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In linguistics, back-formation is the process of forming a new word by removing actual affixes, or parts of the word that is re-analyzed as an affix, from other words to create a base. [5] Examples include: the verb headhunt is a back-formation of headhunter; the verb edit is formed from the noun editor [5]
Nonconcatenative morphology is extremely well developed in the Semitic languages in which it forms the basis of virtually all higher-level word formation (as with the example given in the diagram). That is especially pronounced in Arabic, which also uses it to form approximately 41% [5] of plurals in what is often called the broken plural.
Informally, word formation rules form "new" words (more accurately, new lexemes), and inflection rules yield variant forms of the "same" word (lexeme). The distinction between inflection and word formation is not at all clear-cut. There are many examples for which linguists fail to agree whether a given rule is inflection or word formation.
Back-formation is either the process of creating a new lexeme (less precisely, a new "word") by removing actual or supposed affixes, or a neologism formed by such a process. Back-formations are shortened words created from longer words, thus back-formations may be viewed as a sub-type of clipping .
Clipping differs from abbreviation, which is based on a shortening of the written, rather than the spoken, form of an existing word or phrase. Clipping is also different from back-formation , which proceeds by (pseudo-) morpheme rather than segment, and where the new word may differ in sense and word class from its source. [ 2 ]
Morphology is the study of word formation and structure. Words may undergo different morphological processes which are traditionally classified into two broad groups: derivation and inflection. Derivation is a process in which a new word is created from existing ones, with an adjustment to its meaning and often with a change of word class.
Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are the constituent order of a clause, namely the relative order of subject, object, and verb;
Verbification is sometimes used to create nonce words or joking words. Often, simple conversion is involved, as with formations like beer, as in beer me ("give me a beer") and eye, as in eye it ("look at it"). [clarification needed] Sometimes, a verbified form can occur with a prepositional particle, e.g., sex as in sex it up ("make it sexier").