Linguistics/Word Class/ Word Formation Techniques

 In every language there are a limited number of types of lexical items. These different kinds of words are traditionally known as 'parts of speech' though in linguistic terminology, the label 'word class' is common. Words are classified into word classes partly on account of their syntactic behaviour, partly on the basis of their morphological form.



Major Word Classes

English is sometimes considered to have four major word classes. Noun, Adjective, Verb and Adverb (later on Preposition) Out of these four: nouns, verbs, and repositions behave fairly different from one another, though adjectives are somewhat strange where they have both noun like and verb like qualities.

The major word classes are known as lexical categories. Lexical categories contain content words, those with intrinsic meaning. They contrast with the functional categories which include little words whose meaning is difficult to specify as 'the, a' which are determiners or compliments. Languages that are heavily rely on a word order are known as configurational languages. In Latin word endings or inflections, indicates the relationship between words. Other function words are 'of, by, from etc.' that which indicates the relationship between parts of the sentence.

Word Formation Techniques

The study of the phonemic structure of morphemes; or the changes that morphemes undergo in certain context is called morphophonemics. In generative phonology the changes that take place in the phonological feature are stated as different types of rules,

  1. Zero Modification: Those words that do not change while changing to plural or tense forms. eg: sheep- sheep, deer-deer, put- put, cut- cut
  2. Process Morpheme: those cases where the plural meaning is manifested through the phonological modification such as a change in the vowel of the noun as in man-men or the verb take- took.
  3. Suppletion: it is the replacement of entire form in English, the forms of the verb 'be' : am, are, was, were are the suppletion variants. eh: go- went 

  4. Assimilation refers to the change of one sound into another because of the influence of the neighboring sounds. Assimilation might progressive of regressive. If the feature of a phoneme affect the phoneme preceding it, it is called regressive assimilation. eg: the sound 'k' in words like  k-e-y, k-e-ep is realized as pre- velar under the influence of the following front vowel 'i:'. in+ logical= illogical, in+possible= impossible. If the features of a phoneme affect the phoneme following it, it is called progressive assimilation. the 'l' in please is realized as a voiceless alveoli lateral 'l' under the influence of the preceding voiceless aspirated plosive 'p'.

  5. Dissimilation is the opposite of assimilation, where one or more consonants or vowels of one morpheme become unlike of those of another morpheme whenever these morphemes combine. Is the change of a sound in a word to another, when the word originally had identical sounds near each other. eg: the word taper which derives from papyrus. the 'p' is dissimilated to 't'.
  6. Syncope: is the elimination or omissions of sounds or letters from within a word, usually medial vowels or consonants. eg: the word library is pronounced as |laibri|

  7. Apocopy: is the omission of the final sound of a word as in phrases like 'a cup of tea' to 'a cuppa tea'
  8. Reduplication: is a repetition of identical forms to reduplicate means to repeat a linguistic element exactly or with a slight change. eg: Hurly-Burly, Hurry- Burry
  9.  Metathesis: is a change in the order of the elements of a morpheme. it is the transposition of sounds or letters in a word` eg: Old English a norange> an orange a nadder> an adder, waps-wasp, bren-burn

  10. Degemination: is the reduction of long or double consonants or vowels into short ones eg immature, illogical
  11. Gemination: is the doubling of a consonants or vowels. it literally means twinning. not found in English. Latin origin and also found in Arabic
Prepared by:
Dr. Susan Mathew

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