E-Book Overview
This book is an introduction to the study of word-formation, that is, the ways in which new words are built on the bases of other words (e.g. happy-happy-ness), focusing on English. The book's didactic aim is to enable students with little or no prior linguistic knowledge to do their own practical analyses of complex words. Readers are familiarized with the necessary methodological tools to obtain and analyze relevant data and are shown how to relate their findings to theoretical problems and debates. The book is not written in the perspective of a particular theoretical framework and draws on insights from various research traditions, reflecting important methodological and theoretical developments in the field. It is a textbook directed towards university students of English at all levels. It can also serve as a source book for teachers and advanced students, and as an up-to-date reference concerning many word-formation processes in English.
E-Book Content
Word-formation in English by
Ingo Plag Universität Siegen
in press
Cambridge University Press Series ‘Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics’
Draft version of September 27, 2002
i
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1
1. Basic concepts 1.1. What is a word?
4 4
1.2. Studying word-formation
12
1.3. Inflection and derivation
18
1.4. Summary
23
Further reading
23
Exercises
24
2. Studying complex words 2.1. Identifying morphemes 2.1.1. The morpheme as the minimal linguistic sign
25 25 25
2.1.2. Problems with the morpheme: the mapping of form and meaning 2.2. Allomorphy
33
2.3. Establishing word-formation rules
38