Various types and ways of forming words

Word-formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic formulas and patterns. A distinction is made between two principal types of word–formation:

Word-derivation and Word-composition.

The basic ways of forming words in word-derivation are affixation and conversion. Affixation is the formation of new words with the help of affixes. Conversion is the formation of a new word by bringing a stem of this word into a different formal paradigm. The basic form of the original and the basic form of the derived words in case of conversion are homonymous.

Word-composition is the formation of a new word by combining two or more stems which occur in the language as free forms.

Apart from principal there are some minor types of modern word-formation: shortening, blending, acronymy, sound interchange, sound imitation, distinctive stress, back-formation.

A F F I X A T I O N

Before turning to the various processes of making words, it would be useful to analyse the related problem of the composition of words, i.e. of their constituent parts.

If viewed structurally, words appear to be divisible into smaller units, which are called morphemes.

(Morphemes do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words. Yet they possess meanings of their own.) All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots and affixes. The latter, in their turn, fall into prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word ( as in re-read, un-well) and suffixes which follow the root (as in teach-er, dict-ate).

The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme. Affixation is generally defined as the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to different types of bases. Affixation includes suffixation and prefixation.

Etymology of derivational affixes

From the etymological point of view affixes are subdivided into two main classes: native and borrowed affixes.

N a t i v e affixes are those existed in the Old English period or were formed from Old English words.

Some Native Affixes ( especially frequent native affixes)

Noun-forming suffixes	-er -ness -ing -dom -hood -ship -th -let	worker, teacher, driver painter loneliness, coldness, loveliness meaning, singing, reading, understanding freedom, kingdom, wisdom childhood, manhood, motherhood friendship, leadership, mastership health, length, truth booklet, coverlet
Adjective-forming suffixes	-full -less -y -ish -ly -en -some -like	careful, wonderful, skilful sleepless, cloudless, senseless snowy, tidy, cozy English, Spanish, stylish ugly, likely, lovely golden, silken, wooden handsome, tiresome, quarrelsome dreamlike, ladylike, cowlike
Verb-forming suffixes	-en	sadden, darken, redden
Adverb-forming suffixes	-ly	hardly, simply, warmly
Prefixes	be- mis- un- over-	befriend. befool, befog misname, misuse, mismanage unselfish, overdo, overact, overanalyze

B o r r o w e d affixes are those that have come to the English language from different foreigh languages. The affixes of foreign origin are classified according to the source into:

L a t i n	-able/-ible -ant/-ent extra- pre- ultra-	advisable, divisible servant, student extraterritorial, extracurricular pre-school, pre-election ultra-high, ultra-intelligent
G r e e k	-ist -ism -ite anti- sym-/syn-	artist, realist materialism, darwinism vulcanite anti-democratic symmetrical
F r e n c h	-age -ance/-ence -ard -ate -ee -ess en-/em-	percentage, wreckage perseverance, coherence wizard, drunkard doctorate, filtrate employee, absentee princess, authoress enlist, embed

The adoption of countless foreign words caused the appearance of many hybrid words in the English vocabulary. Hybrids are words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages. There are two basic types of forming hybrid words:

1/ a foreign base is combined with a native affix, e.g. uncertain, colourless

2/ a native base is combined with a foreign affix, e.g.drinkable, ex-wife. There are also many hybrid compounds, such as schoolboy (Greek + English), blackguard (English + French).