UMDATUL KHOIROT, S.Hum., M.Pd.

WORD
Orthographic: a word is what occurs between spaces in writing.
Semantic: a word has semantic coherence; it expresses a unified

semantic concept.
Phonological:

Potential pause: a word occurs between potential pauses in

speaking .
Stress: a word spoken in isolation has one and only one primary
stress.

Morphological: a word has an international cohesion and is

indivisible by other units; a word may be modified only

externally by the addition of suffixes and prefixes.
Grammatical: words fall into particular classes.
Syntactic: a word has external distribution or mobility; it is
moved as unit, not in parts.

Types of words
A simple word. It has one free root, e.g. hand
A complex word. It has a free root and one or more

bound morphs, e.g. unhappy

A compound word. It has two free roots, e.g. handbook
A compound-complex word. It has two free roots and
associated bound morphs, e.g. handwriting

WORD FORMATION
Word formation denotes to the process of creation of new lexical units.
There are numerous word formation process:
1.
Reduplication. It is a process similar to derivation, in which the

initial syllable or the entire word is doubled, exactly or with a slight

phonological change.
In English, reduplication is often used in childrens language (e.g.
boo-boo, choo-choo) or for humorous or ironic effect (e.g. goodygoody, pooh-pooh).
Three different kinds of reduplication can be identified:
a. Exact reduplication, e.g. papa, mama, so-so
b. Ablaut reduplication in which the vowel alternates while the
consonants are identical, e.g. zig-zag, ping-pong, tick-tock
c. rhyme reduplication in which the consonants change while the
vowel remains the same, e.g. hodge-podge, boogie-woogie, nittygritty.

WORD FORMATION (continuation)

2. Compounding. It is the combination of two or more free roots
(plus associated affixes).
English orthography is indeterminate because compounds can
be written as a single word or as two words, hyphenated or not.
Example: icecream, ice cream, ice-cream.
3. Blending. It involves two processes of word formation,
compounding and clipping. Two free words are combined and
blended, usually by clipping off the end of the first word and
the beginning of the second word, although sometimes one or
the other morpheme is left intact. Blending sometimes called
portmanteau words. Examples:
sm(oke) + (f)og : smog
mo(tor) + (ho)tel: motel
tw(ist) + (wh)irl: twirl

WORD FORMATION (continuation)

4. Conversion or functional shift. It is the conversion of one part of
speech to another without the addition of a suffix. It is
sometimes said that zero () derivational suffix is added
(since it is usual for derivational suffixes to change the part of
speech, as discussed above). The only concrete change that
may occur in a functional shift is a change in stress. The
functional shift can be found in English:
a. V to N e.g. (a) run, drive, walk, cut, look
b. N to V e.g. (to) man, head, contact, ship, mail
c. A to V e.g. (to) weary, better, empty, dirty, bare
d. N to A e.g. blue-collar (worker), plant (supervisor), paper
(shredder), head (bookkeeper)
e. A to N (the) rich, poor, (a) daily, double, given
f. Prt to V e.g. (to) down, up, off, thwart

WORD FORMATION (continuation)

5. Back formation. In back formation, speakers derive a
morphologically simple word from a form which they
analyze, on the basis of derivational and inflectional
patterns existing in English, as a morphologically
complex word. So, it is a process in which a word changes
its form and function. Examples:
typewriter typewrite
emotion emote
sedative sedate
Paramedical paramedic
enthusiasm enthuse

WORD FORMATION (continuation)

6. Shortening. There are three types of shortening:
a. acronyms (the initial letters of words in a phrase are pronounced as a
word). Examples: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), AIDS
(Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), sonar (SOund NAvigation
Ranging), radar (RAdio Detecting And Ranging), laser (Light Amplification
by Stimulated Emission of Radiation)
Note that acronyms are always in order to produce a word in which conforms to
English phonotactics.
b. initialisms (the initial letters of words in a phrase are pronounced as
letters). Examples: a.m., p.m., B.C
c. clipped forms. A clipping is the result of deliberately dropping part of a
word, usually either the end or the beginning, or less often both, while
retaining the same meaning and same word class. Examples:
Dropping the end: mike (microphone), fan (fanatic), porn (pornography)
dropping beginning: car (motorcar), venture (adventure), cello (violoncello)
dropping beginning and the end: flu (influenza), fridge (refrigerator), shrink
(head-shrinker)

WORD FORMATION
7. Root creation (coinage). The rarest form of word
formation is root creation, the invention of an
entirely new root morpheme. Examples: meow
(onomatopeic), squeak (natural sounds), quark
(process), aspirin (name of product), volt (name of
person).
8. Borrowing. It is taking a word from one language and
incorporating it into another. Examples: boxer,
ozone, biology (German); jackal, kiosk, yogurt
(Turkish),;pistol, robot (Czech)

WORD FORMATION
9. Derivation. It is the addition of a derivational affix (a prefix, a suffix,
and, in some languages, an infix).
the addition of a derivational affix to a root produces a new word
with one or more of the following changes:
a. a phonological change (including stress change), e.g. reduce
(reduction), clear (clarify), include (inclusive).
b. an orthographic change to the root, e.g. pity (pitiful), happy
(happiness), deny (denial).
c. a semantic change, which may be fairly complex, e.g. husband
(husbandry), post (postage), recite (recital).
d. a change in word class. Examples: flower (N) flowery (A),
happy (A) happiness (N), child (N) childhood (N), work (V)
worker (N), priority (N) prioritize (V), simple (A) simplify (V),
support (V) supportive (A), green (A ) greenish (A), quick (A)
quickly (Adv), home (N) homeward (Adv)

WORD
IDIOMS.
A final consideration in regard to words is the existence of
special kinds of phrases called idiom. An idiom is a
sequence of words which functions as a single unit ; it is
syntactically fixed and semantically conventionalized.
Examples:
sit tight
hit the road
take heart
add fuel to the fire
be dead to the world
let the cat out of the bag

References
Brinton, Laurel J. 1980. The Structure of Modern

English: A Linguistic Introduction. Philadelphia: John

Benjamin Publishing Company.
Kracht, Marcus. Introduction to linguistics (e-book)
Nursamsu. 2009. Introduction to Linguistics.
Tulungagung: Unpublished book.
Yule, Goerge. 1986. The Study of Language: An
Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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