Cooking Up Word Formations

By: Christi Thomas 

The creation and formation of new words in our language is like “cooking up” a good recipe, with just the right ingredients (or linguistically speaking - the right combination of morphemes), one can create a delicious meal. In derivational morphology this delicious meal is just the right combination of sounds and meanings to adequately express a new idea, feeling, or circumstance.  Take a look at the list of recipes and see which word you would like to cook up. 

               List of Recipes 

Backformation 

Compounding

Abbreviations

Acronyms

Blending

Clipping

Borrowing  

Backformation 

Backformation is the process of creating a new word by removing affixes from an existing word. Simply stated, it means removing part of a word to make a new word. Sometimes backformation can be created by converting a noun into a verb. 

Remember when mixing together ingredients, you want to be sure to remove any affixes from the word.

Example:

Start with the word editor 

Remove the affix or

Final outcome: edit

 Sample Backformation Recipes:

Example: 

Start with the word editor 

Remove the affix or

Final outcome: edit

Other Backformation Recipes:

Peddler -- cut off the er -- peddle

babysitter -- cut off the er -- babysit

greedy -- cut off the y -- greed

television --- cut off the ion - televise

donation --- cut off the ion - donate

Compounding

Compounding is the process of joining  two morphemes to create a new word. 

                    Ingredients: 

                            2 free morphemes 

Variations of Compounding Recipes:

Noun + Noun 

Ex: gate + keeper = gatekeeper

Verb + Noun 

Ex: spoil + sport = spoilsport

Adverb + Verb

Ex: over + estimate = overestimate

Adjective + Noun

Ex: green + house = greenhouse

Abbreviations

The process or result of representing a word or group of words by a shorter form of the word or phrase. 

Ingredients: 

1 longer word 

To abbreviate your words, you will need to cut off and eliminate parts of the word. There are several examples of abbreviations in cooking. 

sec. is an abbreviation for second 

min. is an abbreviation for minute

gal. is an abbreviation for gallon 

doz. is an abbreviation for dozen 

Acronyms

Acronyms are formed from the first (or first few letters) of each word(s) they are based on.  They are pronounced as a word. They are generally uppercase and 4 to 6 letters in length. 

Ingredients: 

3 to 6 Capital Letters