Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Investigation and description of processes and rule-governed formation of new complex words on the basis of already existing linguistic resources. Depending on the areas of interest, word formation looks at the structure of the vocabulary from a historical-genetic or synchronic-functional aspect. The following are the main tasks of word formation: (a) classification of the elements of word formation, such as simple or complex words, base morphemes, derivational elements (
affix, prefix, suffix); (b) description of the types and models according to which the formations can be ordered structurally; (c) description of the semantic aspects of the processes involved in word formation.
Word formation deals with the description of the structure of both nonce words and neologisms ( occasional vs usual word formation) as well as of set words (usual form, lexicalization). These must be viewed as two sides of the same phenomenon, for new words can arise only according to the already existing prototypes in the lexicalized vocabulary of the language. The greatest part of all word formations can be subsumed under derivation (the creation of new words through suffixes of a specific word class: read+er, read+ing, read +able), prefixation (attachment of a bound prefix to a free morpheme (un+readable, mis +interpret), composition (compounds of several free morphemes: fire+man, bath+room), and conversion2 (the change of word class of a stem: camp (noun)>camp (verb). Clippings, abbreviations, and blends are seen as peripheral processes of word formation.
The decision about the role of word formation in the framework of a comprehensive grammar is dependent on the given presupposed language theory: since complex words on the one hand have typical lexical word characteristics (e.g. they are subject to lexicalization and demotivation), but on the other hand in part show similarities with regularities of sentence formation (relations of paraphrase, recursiveness), the issues of word formation touch upon morphology and syntax, on the formal side, and semantics, lexicology, and pragmatics. on the content side. Such different interpretations of word formation find their expression in the lexicalist vs transformationalist hypothesis particularly clearly, but also in more recent studies on word syntax.
References
Adams, V. 1973. An introduction to modern English word formation. London.
Anderson, S. 1992. A-morphous morphology. Cambridge:
Bauer, L. 1983. English word-formation. London.
Bybee, J. 1985. Morphology. Amsterdam.
Clark, E.V. and H.H.Clark. 1979. When nouns surface as verbs. Language 55.767–811.
Di Sciullo, A.M. and E.Williams. 1987. On the definition of word. Cambridge, MA.
Downing, P. 1977. On the creation and use of English compound nouns. Language 53.810–42.
Dowty, D. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht.
Hammond, M. and M.Noonan (eds) Theoretical morphology. New York.
Jackendoff, R. 1975.
Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon. Lg 51.639–71.
Kastovsky, D. 1978. Wortbildung und Semantik. Düsseldorf, Bern and Munich.
Krahe, H. and W.Meid. 1967. Germanische Sprachwissenschaft, vol. 3: Wortbildungslehre. Berlin.
Lieber, R. 1981. On the organization of the lexicon. Bloomington, IN.
——1983. Argument linking and compounds in English. LingI 14.251–85.
——1992. Deconstructing morphology. Chicago, IL.
Lipka, L. 1972. Semantic structure and word formation: verb-particle constructions in contemporary English. Munich.
Marchand, H. 1960. The categories and types of present-day English word-formation. Munich. (2nd edn 1966.)
Matthews, P. 1974. Morphology. Cambridge. (2nd edn 1991.)
Selkirk, E. 1982. The syntax of words. Cambridge, MA
Spencer, A. 1991. Morphological theory. Cambridge.
Stein, G. 1973. English word-formation over two centuries. Tübingen.
Generative views
Aronoff, M. 1976. Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA.
Scalise, S. 1984. Generative morphology. Dordrecht. (2nd edn 1986.)
Bibliography
Seymour, R.K. 1968. A bibliography of word formation in the Germanic languages. Durham, NC.
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