English Language

English is a dynamic language. As the world change in all aspects so does the language. The advancements in the fashion industry, for instance, effects in new vocabularies. Some of the main reasons that lead to the formation of new words consist of a change of meanings such as bully, the trending events such as Brexit, while different words just get out of fashion. So as the language changes, it is also imperative to keep trend with the changes. This paper is aimed at analyzing the exceptional ways in which word may be fashioned (Lieber, 2005). The task presented in the assignment primarily revolves around information and technology. However, there are other frequent words underlined in the statements whose formation processes will be handled in this discussion. The prevalent methods involved in the formation of the words highlighted in the twelve remarks are collectively described below.
The first process of word formation is blending. This is the common process of word formation in English. Two words are often combined with their sound structure. The words that are produced are known as blends. The morpheme structure of words is not taken into account. One part of the word is often stitched onto another phrase without taking into account the beginning and the end of a morpheme (Bauer, 1983). For example, the word “swooshtika” is formed from the words swoosh and swastika. The resultant meaning blends in the properties of the two words. An in-between word is generated. In this task the following words are generated by blending:

Netiquette = internet (Net) + etiquette. The meaning of the word is etiquette of the internet.

Netizen= Internet +citizen. It means a person who is always engrossed with internet stuff.

Webcam=web + camera.

Therefore, blending has been used in this case to derive new words whose meanings are not far from the parent names.

The second process used in the formation of the words in this task is acronyms. This process involves the picking of the initial letters of words to form a shortened phrase. It is the most straightforward process that can be used in word formation. The resultant acronym may be used an accepted word. In some other cases, other letters other than the initial letters may be picked from the phrases (Lipka, 1990). In this task, there are three words which were formed by acronyms. These are listed below:

RAM = Random Access Memory. This is used to mean an internal storage space in a computer. The first letters of the original words are used in building the word.

Ruok = means “are you okay”. As stated above, some acronyms may be formed with other letters of the word other than the initials. The word “are” is taken as “r” while “you” are substituted with the letter “u.” The first two letters of the word are just picked randomly.

FAQ = formed from the phrase Frequently Asked Questions. This word has a similar formation to the first word described above.

Therefore, the acronym is equally another way of generating words.

Besides, words may be formed through the process of conversion. Conversion implies a change of functionality of a word from one form t another without changing the word structure. It is also known as zero derivation. It may be further categorized as verbification and nominalization. Verbification or verbing is the use of a noun, adjective, or any other word to generate a verb (Plag, 2003). For instance, the names drink, dress and divorce may be used as verbs without having to change the word structure. In the task at hand, the technology-related nouns, keyboard, and bookmark have been used as verbs. On the other side, nominalization is the use of an adjective, verb, or an adverb to generate a noun. In this task, the term “downloads” has been used as a noun which may also be used as a verb. Therefore, the conversion makes up another way of generating new words in English and especially IT industry.

In addition, clipping is a word formation process in linguistics. It is described as shortening or reduction of the parts of a word to form a new word which has the same meaning as the original word. It may also be regarded as truncation of words. For instance, the word rifle was initially rifle gun, but the last part has been truncated, and the initial meaning has been retained. In this assignment, the word app was used instead of the application. The term “app” is commonly used in IT (Lipka, 1990). Therefore, clipped words are recognized in English and another way of forming new words.

Finally, affixation is another way of forming new words. It involves the addition of suffixes and prefixes to the first words to form words with different meanings. In this task, affixation was used in the formation of techie and blogger (Lieber, 2005). Therefore, words may be formed using different methods.

In conclusion, there are diverse word formation processes. Various methods were utilized in the task which has been described adequately in the preceding paragraphs. Out of these processes, conversion is a flexible method that can be used in IT domain for the formation of new words. The other operations are slightly rigid compared to conversion. It is therefore easy to employ verbification and nominalization in word formation in the field of IT.

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References

Lieber, R. (2005). English word-formation processes. In Handbook of word-formation (pp. 375-427). Springer Netherlands.

Bauer, L. (1983). English word-formation. Cambridge university press.

Lipka, L. (1990). An outline of English lexicology: lexical structure, word semantics, and word-formation (Vol. 3). Walter de Gruyter.

Plag, I. (2003). Word formation in English. Cambridge University Press.