Words and word-formation processes

The Study of Language by George Yule (2006)

New Words
Neologism: a new word
Etymology: the study of the origin and history of words
Coinage: the invention of new words (e.g. xerox)
Eponym: a word derived from the name of a person or place (e.g. sandwich)
Loan translation: a type of borrowing in which each element of a word is translated into the borrowing language, also called calque
Borrowing: the process of taking words from other languages
Compounding: the process of combining two (or more) words to form a new word (e.g. waterbed)
Blending: the process of combining the beginning one word and the end of another word to form a new word (e.g. brunch from breakfast and lunch)
Clipping: the process of reducing a word of more than one syllable to a shorter form (e.g. ad from advertisement)
Hypocorism: a word-formation process in which a longer word is reduced to a shorter form with-y or –ie at the end
Backformation: the process of reducing a word such as a noun to shorter version and using it as a new word such as a verb (e.g. babysit from babysitter)
Conversion: the process of changing the function of a word, such as a noun to a verb, as a way of forming new words, also known as ‘category change’ or ‘functional shift’ (e.g. vacation in They’re vacationing in Florida.)
Derivation: the process of forming new words by adding affixes
Infix: a morpheme that is inserted in the middle of a word (e.g. –rn- in the Kamhmu word srnal)
Porpheme: a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function
Analogy: o process of forming a new word to be similar in some way to and existing word

Study questions
1 The origin of the word nitwit is the colloquial Dutch ‘Ik niet weet’, meaning ‘I don’t know’.
2 a)&b) borrowing with sound modification c) calque
3 a) Absobloominlutely! (infix) b) doc, vet (clipping) c) skateboards (compounding), kickass (compounding, conversion) d) AIDS (acronym) e) parties (conversion) f) Xerox (coinage) g) sofa (borrowing), comfy (hypocorism)
4 prefixes: dis-, in-, re-, un- suffixes: -less, -ness, -ment, -ive, -able, -ful
5 srnal
6 a) FedEx (blending+conversion) b) car-phone (clipping+compounding) c) carjackings (blending+compounding) d) karaokenight (borrowing+compounding) e) hoover (eponym+conversion)