Monografias

Word Formation Processes: How new Words develop in the English Language
Martina Wagner LING 301 Lexical Semantics Ms Kraft Winter Term 2010

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Word Formation Processes: How new Words develop in the English Language

Table of contents
1. Introduction: Why are new words needed? 2. Word formation processes in the English language • Derivation • Compounding ◦ Reduplication / Echoism • Blending • Initialism & Acronymy • Borrowing & Calque • Neologism / Coinage ◦ Onomatopoeia 3. Conclusion 4. Bibliography

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1. Introduction: Why are new words needed?
Because of new inventions and changes, every language is in need of new words – borrowed, derived or otherwise formed – simply because new things need new words. The human community is steadily growing and developing, just as the tool we use to communicate: Language. When new inventions and changes enter our lives, we are in the need of naming them and of course to communicate about them. Language is dynamic, it changes constantly. Inter alia because native speakers like to play with their language, or because there are no 'wrong' words. The key here is usage: If a new word, however silly it may be, is used by many speakers of a language, it will probably survive and it can happen that one day, it is an everyday word and entered our dictionaries. Especially in the last centuries, many word creations are spread amongst the language community. For example, if you take a look at the vast amount of new inventions made in the 20th and 21st century, it is obvious that the words we knew before were not enough to cover all these things. Exclusively in the 21st century, abbreviations were and still are everywhere, thanks to the internet (chat rooms and e-mail) and the cell phone (text messaging with its limited number of characters). And of course there are language trends that come and go as time passes, for example youth language (college slang: cool, chill, wasted – Finegan 2007, 321) or the formerly mentioned