Derivation

Word Formation Processes

Word formation covers research on:

• How words have been made in the English language (diachronic approach)
• Processes that are used frequently in creating new words (neologisms) in present-day English (synchronic approach)

HISTORICAL RELEVANCE OF WORD FORMATION PROCESSES

Word formation processes can be classified as:

• Productive –synchronically active in making new words
• Non-productive – having diachronic value, relatively passive in making new words

FREQUENCY OF WF PATTERNS

• Normally, the frequency of an event is the number of times it happens during a particular period;
• The frequency of WF patterns is their quantity in different texts;
• For example, the adj - making suffix – ous is not productive, but frequent in the scientific texts, in particular, chemical texts;
• Patterns with the suffix –eme are more frequent in linguistic texts: phoneme, seme, phraseme, etc.

DERIVATIONAL STRUCTURE

• Word-derivation is a word-formation process by which a new word is built from a stem – usually through the addition of an affix – that changes the word class and / or basic meaning of the word.
• Derivational structure - the nature, type and arrangement of the ICs of the word.
• Derivational relations are the relations between words with a common root but of different derivational structure.
• According to the derivational structure all words fall into two big classes: simplexes, or non-derived words, and complexes or derivatives.

HISTORICAL CHANGEABILITY OF WORD-STRUCTURE

• Process of simplification:
• root-morphemes may turn into affixational or semi-affixational morphemes - childhood;
• polymorphic words may become monomorphic – lady, lord, daisy;
• compound words may be transformed into derived or even simple words.