In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either:
A common method of word formation is the attachment of inflectional or derivational affixes.
Examples include:
Inflection is modifying a word for the purpose of fitting it into the grammatical structure of a sentence. For example:
Examples includes:
An acronym is a word formed from the first letters of other words. For example:
Acronyms are usually written entirely in capital letters, though some words originating as acronyms, like radar, are now treated as common nouns.
Initialisms are similar to acronyms, but where the letters are pronounced as a series of letters. For example:
In linguistics, back-formation is the process of forming a new word by removing actual affixes, or parts of the word that is re-analyzed as an affix, from other words to create a base. Examples include:
The process is motivated by analogy: edit is to editor as act is to actor. This process leads to a lot of denominal verbs.
The productivity of back-formation is limited, with the most productive forms of back-formation being hypocoristics.
A lexical blend is a complex word typically made of two word fragments. For example:
Although blending is listed under the Nonmorphological heading, there are debates as to how far blending is a matter of morphology.
Compounding is the processing of combining two bases, where each base may be a fully-fledged word. For example:
Compounding is a topic relevant to syntax, semantics, and morphology.
There are processes for forming new dictionary items which are not considered under the umbrella of word formation. One specific example is semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define as a new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form.
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