词汇学（8）Word Formation Ⅴ Other Methods

Delvinancey
2021年2月6日

词汇学（8）Word Formation Ⅴ Other Methods

Blending

Blending is the formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word and vice versa. Words formed as such are called blends and portmanteau words. Blending is a very productive process and many coinages resulting from blending have become well-established. Moreover, they even serve as models for new informations. Structurally, blends fall into four major categories.

head+tail

head+head

head+word

word+tail

Blends are mostly used in writing related to science and technology, and newspapers and magazines. Though many of them have already achieved currency in English, they are still considered by serious-minded person to be slang and informal. Therefore its adviable not to use such words often in formal writing.

Clipping

Another common way of making a word is to shorten or clip a longer word, known as clipping. It is the formation of new words bu cutting a part off the original and using what remains instead. In modem time, people tend to be economical in sppech and writing tokeep up with the tempo of the new life style. To save time one is likely to clip words that are frequently used. There are four common types of clipping.

Front clipping

Back clipping

Front and back clipping

Phrase clipping

Acronymy

Acronymy is the process of forming new words by joining the initial letters of composite names of social and political organizations or phrases used as technical terms. Words formed in this way are called acronyms, which can be subdivided into initialisms(alphabettisms) and acronyms depending on the pronounciaton of the words.

Innitialisms(alphabetisms)

Letters representing full words

Letters representing constituents in a compound or just part of the word

Acronyms

A true acronym is a word formed from initial leeters but pronounced as a normal word. The method of acronymy is a real liguistic innovation of the 20th century and seem to have originated spontaneously in the military jargon og the First World War. It remains a favorite with the military, but it is now also used by others.
E.g.

Back-formation

Back formation is considered to be the opposite process of the suffixation. Therefore back-formation is the method of creating words by removing the supposed suffixes. socalled because many of the removed endings are not suffixes but inseperable parts of the words. Back-formation usually invovles the following types ofthe words.

Abstract nouns

Agential nouns

Compound nouns and others

Adjectives

Sound Reduplication

Sound reduplication is the formation of compound words by repeating the same element with little or no change. Words made in this way are knowns as reduplicatives. Semantically, these words can be classified into four groups.

Words to imitate pure sounds

E.g. tick-tuck, ha ha ha, bow-wow

Words to suggest alternating movements

E.g. ping-pong, seesaw, flip-flop

Words to diaparage

E.g. miz-maze, dilly-dally, hocus-pocus

Words to intensify

E.g. teeny-weeny, tip-top, super-cluper

Commonization of Proper Names

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