English Word-Formation

Abstract

Interest in word-formation is probably as old as interest in language itself. As Dr Bauer points out in his Introduction, many of the questions that scholars are asking now were also being asked in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, there is still little agreement on methodology in the study of word-formation or theoretical approaches to it; even the kind of data relevant to its study is open to debate. Dr Bauer here provides students and general linguists alike with a new perspective on what is a confused and often controversial field of study, providing a resolution to the terminological confusion which currently reigns in this area. In doing so, he clearly demonstrates the challenge and intrinsic fascination of the study of word-formation. Linguists have recently become increasingly aware of the relevance of word-formation to work in syntax and semantics, phonology and morphology, and Dr Bauer discusses - within a largely synchronic and transformational framework - the theoretical issues involved. He considers topics where word-formation has a contribution to make to other areas of linguistics and, without pretending to provide a fully-fledged theory of word-formation, develops those points which he sees as being central to its study. The book draws on a wide range of sources, and general points are illustrated from a variety of languages. As the title suggests, though, the exposition is principally illustrated with material drawn from English, including close analysis of a number of sets of neologisms. A survey of the types of word-formation found in English is also included. Some background in linguistics is assumed, but students of linguistics and English language with no previous knowledge of word-formation or of morphology at all will find English Word-Formation an accessible and stimulating textbook.

Analyzing lexical emergence in Modern American English online

“…Lexicalization is also often contrasted with institutionalization. For example, Bauer (1983) saw lexicalization as a process that followed institutionalization. Alternatively, grammaticalizaton is the process through which lexical items lose referential meaning as they gradually develop into function words that express grammatical information (Hopper & Traugott 2003).…”

When Spanish owns English words

“…Once the word has become an everyday 'tool' in the Internet (subject to semantic changes, meaning specialization and formal changes including those resulting from wordformation or word creativity), the next step is to use it as an element for humorous word-formation, although there is already a jocular component in the use of the alphanumeric writing we mentioned earlier, or in other graphic games, such as hyphenation ('Menudo O-W-N-E-D te has comido amiga' ['that's a good O-W-N-E-D you've just eaten up, my friend']). 25 Of course, this is a common occurrence in English, where puns are made (usually with blends and compounds; on the differences between these two processes see, for example, Bauer, 1983) using the word, as in Ronaldowned, i.e. 'owned by Ronaldo' ('Last I knew Ronaldo had a knee injury but still pwned Germany with 2 goals in the Final.…”

Attenders or attendees? Deverbal -ee and -er variants in English

“…A first set was extracted from a 56 million word subcorpus of the Bank of English, also known as the Collins COBUILD corpus. 5 Of the agentive -ee nouns mentioned in Bauer (1983), Marchand (1969, Barker (1998) andPortero Muñoz (2003) (included here under (15)) only 7 turned out to be attested in the COBUILD corpus, viz. attendee, enlistee, escapee, resignee, retiree, returnee and signee.…”