Introduction I. Chapter. The theory of word formation

II.CHAPTER. Concept of root and artificial word
2.1 Word formation in Uzbek; ways of forming words
The first type are compounds that already existed and are shortened to form the blend; in these blends, the first base modifies the second base, for example, sci-fi which is a kind of fiction and not a kind of science. The second type does not originally come from compounds and designs concepts characteristic of the two elements, for instance, brunch referring to a mixture of a breakfast and a lunch. Bauer et al. (2013) maintain that the most common combinations are, in order of productivity: noun + noun, adjective + noun, adjective + adjective and verb + verb. It is worth noting that blends are not longer than the longer base of the elements contained in the blend (Huddleston & Bauer, 2002). 13 2.7. Back-formation The process of back-formation is to “derive a morphologically simple word from a form which they analyse, on the basis of derivational and inflectional patterns existing in English, as a morphologically complex word” (Brinton & Brinton, 2010, p. 107). Back-formation tends to occur in denominal verbs (Bauer, 2002; Carter & McCarthy, 2010; Quirk et al., 1995). An example of back-formation is baby-sitter in which the suffix -er is dropped and the word babysit is then formed (Bauer, 2002; Huddleston & Bauer, 2002). As happens with conversion, it is quite difficult to know which one is the first form, although the date of attestation of the two words or the frequency–the longer word has a higher frequency–help to know this (Bauer et al., 2013). Back-formation also occurs in inflected words, for instance, pea comes from pease –a form perceived as plural, but was singular and uncountable (Bauer, 2002). 2.8. Reduplication Reduplication is “a process similar to derivation, in which the initial syllable or the entire word is doubled, exactly or with a slight phonological change” (Brinton & Brinton, 2010, p. 100). In English, it is not a productive word-formation process, and most of them belong to the children’s language –boo-boo– or to a context of humour. Moreover, words formed by reduplication are generally associated with informality (Brinton & Brinton, 2010; Quirk et al., 1995). Bauer et al. (2013) make a clear and specific classification of words by reduplication with three different groups; firstly, those in which both elements are homophonous, as in woofwoof; secondly, there is a slight difference on the vowel sound and the consonant sound remains unchanged, for instance, flipflop; thirdly, the foot remains the same and the onset changes, this 14 is the case of easy peasy. Reduplication can explain different ideas: alternation, onomatopoeia or intensification, among many others (Brinton & Brinton, 2010). 15 3. New trends in English word-formation New words are mainly created if a name is needed to refer to a new concept (Harley, 2006). The Global Language Monitor (2018) estimates that each day more than 14 words are created in the English language, which would be more than 5000 a year. In recent years, some studies have been carried out on how new words are formed nowadays. Moreover, Bauer (2002) refers to a word-formation process as productive “if it can be used synchronically in the production of new forms, and non-productive if it cannot be used synchronically in this way” (p. 18). Heynen (2008) puts forward that the most important sources of neologisms are compounding, clipping, blending, acronyms, derivation –which in this paper is called affixation–, coinage3 , conversion and borrowing4 . Compounding is one of the most productive word-formation processes (Heynen, 2008). Heynen (2008) considers that, in recent years, compounds usually “hint at already existing words” (p. 6), for instance, shopgrifting is used to refer to the action of wearing an item and then giving it back to the shop and hints at shoplifting (Heynen, 2008). On Twitter, shopgrifting was for the first time used on 13 June 2007–more precisely a tweet that says “Learning about shopgrifting” (Jonathan Vaught, 2007)–, but this word is not that common since only eight tweets contain it and the OED does not even include it. 3 Coinage is “the process of finding totally new words” (Heynen, 2018, p. 9). Many of these terms are the names for brands such as iPod. The process of coinage has phonological restrictions meaning that sounds have to follow a certain phonological pattern. 4 Borrowing is not included in the word-formation processes but is a source of new words. These are terms coming from other languages, as in the case of the French language during the ME period. 16 Clipping is also quite productive (Heynen, 2008). In 2008 –the year in which Heinen’s book was published–, one of the newest terms formed by clipping was blog clipped from weblog. The name weblog came to be used in the nineties and then at the beginning of the 21st century the word blog appeared (Harley, 2006). Affixation is also quite productive; Heynen (2008) also explains that, in recent years, many neologisms formed by affixation are related to sexuality. For instance, words such as bisexualism, homosex or asexualized, among many others, were included in the OED in March 2018 and have an extended use on Twitter. Nishimoto (2004) makes a thorough study on the degree of productivity of some suffixes in the British National Corpus: the most productive suffixes are -ish, -ness, and -ee and the least productive ones are -th, -ment and -ion. In the article “How new words are born”, published in The Guardian, Bolde (2016a) makes a study of the different word-formation processes and maintains that, during the 20th century, the most productive process was acronymy, especially during the wars in order to facilitate communications. Nevertheless, Bolde (2016a) asserts that acronyms have lost importance these days since the same acronym can refer to many different concepts. For Bolde (2016a), today the most productive process is blending. Blends constantly appear in everyday life (Baliaeva, 2019; Bodle, 2016b). This word-formation process is not recent since, for instance, smog (smoke + fog) was first attested in 1905 (Bodle, 2016b). Nowadays, blending is one of the most productive word-formation processes and is increasing its use (Baliaeva, 2019, Heynen, 2008). It is used for politics (Brexit: British + exit), youth slang (brovember: bro + November), journalism (Brangelina: Brad Pitt + Angelina Jolie) or even advertisement (Frappuccino: frappé + cappuccino) because blendings are attention-catching (Baliaeva, 2019). Some of the words formed by blending are used to refer to the combination of two languages, for example, Hinglish –formed by Hindi and English– (as cited in Heynen, 2008). 17 The most productive patterns of blends are, namely, blends with clipping, blends with overlapping and blends with both (Mirzaie, 2014). An example of blend with clipping is framily which puts together friend and family and is used to refer to those people who are friends but are like family (Mirzaie, 2014). Framily is used on Twitter by English speaking people and also by Spanish and German speaking people; even the Macquarie Dictionary (2018) –a dictionary of Australian English– named framily as word of the year in 2017. However, framily is not included in the OED. An example of blend with overlapping is slanguage that includes slang and language (Mirzaie, 2014) and the use of this word is more extended than the one of framily. Slanguage is included in the OED and defined as “a form of slang” (Slangism, 2019). Foolosopher is an example of blend with both, overlapping and clipping, which joins fool and philosopher to refer to a person with no prudence (Mirzaie, 2014) and this word was already included in the OED version of 1897; therefore, it is not that new. The most productive ones are blends formed by clipping, followed by those formed by both of them and finally blends formed by overlapping (Mirzaie, 2014). Nowadays, the fields that give more new words to the English language seem to be the internet language, advertising, trademarks, science, entertainment and lifestyles (Heynen, 2008). In the internet language, the e- prefix, for instance, has been used for many expressions to refer to anything related to the internet (Crystal, 2004). However, this prefix is not so new since it was already mentioned in the Oxford dictionary of new words (1991) and the American Dialect Society named it word of the year in 1998 (Crystal, 2004). In The New York Times, the first time that the word e-text was employed was on 8 November 1998 in the article “On language; the e-lancer eats a Bagelwich” by William Safire. It is precisely on this language of the internet that Liu and Liu (2014) focus their study of word formation processes. Liu and Liu (2014) study word-formation processes of the English 18 Netspeak. According to them, compounding is the most productive word-formation process of Netspeak (73.8%), 93.5% of which are compound nouns. One of these compound nouns is fleshmeet defined by Liu and Liu (2014) as “people chatting online make a date to see each other in the real world” (p. 25). On Twitter, the word fleshmeet was first used on 14 September 2007 in a tweet that says “hi... well, since we have one friend in common outside Twitter, I hoped to fleshmeet him some day” (Miguel Lopez, 2007) and appears in more than 80 tweets. The second most productive word-formation process of Netspeak is blending. This is the case of the word wedsite: a website with information about somebody’s wedding (Liu & Liu, 2014). In the study of words taken from Word Spy that Liu and Liu (2014) carry out, only 13 English words are formed by affixation, only two of them being composed by prefixation. Such is the case of the word ungoogleable with extended use on Twitter, for example, this tweet: “ok but 'The Suicide Squad' is a very stupid and ungoogleable name for a sequel to a film called 'Suicide Squad'” (Molly Martian, 2021). In the same line, only two acronyms and two conversion cases are found together with an only instance of clipping. Mustafa, Kadasamy and Yasin (2015) conducted some research on the most common word-formation processes in everyday communication on Facebook focusing on Malaysian young adults. In this field, the most productive types are, in this order, acronyms, blending and clippings. Malaysians tend to use short words because of their non-stop lifestyle: they do not have much time to write, so they shorten words (Mustafa et al., 2015). As was mentioned above, the internet language is one of the essential sources to look for new words and analyse their word-formation processes; some of these words are included in the OED. The OED makes a minimum of four updates to their dictionary every year and is therefore a good place to look for recent words. The OED compilers are aware of the existence of terms from many different fields and contact people of many different sectors of society to 19 include those specialised words (Flood, 2018). For instance, in 2018, the OED included words related to parenting after asking the forum Mumsnet; the forum proposed many words, and not all of them were included. Babymoon or baby-led weaning, known as BLW, were among the ones included, but apoocalypse was not added (Flood, 2018). In 2019, words related to Hawaiian cuisine, poke, or words related to Star Wars, such as Jedi, were added (Petter, 2019). This dictionary also includes words of other English varieties. In 2017, words of Indian English were included: chakka jam referring to the “blocking of a road as a form of civilian protest” (Salazar, 2017), or dadagiri meaning “the use of one’s power and authority to intimidate others” (Salazar, 2017). Table 1 shows the number of words added to the OED between 2012 and 2020: Year New entries to the OED 2012 1050 2013 468 2014 562 2015 516 2016 843 2017 535 2018 1183 2019 621 2020 712 Table 1 6490 words were added to the OED from 2012 until 2020. Ratih and Gusdyan (2018) carried out a research study on the word-formation processes found in the OED between the years 2012 and 2016 by analysing some of the words added in that span of time. According to them, these terms can be classified into eight word-formation processes. In this period of five years, the most productive processes are affixation (46%), followed by compounding (27%), 20 blending (12%), clipping (7%) and then acronyms, folk-etymology5 , borrowing, abbreviation and back-formation as minor processes. All in all, there is no consensus on the most productive word-formation processes of the English language. According to these studies, compounding and affixation continue to be among the most productive ones but, in recent years, blending and also clipping are becoming more and more important for the formation of new words. 5 Ratih and Gusdyan (2018) define folk etymology as a source of new words which is quite similar to borrowing, but “the speaker changes the form or the pronunciation” (p. 27) of the word. 21 4. New words in 2020: an analysis of the recent entries in the OED During the year 2020, seven different updates were implemented to the OED. In the updates, changes are classified by alphabetical order into, namely, new word entries, new subentries, new senses and additions to unrevised entries (Dictionary, n.d.d). New sub-entries, new senses and additions to unrevised entries will be out of the scope of this paper. My analysis will specifically concentrate on the 712 new word entries of the seven different updates which were added to the OED during 2020. Table 2 shows the distribution of the new entries in the seven different updates: Month New entries added to the OED in 2020 January 162 March 147 April 14 June 94 July 18 September 160 December 117 Table 2 For the study that follows, an in-depth analysis has been carried out in order to classify the 712 words according to certain labels. The words were first classified in terms of their wordformation processes taking into account the useful information provided by the OED. Then, the words were classified attending to their semantic field. To this end, I had to read the different definitions and look for common semantic labels to group the words. Finally, I scrutinized all the data and obtained some relevant results which will be shown in the diagrams below. For obvious reasons of space, only some words are going to be used as examples of the labels mentioned throughout these pages; all the words, together with their detailed information can 22 be found in alphabetical order in Appendix 1. Each of the entries includes category, wordformation process and semantic field. In this respect, it cannot be forgotten that the year 2020 is marked by Covid-19, which affected all sectors of all the world; the pandemic has also had an impact in language; new words have appeared and their use and connotations have also been influenced and altered. This semantic changes and lexical enrichment in English can be clearly observed by paying attention to the words added to the OED during 2020 during this unprecedented situation. Then, 32 words related to the pandemic were included in the entries of April and July. 4.1. Word-formation processes of the OED during 2020 For the study that follows, 712 words are going to be classified into the different wordformation processes that were mentioned at the beginning of this paper in order to observe their productivity during 2020. As shown in diagram 1, OED new entries will be classified in affixation, compounding, conversion, initialisms, acronyms, clipping, blending and reduplication. Moreover, some new labels are going to be added since they cannot be included under these word-formation processes: words inherited from Germanic, borrowings, and words of uncertain or unknown origin. 23 4.1.1. Compounding in the OED during 2020 The most productive word-formation process is compounding (33.4% of the total number of words), which coincides with the results obtained by Plag (2003). As explained in section 2.2. above, compounds can be classified into compound nouns, compound adjectives, compound verbs and neoclassical compounds. Nevertheless, in the words added to the OED during 2020, in addition to these four types of compounds, compound adverbs and compound interrogatives also appear. In diagram 2, I show compound terms divided into these labels. 33.4% 32.7% 14.5% 7.3% 4.2% 3.6% 2.1% 0.7% 0.6% 0.6% 0.3% Diagram 1 Compounding Affixation Borrowing Conversion Blending Clipping Uncertain or unknown origin Acronym Inherited from Germanic Reduplication Initialism 24 As in the study carried out by Plag (2003), the most productive type of compounding is compound nouns (more than two-thirds). Among them, the most productive type, as Bauer et al. (2013) and Huddleston and Bauer (2002) had already stated, is noun + noun with more than two-thirds, followed by adjective + noun and verb + noun. Good examples of new words from this group are, among others, birthing room, a compound noun formed by the noun birthing and the noun room. This word has two different meanings: the most general meaning refers to the place in a hospital that is prepared for a woman giving birth, and then in the United States this word is also used to refer to a room in the house “to use during childbirth”; however, the specific meaning of the United States is historical. Other compound nouns that could also be mentioned here are suicide belt which has the meaning of a region where the rates of suicide are higher and also refers to the belt with explosives used by a suicide bomber. Physical distancing, formed by an adjective and a noun, is employed these days with the meaning related to Covid-19 but has a more general meaning referring to keeping a distance with a person not just in a disease situation. 69.6% 16.1% 9.4% 3.2% 1% 0.7% Diagram 2 Compound nouns Compound adjectives Neoclassical compounds Compound verbs Compound adverbs Compound interrogatives 25 Compound nouns are followed, at a considerable distance, by compound adjectives (16.1%) in accordance with the literature mentioned in the overview. As stated by Huddleston and Bauer (2002), the most common combination is noun + adjective. This is the case of chuckheaded refers to a person who is not intelligent. Awesomesauce is a compound adjective formed by awesome, an adjective, and sauce, a noun, and is used to refer to something which is “extremely good; excellent”. Neoclassical compounds are also quite productive6 . There are three words related to a phobia that are neoclassical compounds; one of the most interesting ones is coulrophobia, first used in 19977 , which is the fear of clowns. It is composed of the first element of unknown origin and phobia, coming from Latin. As stated in the overview, compound verbs are not really productive, only nine words are compound verbs and most of them are formed by noun + verb. Skim-read is an example of a compound verb formed by skim, a verb, and read, a verb; it means “read in a rapid […] manner” and can be transitive or intransitive. Only three words are 6 Bauer (2002) states that the forms that create neoclassical compounds, which come from Latin and Greek, are called combining forms by the OED. Most of the words containing a combining form in the OED were, in this paper, integrated into the label of neoclassical compounds; however, there were some words labelled under other categories. This is the case of chatbot, considered by the OED a compounding of the noun chat and the combining form -bot formed by the clipping of the word robot, but, in this study, this word is classified as a blend since it combines the word chat and robot. 7 Some words which were incorporated into the OED during 2020 have a quite old first attested use, as the case of coulrophobia –there are words having an older first attested use–. The OED refers to this kind of words as a “new word from the past” (Dictionary, n.d.a) since they “escaped inclusion” (Dictionary, n.d.a) and now are incorporated. 26 compound adverbs as next tomorrow, coming from Nigerian English and meaning “on the day after tomorrow”. Finally, two words are compound interrogatives. In their studies, Heynen (2008) and Liu and Liu (2014) point to the importance that the word-formation process of compounding has today, and there is clear evidence of this in my study. As a matter of fact, putting two words together with no changes can be considered the easiest form to refer to a new concept. From the moment that the endings of words started to be lost, compounding has always been among the most productive word-formation processes. Thus, if someone wants to talk about a soup that contains chicken, the simplest term and the most appropriate one would be chicken soup. The word chicken soup is then added to the dictionary during 2020. Combinations of different types can be made and many concepts can be referred to just by putting together two terms. It is quite easy to understand a term formed by two words because it is just putting the meaning of the two words in one. By contrast, words formed by other wordformation processes require further knowledge that make communication more difficult. As noticed in the coming pages, practicality and avoiding misunderstandings is key in communication. Then, this is perhaps the reason why compounding is more productive than other processes such as acronymy, initialism, or blending. Ease is going to be key in the productivity of word-formation processes. 4.1.2. Affixation in the OED during 2020 The word-formation process of compounding is closely followed by affixation (32.7%). As is well known, words formed by affixation can be divided into three groups depending on the place where the affix is added: suffixation, prefixation, and prefixation and suffixation at once. This division is shown in diagram. The most productive suffix is -ing, followed by -er, -y, -ly and -ed. A word formed by the most productive suffix is futzing with the meaning of “ineffectual or trifling activity; messing about; tinkering”. Another interesting word these days is frontliner which is formed by front line, a noun, and the second most productive suffix -er. Frontliner can mean two different issues: “a person positioned on the foremost line, row, or part of something” and a person who works as the employee who is in contact with clients in an organization. The words added in July are related to the pandemic; frontliner is one of these, and it is employed to talk about the doctors who are in the front line of a hospital. Most of the words formed by the suffix -y end in -ie as the case of the colloquial term mouthie, a synonym for mouth. Suffixation is followed by prefixation. Diagram 5 shows the most productive prefixes. 22.5% 13.9% 11.9% 9.9% 7.9% 5.3% 4.6% 3.3% 3.3% 3.3% 2.6% 2% 2% 2% 1.3% 1.3% 1.3% 1.3% Diagram 4 -ing -er -y -ly -ed -ic -ian -ism -ist -ness -able -ery -ish -oid -ine -ize -o -tion 29 The most productive prefix is de-, followed by a-, self- and co-. The verb deprioritize is one of the words formed by the most productive prefix meaning to diminish the importance of any issue. Amelodic is composed by the prefix a- and the adjective melodic referring to “not containing, composed of, or characterized by melody; not melodic”. It is worth stating that, during 2020, the prefix self- formed words of the vocabulary associated today to Covid-19: selfisolate, verb; self-isolated, adjective; self-isolation, noun; self-quarantine, noun, selfquarantine, verb; and self-quarantined, adjective. Another interesting word is comorbidity formed by the quite productive prefix co- and then the noun morbidity and is used to refer to “the coexistence of two or more diseases, disorders, or pathological processes in one individual”. Comorbidity is a noun that was added in July 2020 in the words included because of coronavirus; the adjective comorbid was also added in this update. Furthermore, there are two words that are formed by suffixation and prefixation at a time; one of them is self-isolating –formed by the prefix self-, the verb isolate and the suffix -ing. 25.5% 17.6% 11.7% 7.8% 5.8% 3.9% 3.9% 3.9% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% Diagram 5 deaselfcononantihyperoverambianbydiemalonparaununder- 30 In the study that Ratih and Gusdyan (2018) completed on the OED words between 2012 and 2016, the most productive process was affixation followed by compounding whereas in my analysis the result is slightly reversed. Liu and Liu (2014) refer to the productivity of suffixation over prefixation and this does coincide clearly with my study. Nowadays, words tend to be formed by suffixation and prefixation is not really productive. If we focus on suffixation, the results obtained by Nishimoto (2004), different from mine, are worth mentioning. The three most important suffixes that Nishimoto (2004) points out, only -ness appears in diagram 4 with only 5 words. Curiously enough, Nishimoto’s (2004) most productive suffix is not even used in my 712 terms. Of the 18 suffixes included in the diagram above, six were not mentioned in the first section of this paper: -ian, -ery, -oid, -ine, -o and -tion. -ian is specially used to form words that refer to a person that belongs to a place. 4.1.3. Borrowing in the OED during 2020 Borrowing is the third most productive source of new words during 2020, but it is not really a word-formation process. 103 words went into the English language during 2020 just by taking them from other languages; the languages of origin of these terms are highly diverse. Diagram 6 below shows the most important languages of borrowing during 20209 . 9 Only those languages which gave two words or more to the English language during 2020 are included in the diagram. The following are the languages that only brought one word: Arabic, Icelandic, Irish, Fon, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hindi, Malay, Maya, Mikasuri, Okanagan, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Southern Sotho, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukrainian, Welsh and Zulu. 31 There are six words that come from two different languages, for instance, farmacia, called traditionally in English a pharmacy, comes from Spanish and Italian. The most important language source is Latin. Latin gave to the English language 20 words; among them is metallous, which is a synonym for metallic and, according to the OED, has a rare use today. Latin is, as can be seen, a source of words that are not that important today and most of them are marked by the OED as dead, obsolete or rare. Nevertheless, as can be seen, it does not really matter to the OED that the new words added are used or not. French has always been an essential source of new words to the English language, and this was also the case during 2020. 15 French concepts came during 2020 and five of them are related to gastronomy: macaron is a dessert that consists of two biscuits and in the middle of them has a merengue, or perlage referring to “the aggregation of tiny bubbles which forms on the surface of a glass of sparkling wine, champagne”. Furthermore, Yiddish brought to the English language 10 terms during 2020, among them, farbrengen referring to a typical gathering of Judaism. 23.5% 17.6% 7% 11.8% 5.8% 5.8% 4.7% 3.5% 3.5% 2.4% 2.4% 2.4% 2.4% 2.4% 2.4% 2.4% Diagram 6 Latin French Yiddish Spanish Italian Japanese German Russian Afrikaans Bemba Chinese Dutch Greek Gujarati Hebrew Persian 32 Spanish brought to the English language 6 words and among them, there are many interesting concepts. One of them is pincho, a noun with two meanings. In Spanish and Basque cuisine, it is the food eaten before lunch or dinner and which has a toothpick to put all the food together. This meaning of pincho was first attested in the Times Recorder –a newspaper in Zanesville (Ohio)–. In Spanish and Latin American cuisine, pincho also means “a portion of grilled or roasted meat served on a skewer”. Besides, anejo is a noun or an adjective and is used to refer to tequila or rum –and also wine although in the OED this use does not appear– that is “aged in the barrel for at least a year”. The word anejo is añejo in Spanish and the Spanish meaning of anejo is something or someone attached to or that it depends on something or someone and it is used to refer to the supplement of a scientific journal or even to a church that depends on another church in the same village (Anejo, n.d.). 5 words came to the English language from Italian: fonduta is a dish with cheese, milk, cream, eggs and with sliced truffle all over and first attested in the Vogue magazine, or fondamenta, “in Venice: the bank alongside a canal for use of pedestrians”. 5 words came from Japanese, among them, bokeh, a technical process in photography. As can be seen in the diagram above, a good number of languages gave words to the English language during 2020. Some of them are spoken in nations that traditionally gave many words to the English language –French, Latin, Spanish or Italian– but there are many more languages that are not common –Yiddish, Afrikaans, Gujarati, Bemba or Persian–. This points to the globalization that today exists and that also affects semantics. There are English-speaking countries in many different continents and the OED does not only add terms that are used in the United Kingdom –those coming from French, Italian or German– but also those concepts that are used in other English-speaking cultures. 33 English is a Germanic language. There was a common Germanic language that divided into different branches: North, West and East. English comes from the West Germanic branch and Afrikaans, Dutch, German and Yiddish were also languages of this branch. Therefore, the relation of these languages continues to be in some way important as 19 terms coming from these four languages were introduced in the OED during 2020. Borrowing is, indeed, an easy way to introduce new words to the language, just by taking them from other languages and introducing them to yours.