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In linguistics, morphology ( mor-FOL-ə-jee[ 1]) is the study of words, including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. [ 2][ 3] Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes, which are the smallest units in a language with some independent meaning.
Morphological derivation. Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as un- or -ness. For example, unhappy and happiness derive from the root word happy. It is differentiated from inflection, which is the modification of a word to form different ...
Back-formation. 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]
In linguistic morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation [ 1] in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness. [ 2] The inflection of verbs is called conjugation, while the inflection of nouns ...
Clipping (morphology) In linguistics, clipping, also called truncation or shortening, [1] is word formation by removing some segments of an existing word to create a synonym. [2] Clipping differs from abbreviation, which is based on a shortening of the written, rather than the spoken, form of an existing word or phrase.
Conversion (word formation) In linguistics, conversion, also called zero derivation or null derivation, is a kind of word formation involving the creation of a word (of a new part of speech) from an existing word (of a different part of speech) without any change in form, [ 1] which is to say, derivation using only zero.
v. t. e. Occurrence of reduplication across world languages. In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edward Sapir's: "generally employed, with self ...
Compound (linguistics) In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make a longer word or sign.