English morphology is the study of the structure of words and the way in which they are formed from smaller units called morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language, and it can be a word or a part of a word.
Formation of New words in English
There are many ways in which English words can be formed through morphology. Here are eight different ways:
Affixation:
This involves adding prefixes or suffixes to a base word to create a new word with a different meaning or function. For example, the prefix “un-” can be added to “happy” to create “unhappy,” which has the opposite meaning.
Compounding:
This involves combining two or more words to create a new word. For example, “tooth” and “brush” can be combined to create “toothbrush.”
Conversion:
This involves changing the part of speech of a word without changing its form. For example, the word “run” can be a verb or a noun, depending on the context.
Back-formation:
This involves creating a new word by removing a suffix from an existing word. For example, the noun “editor” was formed by removing the “-or” suffix from the verb “edit.”
Clipping:
This involves shortening a word by removing one or more syllables. For example, “television” is often shortened to “TV.”
Blending:
This involves combining parts of two words to create a new word. For example, “smog” is a blend of “smoke” and “fog.”
Acronyms:
This involves creating a new word from the first letters of a group of words. For example, “NASA” stands for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”
Onomatopoeia:
This involves creating a word that imitates a sound. For example, “buzz” imitates the sound of a bee.