Word Formation Processes

1. Word
Formation
By N. Valdelomar

2. Structural Analysis of Words
• Morphological: analysis
and classification of
individual words out of
context
• Syntactical: analysis of
words as they relate to
each other in context.
Specific word function.

3. The study of morphemes, combination of sounds with meaning
Morphemes: basic units of meaning that make up words
Morphology

4. Criteria to identify the morphemes in word
To be a
morpheme
It has to have
meaning.
It has to appear
with the same
meaning in other
words.

5. morphemes
affix
prefix
suffix
root
All words are either single morphemes (act) or combination of
morphemes (actively).
All morphemes are either roots (act) or affixes (-ive, -ly).

6. What is a ROOT?
• Roots are morphemes that provide words with their essential or main
meanings.
• Roots can be words on their own.
• The root meaning of a word never changes no matter what prefixes
(beginnings of words) or suffixes (endings of words) are added to it.
• It cannot be divided further into meaningful parts
e.g., farm, farmer, farming
write, writer, writing, prewriting

7. What is a suffix?
A SUFFIX is a morpheme that follows the root. Most suffixes tell
you less about word meaning and more about word function,
changing adjectives to nouns or nouns to adverbs.
e.g., dry and dryness; grace and gracefully.
What is a prefix?
A PREFIX is a morpheme that precedes the root. Prefixes
don't affect a word's core meaning, but they do modify the
word's meaning as a whole,
e.g., social and antisocial; annual and biannual.

8. Bound and Free Morphemes
• Some morphemes can stand alone (free).
• Some others cannot (bound). That’s what affix means.
• In this word, only the first morpheme is free, the other two are
bound.
act ive ly

9. Bound and Free Morphemes
re elect
re flect tion
In this word, only the second morpheme is free, the first is bound.
In this word, even the root is bound, because “flect” is not a word that
can stand alone.

10. Derivational
Affixes
• The term derivational refers to a change
that a word undergoes when a derivational
morpheme is added: either the meaning of
the word changes or the class (the part of
the speech) changes, or both.
• active – inactive : a new meaning is
derived
• active - action: a new class of word is
derived

11. Inflections
• Inflections are grammatical endings that
show aspects related to the plural of the
noun, past tense, possessive, 3rd person
singular in the present tense, or
comparative and superlative forms of the
adjective.
• These endings ARE NOT word building
forms because they do not change the
category of the word (or part of the speech)
or the meaning of the word.

12. MORPHEMES
root affix
prefix
derivational
suffix
derivational inflectional

13. If we know the form of
the word , we can get
closer to its meaning.

14. The Form of a Word as a Clue to Meaning
Some words are formed by adding prefixes and suffixes to the root.
suffixes
prefixes roots
If you know the root , you can guess the meaning of longer words.

15. Example:
break
un able
not Having the ability
=
cannot be broken

16. Guess the meaning of the underlined words
1. Work:
• a worker
• a workable plan
• an unworkable plan
• a man who overworks
2. Read:
• a reader
• a readable book
• an unreadable book
• to reread the book
• to misread a book

17. Guess the
meaning of
each of the
underlined
words
Be careful about
what you do.
Different things may
happen in the future.
One can never
foresee the results.
The workers in that
factory work
sixteen hours a day
for only three
dollars. They say
that they are
overworked and
underpaid.

18. Compound Nouns
Compounding is another way of building up words. It consists of joining
two or more than two nouns together. This single multiple noun unit is
a compound noun and is solely constitued by nouns.
• Two nouns:
joined hyphenated separated
cardboard
toothbrush
lid-opener
fund-raiser
health care
desk lamp

19. • Three nouns:
• Compound nouns constituted of more than three nouns are built
according to the needs of discourse, composition or conventions:
hyphenated separated
screenwriter-director
animal-protection societies
computer terminal software
World Press Group
Four nouns Music school student hall
Five nouns Music school student hall entrance
Six nouns (rare) Music school student hall entrance door
Seven nouns (rare) Music school student hall entrance doorknob