Exploring Word Formation Processes: Borrowing, Compounding, Coinage, Blending, Clipping, Back Formation, and Conversion

Word formation processes:

These are described as different ways of creating new words in a language.

Borrowing:

Borrowing is one of the word-formation processes in which one language borrows words from another language. For example, Piano from Italian, Sofa from Arabic, Dope from Dutch, and yogurt from Turkish. Sometimes this borrowing may result in a borrowing of a sound as well. For example, the voiced fricative /ʒ/ in words like pleasure and television came from borrowed French words. 

This is another type of borrowing called claque or loan- translation. In this type, a borrowed word is translated into the language, which is borrowing it. For example Superman and skyscraper.

Compounding:

Compounding is a process of combining two or more free Morphemes to create one single compound word. Compound words may be written together or with a hyphen or with a space in between. 

For example, bedroom, headphones, classroom, bathroom towel, Police car, user-friendly, ice-cold etc.

Types of compounds include: Attributive, Coordinative, and Subordinative compounds. Attributive compounds are those whose first element is a modifier of the head, which is one the right. For example, toothpaste, bathroom, phone case, etc. Coordinative compounds are those whose elements carry the same value and there is no modifier of the head. Both elements define the referent. For example, producer director, blue-green, icy cold, etc. Subordinative compounds are those compounds whose one element is either verb or derived from verbs and the other element is considered as the argument of the verb. For example, dog walker, meal preparation, exam controller, etc. 

Coinage:

In this process, a completely new word is invented. For example, Tesla, Twitter, Google, etc.

This is also another term known as eponym which is defined as a word invented after the name of a person or a place like Channel, Sandwich, etc.

Blending:

In blending, two free Morphemes are clipped or shortened and put together to form a new word. Like brunch, smog or motel. Sometimes, only one word is shortened and the other word is used as a whole like breathalyzer, workaholic, or cranapple. 

Clipping:

In this process a word is shortened or clipped and it is adopted in this short form. It does not change the meaning nor does it change the syntactic category of the word, which is shortened. For example, ad is a shortened form of advertisement and gas is a shortened form of gasoline. 

Back formation:

In this process a word of a different category is formed by reducing the word. Generally, it occurs in the case of a noun, which is reduced to form a verb. For example, Television to televise, Burglar to burgle, option to opt, etc.

Conversion:

In conversion, only the syntactic category of the word is changed mostly from nouns to verbs, and no affix is added to the word.