Page 322 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes • Clipped forms are also used in compounds. One part of the original compound most often
remains intact. Examples are: cablegram (cable telegram), op art (optical art), org-man
(organization man), linocut (linoleum cut). Sometimes both halves of a compound are clipped
as in navicert (navigation certificate). In these cases it is difficult to know whether the resultant
formation should be treated as a clipping or as a blend, for the border between the two types
is not always clear. According to Bauer (1993), the easiest way to draw the distinction is to
say that those forms which retain compound stress are clipped compounds, whereas those
that take simple word stress are not. By this criterion bodbiz, Chicom, Comsymp, Intelsat,
midcult, pro-am, sci-fi, and sitcom are all compounds made of clippings. According to
Marchand (1969), clippings are not coined as words belonging to the standard vocabulary of
a language. They originate as terms of a special group like schools, army, police, the medical
profession, etc., in the intimacy of a milieu where a hint is sufficient to indicate the whole.
For example, in school slang originated exam, math, lab, and spec(ulation), tick(et = credit)
originated in stock-exchange slang, whereas vet(eran), cap(tain), are army slang. While
clipping terms of some influential groups can pass into common usage, becoming part of
Standard English, clippings of a socially unimportant class or group will remain groap
slang.
• Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and IBM, that are formed
using the initial letters of words or word parts in a phrase or name. Acronyms and initialisms
are usually pronounced in a way that is distinct from that of the full forms for which they
stand: as the names of the individual letters (as in IBM), as a word (as in NATO), or as a
combination (as in IUPAC). Another term, alphabetism, is sometimes used to describe
abbreviations pronounced as the names of letters.
• A blend is a word formed from parts of two other words. These parts are sometimes, but not
always, morphemes.
• A blend is different from a portmanteau word in that a portmanteau refers strictly to a
blending of two function words, similar to a contraction.
• Derivation is used to form new words, as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or
determination from determine. A contrast is intended with the process of inflection, which
uses another kind of affix in order to form variants of the same word, as with determine/
determine-s/determin-ing/determin-ed.
• A derivational suffix usually applies to words of one syntactic category and changes them
into words of another syntactic category. For example, the English derivational suffix -ly
changes adjectives into adverbs (slow ? slowly).
• Borrowing is just taking a word from another language. The borrowed words are called loan
words. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another
with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept
whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The
word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort. Loanwords can also be called
"borrowings".

24.6 Key-Words

1. Noun Suffixes : Those suffixes which create nouns, for example, -hood, -dome, -ism,
-ship, etc.
2. Adjective Suffixes : These suffixes when combine with stem create asjectives. For example,
-ful, -ish, -less, etc.

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