Back-formation, reduplication, sentence-condensation.

The process of forming a new word (a neologism) by extracting actual or supposed affixesfrom another word; shortened words created from longer words. Verb: back-form (itself a back-formation). The term back-formation was coined by Scottish lexicographer James Murray, the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until 1915.

Examples and Observations:

· singular noun pea from the older English plural pease

· the verb burgle from the older English noun burglar

· the verb diagnose from the older English noun diagnosis

· "Stripping the in- from inchoate is known as back-formation, the same process that has given us words like peeve (from peevish), surveil (from surveillance) and enthuse (from enthusiasm). There’s a long linguistic tradition of removing parts of words that look like prefixes and suffixes to come up with 'roots' that weren’t there to begin with."
(Steven Pinker, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. HarperCollins, 1999)
"In many cases of back-formation a presumed affix is removed which is in fact not truly an affix, as in the following words where the -or, -ar, and -er are not the agentive suffix, but part of the root:orator - -er> orate, lecher + -er> lech, peddler + -er> peddle, escalator + -er> escalate, editor + -er>edit, swindle + -er> swindle, sculptor + -er> sculpt, hawker + -er> hawk. These mistakes are calledback-formations. Note that some of them are colloquial or marginal, while others are fully accepted."
Back-Formation in Contemporary English
"Back formation continues to make a few contributions to the language. Television has given televise on the model of revise/revision, and donation has given donate on the model of relate/relation. Babysitter and stage manager have given babysit and stage manage for obvious reasons. More remote was the surprising lase from laser (the latter an acronym for 'lightwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation'), recorded from 1966."
Filling a Void
"Backformations are more likely to occur with very strongly entrenched patterns and they have the effect of filling an apparent void. The process has given us common verbs such as afflict (fromaffliction), enthuse (from enthusiasm), laze (from lazy), liaise from liaison), aggress (fromaggression), televise (from television), housekeep (from housekeeper), jell (from jelly), and many more."

· The repeating of parts of words to make new forms is called reduplication. There are various categories of this: rhyming, exact and ablaut (vowel substitution). Examples, are respectively, okey-dokey, wee-wee and zig-zag. The impetus for the coining of these seems to be nothing more than the enjoyment of wordplay. The words that make up these reduplicated idioms often have little meaning in themselves and only appear as part of a pair. In other cases, one word will allude to some existing meaning and the other half of the pair is added for effect or emphasis.

· New coinages have often appeared at times of national confidence, when an outgoing and playful nature is expressed in language; for example, during the 1920s, following the First World War, when many nonsense word pairs were coined - the bee's knees, heebie-jeebies etc. That said, the introduction of such terms begin with Old English and continues today. Willy-nilly is over a thousand years old. Riff-raff dates from the 1400s andhelter-skelter, arsy-versy (a form of vice-versa), and hocus-pocus all date from the 16th century. Coming up to date we have bling-bling, boob-tube and hip-hop. I've not yet recorded a 21st century reduplication. Bling-bling comes very close but is 20th century. 'Bieber Fever' is certainly 21st century, but isn't quite a reduplication.

· Rhyming: - These are reminiscent of Cockney rhyming slang, although in that the rhyme is usually with some other unspoken word, which doesn't form part of the phrase; for example, trouble and strife - wife. There are a few exceptions to this guideline, for example, chevy chase - face.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1837