Which of the following refers to the study of word formation and word meaning?

Words, like facts, are difficult to remember out of context.  Remembering is greatly facilitated when you have a body of information with which to associate either a word or a fact.  For words, interesting origins or histories will help provide a context.  For example, a hippopotamus is a "river horse," from the Greek hippos, meaning "horse," and potamos, meaning "river."

Indiana is called the Hoosier state, and its people Hoosiers.  Why?  In the early days, the pioneers were gruff in manner; when someone knocked at the front door, a pioneer's voice would often boom, "Who's yere?"

If you were offered a Hobson's choice, would you know what was meant?  Thomas Hobson owned a livery stable in seventeenth-century England.  He loved his horses, and to prevent any one horse from being overworked, he hired them out in turn, beginning with stall number one.  Customers had to take the horses they were given.  Thus Hobson's choice means no choice at all. (Pauk, p. 314)

Etymology is the study of the origins of words.  The English language is living and growing.  Although many of our words have been part of our language for many years, new words are added all the time.  Following are various ways our language is influenced.

  • Derived from Foreign Words - English, in many cases, has been commonly expanded by incorporating foreign words into it.  Most of our language has ancient Anglo-Saxon or Latin origins.  Other languages have also added to our vocabularies.

  • Additions through Technology & Products - Our words often reflect current interests, trends, and innovations.  One of the most recent contributors to our language has been computer technology, which has created words such as bytes, monitor, and disk.

    Another way new words come into our language is through the development of products.  Some examples include: Kleenex, Walkman, Scotch tape, Xerox, and Linoleum.

  • People's Names - sometimes when a person invents or introduces something, that thing becomes associated with the person's name.  The person, through time, is forgotten while the name lives on in our language.  Examples include:

    • mesmerize - F.A. Mesmer, an Austrian doctor and hypnotist.
    • sideburns - an American English alteration of burnsides, Ambrose E. Burnside, a Union general.
  • Words from Letters - The initials for the names of things may actually come to replace the names.  The initials become the words that represent the thing, concept, or group.  The following are examples of words that have developed from initials.

    • TV - TeleVision
    • DWI - Driving While Intoxicated
    • COD - Cash On Delivery
    • ZIP - Zone Improvement Plan
  • Word Histories - Some words also have interesting histories.  Learning the stories behind the meanings is a good way to learn those words.  The following examples will give you an idea of how history can affect language.

    In linguistics (particularly morphology and lexicology), word formation refers to the ways in which new words are formed on the basis of other words or morphemes. This is also known as derivational morphology.

    Word formation can denote either a state or a process, and it can be viewed either diachronically (through different periods in history) or synchronically (at one particular period in time).

    In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, David Crystal writes about word formations: 

    "Most English vocabulary arises by making new lexemes out of old ones — either by adding an affix to previously existing forms, altering their word class, or combining them to produce compounds. These processes of construction are of interest to grammarians as well as lexicologists. ... but the importance of word-formation to the development of the lexicon is second to none. ... After all, almost any lexeme, whether Anglo-Saxon or foreign, can be given an affix, change its word class, or help make a compound. Alongside the Anglo-Saxon ​root in ​kingly, for example, we have the French root in royally and the Latin root in regally. There is no elitism here. The processes of affixation, conversion, and compounding are all great levelers."

    Processes of Word Formation

    Ingo Plag explains the process of word formation in Word-Formation in English:

    "Apart from the processes that attach something to a base (affixation) and processes that do not alter the base (conversion), there are processes involving the deletion of material. ... English Christian names, for example, can be shortened by deleting parts of the base word (see (11a)), a process also occasionally encountered with words that are not personal names (see (11b)). This type of word formation is called truncation, with the term clipping also being used."

    (11a) Ron (-Aaron)
    (11a) Liz (-Elizabeth)
    (11a) Mike (-Michael)
    (11a) Trish (-Patricia)
    (11b) condo (-condominium)
    (11b) demo (-demonstration)
    (11b) disco (-discotheque)
    (11b) lab (-laboratory)

    "Sometimes truncation and affixation can occur together, as with formations expressing intimacy or smallness, so-called diminutives:"

    (12) Mandy (-Amanda)
    (12) Andy (-Andrew)
    (12) Charlie (-Charles)
    (12) Patty (-Patricia)
    (12) Robbie (-Roberta)

    "We also find so-called blends, which are amalgamations of parts of different words, such as smog (smoke/fog) or modem (modulator/demodulator). Blends based on orthography are called acronyms, which are coined by combining the initial letters of compounds or phrases into a pronounceable new word (NATO, UNESCO, etc.) Simple abbreviations like UK or USA are also quite common."

    Academic Studies of Word-Formation

    In the preface to the Handbook of Word-Formation, Pavol Stekauer and Rochelle Lieber write:

    "Following years of complete or partial neglect of issues concerning word formation (by which we mean primarily derivation, compounding, and conversion), the year 1960 marked a revival—some might even say a resurrection—of this important field of linguistic study. While written in completely different theoretical frameworks (structuralist vs. transformationalist), both Marchand's Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation in Europe and Lee's Grammar of English Nominalizations instigated systematic research in the field. As a result, a large number of seminal works emerged over the next decades, making the scope of word-formation research broader and deeper, thus contributing to better understanding of this exciting area of human language."

    In "Introduction: Unravelling the Cognitive in Word Formation." Cognitive Perspectives on Word Formation, Alexander Onysko and Sascha Michel explain:

    "[R]ecent voices stressing the importance of investigating word formation in the light of cognitive processes can be interpreted from two general perspectives. First of all, they indicate that a structural approach to the architecture of words and a cognitive view are not incompatible. On the contrary, both perspectives try to work out regularities in language. What sets them apart is the basic vision of how language is encapsulated in the mind and the ensuing choice of terminology in the description of the processes. ... [C]ognitive linguistics concedes closely to the self-organizing nature of humans and their language, whereas generative-structuralist perspectives represent external boundaries as given in the institutionalized order of human interaction."

    Birth and Death Rates of Words

    In their report "Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death," Alexander M. Petersen, Joel Tenenbaum, Shlomo Havlin, and H. Eugene Stanley conclude:

    "Just as a new species can be born into an environment, a word can emerge in a language. Evolutionary selection laws can apply pressure on the sustainability of new words since there are limited resources (topics, books, etc.) for the use of words. Along the same lines, old words can be driven to extinction when cultural and technological factors limit the use of a word, in analogy to the environmental factors that can change the survival capacity of a living species by altering its ability to survive and reproduce."

    Sources

    • Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
    • Onysko, Alexander, and Sascha Michel. “Introduction: Unravelling the Cognitive in Word Formation.” Cognitive Perspectives on Word Formation, 2010, pp. 1–26., doi:10.1515/9783110223606.1.
    • Petersen, Alexander M., et al. “Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 15 Mar. 2012, www.nature.com/articles/srep00313.
    • Plag, Ingo. Word-Formation in English. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
    • Stekauer, Pavol, and Rochelle Lieber. Handbook of Word-Formation. Springer, 2005.

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    Nordquist, Richard. "Types of Word Formation in English." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/word-formation-1692501 (accessed December 11, 2022).

    What is the study of word formation and word meaning?

    In linguistics, morphology (/mɔːrˈfɒlədʒi/) is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes.

    What word refers to the formation of words?

    Updated on June 11, 2020. In linguistics (particularly morphology and lexicology), word formation refers to the ways in which new words are formed on the basis of other words or morphemes. This is also known as derivational morphology.

    Which of the following studies the formation of words?

    Morphology - the study of the formation of words. Syntax - the study of the formation of sentences. Semantics - the study of meaning. Pragmatics - the study of language use.

    What is the meaning of Etymologist?

    Meaning of etymologist in English a person who studies the origin and history of words: He was known as an etymologist as well as for his poetry. The task of our etymologist is to determine the earliest recorded occurrence of a word.