipstick), V+N (cut-throat), A+N (soft-toy), Prt+N (afternoon), Prt+V (outcast), V+Prt (take-away), N+’s+N (bachelor’s degree), V+ing+N (spending money), N+V+-ing (handwriting), N+V (sunrise), N+V+-er (hairdresser). In order to analyse the formation of verbs we need to take into account the distinction between inflection and derivation. Regarding inflection, English verbs present a series of productive forms: present tense (3rd p sg “-s”), past tense (-ed), past participle (-ed), present participle (-ing), negation (-not / n’t). Regarding derivation, English has some available procedures in order to form new verbal forms: prefixation (be- > becalm, enendanger), suffixation (-ate > methanate, -en > strengthen, -ify > identify, -ize > legalize), compounding through N+V (skydive), A+V (whitewash), V+V (freeze-dry), Prt+V (outdo), A+N (mainstream), N+N (breath-test), V+N (shunpike). The formation of adverbs in English is more restricted than that of other word classes. In fact, only suffixation is the productive procedure for their formation. Examples of suffixes used to form new adverbs are: -ly (happily), -wards (backwards), -wise (education-wise), -style/-fashion (American-style). Adjectives are formed through inflection (comparative and superlative suffixes to express degree), prefixation (a- > afloat, astride), suffixation (-able > breakable, -al > cultural, -ary > complementary, -ed > wooded, -esque > burlesque, -ful > forgetful, -ic > economic, -ish > sharpish, -ive > explosive, -less > speechless, -ly > monthly, -ous > famous), and compounding through N+A (duty-free), A+A (bittersweet), N+N (seaside), A+N

(redneck),

V+Prt

(see-through),

N+V+-ing

(heart-breaking),

A+V+-ing

(easygoing), N+V+ -en (housebroken), A+V+ -ed (thick-skinned).

In this section, we will talk about prefixation, suffixation and compounding. According to Quirk and Greenbaum (1973), prefixes are placed before the base, and they do not generally alter its word class, except for the so-called conversion prefixes (a-, be-, en-). Prefixes fall into a number of semantic classes in English, depending upon the meaning that they contribute to the root. Thus, according to Quirk and Greenbaum (1973), and Brinton (2005), the semantic classification of English prefixes shows the following

categories: time and order (fore-, pre-, post-, ex-, re-), number (uni-, mono-, bi-, di-, tri-, multi-, poly), place (super-, sub-, inter-, trans-), degree or size (arch-, super-, out-, under, sub-, ultra-), privation (un-, de-, dis-), negation (un-, non-, dis-, a-), attitude (counter-, co, pro-, mal-). Suffixation is one of the most productive procedures for word-formation in the English language. Suffixes can be either native, coming from Old English, or borrowed during any of the periods of Latin and Greek influences over English, especially in the neoclassical period. Suffixes have two functions: to change the meaning of the root (diminutive suffixes, feminine suffixes, abstract suffixes) and to change the part of speech of the root. Some classifications of suffixes have been proposed. Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) claim that it is convenient to group them not only by the class of word they form (noun suffixes, verb suffixes, etc.), but also by the class of base to which they are added. In this sense, they distinguish between denominal (when they are added to nouns), deadjectival, and deverbal. They also state that, in general terms, English suffixes are unstressed, the only exceptions being the ending –ation. According to Brinton (2005), compounding is the combination of two or more free roots. Unlike phrases, a compound is considered a single word although it can be written as a single word or as two words. Compounds may also involve conversions and backformations. Another problem of historical interest is amalgamated compounds. These are words which in origin are compounds, but which in the course of time have become fused and no longer separable into two distinct parts (midwife). Apart from the different procedures for compounding in order to form nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adjectives, there are also compound prepositions: into, onto, because of; compound pronouns: somebody, anyone; and compound conjunction: whenever, so that. There are several activities that teachers can use to implement this unit into the classroom, for instance, we can make students find examples of real word formation in a dictionary and make up two or three wrong alternatives, e.g. “punishment”, “punishness” and “punishation”. They read them out to another group, seeing if they can fool them about which one is the real one. Something similar can also be done with written exercises where students fill the gaps with a mix of the real and wrong answers and other groups see if they can spot which is which. Word formation is an extensive, open field for research, since language continues to evolve and lexicon is probably the area where changes are more frequent. The exchange of information and data all over the world has geometrically grown in the last decades,

thanks to the Information Technologies, and the language is where this change in our lives is reflected. The unit provides a through account of the word-formation processes available in contemporary English Language; taking into account the limitations of time and space that must be considered for a competitive exam. As teachers, we may introduce this topic in the English classroom so as to make our students aware of all these processes and let them know how English language works regarding its word-formation and its evolution. In conclusion, the topic covered in this unit shows that language is not a closed, abstract system of signs which can be prescribed by academies. Instead, language is a living corpus, integrated by human beings (both living and dead). Heidegger said that language made us humans. We may add that, in fact, language is what makes us alive.

Bibliography BRINTON, L.: The Structure of Modern English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000. QUIRK, R., GREENBAUM, S., LEECH, G. and SVARTVIK, J.: A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman, 1972.