Creating Words and Morphemes

LIGN 42 - Will Styler

Today’s Plan

• How are words born?

• How are morphemes born?

• Do morphemes ever die?

• Reanalysis!

How are new words born?

In language, we have lots of processes that form words

• Blending: situationship, croots, mansplain

• Coining: bling, yeet, doggo, uwu, dongle

• Univerbation: cat-and-mouse game, or goodbye

• Clipping: pog, rizz

• Spelling Changes: thicc

Also…

• Acronyms and Initialisms: NASA, WAP, thot, UCSD, UCB

• Borrowings: pupusa, kawaii!

• New meanings: nerf, body count, cap

• … and many more

Give me new-ish words!

This describes the moment of creation

• … but what else needs to happen for a word to be ‘real’ and usable?

How widespread does a word need to be usable?

• We’ll think more about this on Wednesday!

How are morphemes born?

Borrowing

• -ation, -ize, -ify from Latin

• uber- from German

• -ito/-ita from Spanish

• Other borrowed morphemes?

Grammaticalization

• ‘will’ as future marker from Old English ‘willan’

• ‘we’ll’ as future marker from ‘we will’

  • It’s not fully productive yet!

• ‘imma head out’ from ‘I am going to head out’

• ‘Let’s eat’ from ‘let us eat’

Compounding is a common

• Compounding takes two existing free words and combines them for a new meaning

  • Laptop, backpack, cellphone, fireplace, lipstick, down bad, fuckboy

• Most Compounds have a ‘head’ which controls the part of speech and part of the meaning

  • Bookkeepers, Light Years (vs. años luz), sidestepping, grad school

• Compounding acts like derivation

  • New words are created, and with unpredictable meanings

Compounding meanings can be odd too

• Salad Dressing, Butt Dial, Booty Call, Big Mac, Blowhard, pushover, Hawkeye

• Substitutions feel very creative

  • Lapbottom? Butt text? Booty Skype? Little Mac? Eyestick?

Reanalysis

• … but first…

Do morphemes ever die?

Morphology can become opaque and disappear

• It ceases to be ‘segmentable’

  • We no longer realize there’s a morpheme there

• -en is no longer a productive plural for English

  • oxen, children, women, *wugen, *thoten

• ‘Strong verbs’ (ablaut) is no longer a productive process

  • sit -> sat, sing -> sang, sting -> stung, ding -> *dung, yeet -> *yote

This morphology has become ‘lexicalized’

• It’s not usable morphology, it’s ‘a word being weird’

• We view ‘children’ as a quirk of ‘child’

• We view ‘brethren’ as a separate word

• We consider ‘strong’ (ablauted) verbs to be ‘irregular’

At this point, the affix is fossilized

• You may find it in old words

• Speakers may be vaguely aware of the affix

• It’s no longer active

• It is lost to the language

Until, when chance came, it ensnared another bearer.

Reanalysis

We’re constantly looking for morphemes

• … and not just in this class!

• People try to make sense of their language

• Kids try to understand ‘the moving parts’ of what they’re learning

• Humans are very good at pattern finding

If we notice a pattern, we’ll use it

• Whether that was ‘intended’ or not!

• “No, older generation, that’s analyzeable!”

Resegmentation

Cran-

This often happens with borrowings

• Pease -> Peas -> Pea

• Statistics -> Statistic

• Burglar -> Burgle

• Tamales -> Tamale

• Euthanasia -> Euthanize

Sometimes, these are modern words

• Babysitter -> Babysit

• Bookkeeper -> Bookkeep

• Dingy -> Dinge

• Mentor -> Mentee

• Taser -> Tase

• Typewriter -> Typewrite

Speakers can differ in their acceptance of these forms

• Uncouth -> Couth?

• Enthusiasm -> Enthuse?

• Disgruntled -> Gruntled?

• Disdained -> Dained?

An affix is born!

• Alcoholic

• Alcoholic

-oholic is now a productive affix

• Chocoholic

• Workaholic

• Enchiladaholic

• (Does this mean that Catholics really like cats?)

Arnold Zwicky coined a term for these: ‘libfix’

• -burger
• -tard
• -naut
• Cran-
• -gate
• -ussy

Sometimes, old affixes are rediscovered

• Some day, your grandkids will take you to the oven store to buy an ov

What other new morphemes can you think of?

This week, we’re going to think about these issues in the meme world?

• When does a new meme become a new meme?

• How readily can we find the parts of a meme?

• How easily can we understand what parts refer to what?

• Does that have a role in reanalysis?

• Does that reflect on how new memes are born?