Word formation

In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define: a new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form (see conversion). Word formation can also be contrasted with the formation of idiomatic expressions, although words can be formed from multi-word phrases (see compound and incorporation).

Types of word formation

There are a number of methods of word formation.

Morphological word formation

There are two subcategories; words created by derivation and words created by conversion.

Derivation

Derivation is the process of forming new words from existing ones by adding affixes to them, like shame + less + ness → shamelessness. In cases in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories, this is known as agglutination, as seen in agglutinative languages.

Word Formation

The Word Formation is a geologic formation in Texas. It preserves fossils dating back to the Permian period.

See also

References