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What are words, and how are they created?
These issues lie at the heart of the linguistic discipline of morphology. It focuses on the smallest meaningful constituents of language, morphemes, and examines their structure, creation and use. Morphology goes hand-in-hand with the study of word formation, which investigated the various processes by which new words can be created, such as derivation, compounding or inflection. During the last years, this field of research has been fundamentally changed by new technology and methods. Since the advent of corpus linguistics, we have been using larger and larger corpora to catalogue the morphological inventory of English and other languages. In addition, new trends in linguistic theory such as the increasing importance of pragmatics mean that our perspective has changed, as we need to consider, for example, extra-linguistic features and diachronic aspects.
This lecture offers a general overview of English morphology and word formation, with detailed analyses of concrete examples. It is ideal as an introduction to the structure of English. We will discuss general features of morphology, such as the classification of morphemes, words or lexemes, the mental lexicon, derivation, compounding, inflection, productivity and historical aspects. Our take on word formation will feature all the key word formation processes as well as issues like productivity and the creation of complex lexemes. In the second part of the lecture, innovative methods of word-formation, for example in web-based communication, will be discussed. We’ll look at innovative ways of creating lexical items, such as blending, mixing or iconic elements, and discuss how new methods of communication challenge the traditional notion of word formation and how the introduction of cognitive categories, frames, cultural models and quantity aspects can help to understand them. |
