Word Formation

Word Formation

English is the most commonly used language by us. People use a language for communication. But then how do they communicate using a language? They do it by words. The English language had 26 key alphabets. When these alphabets are combined to make meaning, they form words. In simple terms, the combination of alphabets leads to the word Formation. What you speak, what you are reading, all are words. Words are essential to forming sentences. Without words, you cannot use a language. You can use one letter (like: I) or  combine a minimum of two letters to form a word(like: Do). There is no limit to combining alphabets to create words. You can combine as many alphabets as you want to form a word. Currently, in the English language, the longest word is a combination of almost 30 alphabets.

Types of Word Formation

There are four major types of word formation that you need to know. The four major types of word formation are prefixes, suffixes, conversion and compounding. Read along to gather more detailed information on all four of them.

1. Prefixes: Prefixes are those words that are added at the beginning of any word. This addition gives a new meaning to the word. Adding prefixes can even make a word negative and can be useful to establish relations between time, place, etc. For example, consider words like paid, intelligent, possible. Now, if you add prefixes like un, over, im respectively to these words, then a word with a completely new meaning will be formed. The newly formed will be unpaid, over smart, impossible.
2. Suffixes: A suffix is the opposite of the prefixes. Unlike prefixes, it is added at the end of a word to form new words. For example, Use, beauty, think are all words. If you add suffixes like less, full, and ing respectively at the end of the word, it will form new words. After adding them, the new word-formation will be useless, beautiful, thinking.
3. Conversion: There are many classes of words like nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, etc. The transition of words from one class to another is called a conversion. Like a verb can be converted into an adjective, noun, etc.
4. Compounding: A combination of two or more words is called compounding. Compounding is completely dissimilar to prefixes and suffixes. In this process, separate words are combined. For instance, peace and lover are two different words with completely different meanings. When combined, these words form a new word with a different meaning, like: peace-lover, which means one who loves peace.

Some more Word Formation types

1. Rhyming compounds: These words are formed from two compounds. They rhyme with each other. Words like chiller-killer, razzle-dazzle form such words.
2. Clipping: In this procedure of word-formation a part of a word is being clipped off that is removed. The remaining word has the same meaning that it had earlier. Like consider the word hamburger, but often the word ham is being clipped, and it is spoken and written as burger, which doesn’t make any difference to it.
3. Acronyms: When the initial letters of the word are considered to denote a new word, then the words are referred to as acronyms. Like the National Organisation of Women considers the first letter of the three words, the acronym formed will be NOW.

Fun with Words

The process of word formation is undoubtedly crucial to any language. You got to know some of the technical parts of  word formation in English in the above section. In this section, you will learn how to have fun with words. Words are something that can be fun when experimented with. The process of word-formation can give rise to many interesting games and competitions. Wordplay is a popular game played at birthday parties, English lessons in primary schools or higher levels. Some wordplay competitions can be held at school and college levels. You will be indeed surprised to know that the spelling bee is a famous wordplay game on which competitions are being held at national and international levels. Spell bee, make new words quick, unjumble the jumble words, rhyme the word, etc., are some of the commonest wordplay games. These games are a pastime for kids as well as adults. Wordplay games can come under the category of fun learning activities. Few Word Formation Examples The best word formation examples are when two compound words are used with a hyphen or separated by a hyphen. Few word formation examples are Noun + noun – bread + earner Adverb + noun – under + tone

Conclusion

To conclude the entire thing, it can be said that the word-formation process is an interesting and fun-loving activity. It’s just a play with alphabets that give rise to new words. It is interesting to note that there are countless words in the English language, and each of them has a different meaning.