In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The line between word formation and semantic change is sometimes a bit blurry; what one person views as a new use of an old word, another person might view as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form; see Conversion (linguistics). Word formation can also be contrasted with the formation of idiomatic expressions, though sometimes words can form from multi-word phrases; see Compound (linguistics) and Incorporation (linguistics). Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ... A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetical value. ... In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. ... A process of word formation where a word is created from another word without any change in its form (for example no derivational affixes are involved). ... An idiom is an expression (i. ... In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (a word) that consists of more than one other lexeme. ... Incorporation is a phenomenon by which a word, usually a verb, forms a kind of compound with, for instance, its direct object or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function. ...

See also

The following articles describe various mechanisms of word formation:

• Acronym (a word formed from initial letters of the words in a phrase, like English laser from light amplified by stimulated emission of radiation)
• Affix (a morpheme that attaches to a base morpheme to form a word, like re- or -ness)
• Agglutination (the process of forming new words from existing ones by adding affixes to them, like shame + less + ness → shamelessness)
• Back-formation (removing seeming affixes from existing words, like forming edit from editor)
• Blend (a word formed by blending two older words, like smog, which comes from smoke and fog)
• Clipping (lexicography) (taking part of an existing word, like forming ad from advertisement)
• Compound (linguistics) (a word formed by stringing together older words, like earthquake)
• Conversion (linguistics) (forming a new word from an existing identical one, like forming the verb green from the existing adjective)
• Incorporation (linguistics) (a compound of a verb and an object or particle, like intake)
• Loanword (a word borrowed from another language, like cliché, which comes from French)
• Neologism (a completely new word, like quark)
• Noun adjunct (a noun that modifies another noun, like chicken in chicken soup)
• Phono-semantic matching (matching a foreign word with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root)

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Backronym and Apronym (Discuss) Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and ABC, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced on the basis of this abbreviated written form. ... Look up affix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For the music festival, see Agglutination Metal Festival. ... In etymology, the process of back-formation is the creation of a neologism by reinterpreting an earlier word as a compound and removing the spuriously supposed affixes. ... This article is about the creation of words by combining words. ... In linguistics, clipping is the word formation process in which a portion of a longer word is used to produce a clipped word. ... In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (a word) that consists of more than one other lexeme. ... A process of word formation where a word is created from another word without any change in its form (for example no derivational affixes are involved). ... Incorporation is a phenomenon by which a word, usually a verb, forms a kind of compound with, for instance, its direct object or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function. ... A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ... A neologism (Greek νεολογισμός [neologismos], from νέος [neos] new + λόγος [logos] word, speech, discourse + suffix -ισμός [-ismos] -ism) is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created (coined) — often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. ... In grammar, a noun adjunct is a noun that modifies another noun and that is optional; that is, it can be removed without affecting the grammar of the sentence. ... Phono-semantic matching is a term introduced by Professor Ghilad Zuckermann, University of Cambridge. ...

Literature

• Bussmann, Hadumod (1996), Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics, London: Routledge.
• Grzega, Joachim (2004), Bezeichnungswandel: Wie, Warum, Wozu? Ein Beitrag zur englischen und allgemeinen Onomasiologie, Heidelberg: Winter.
• Koch, Peter (2002), “Lexical Typology from a Cognitive and Linguistic Point of View”, in: Cruse, D. Alan et al. (eds.) (2002-), Lexicology: An International Handbook on the Nature and Structure of Words and Vocabularies / Lexikologie: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wörtern und Wortschätzen, [Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 21], Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, vol. 1, p. 1142-1178.

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