PDF #15 – Hickey, Raymond Productive lexical processes in present-day English
Lexical Processes in English – The theme of lexical change in present-day English is a fruitful field of study. Examining such change reveals many aspects of the lexicology of English, the kinds of processes which are to be found there, the internal organization of the vocabulary of the language and, significantly, it reflects the contemporary society which uses the language.
Lexical change also tells us about the typological options available in the language and how these are used creatively by its speakers. In order to illuminate these various aspects of the subject, the present study will consider a representative amount of lexical material which illustrates on-going changes of recent years.
One might say that words are the building blocks of language: words make up sentences, which make up paragraphs, which make up stories, and stories allow us to communicate with one another. We often take the existence of words for granted, but they didn’t just spring into being. There are many processes that allowed the words we use every day to be formed and that allow new ones to be formed even today. On this page, we will take a look at how words work and how they are made. The most common of these lexical processes include affixation, compounding, and conversion.
Words themselves are made up their own smaller building blocks, called morphemes. There are two overarching kinds of morphemes: inflectional and derivational.
1. Inflectional morphemes can change the state of a word (as in the case of superlative morphemes -er and -est), or change the meaning, as when morphemes are added to show plurality or possessiveness, along with many other functions. Inflectional morphemes also include the internal vowel changes that sometimes occur when certain words change from singular to plural or change tense: foot to feet, ring to rang, and so on.
These inflectional morphemes include the endings -ing, -s (used with verbs or nouns), -ed, -en, -‘s, -er, and -est.
2. Derivational morphemes are affixes (prefixes or suffixes) that work to change the lexical meaning or part of speech of a word.
Some examples include the addition of -ment to the verb argue to create the new noun argument, or the addition of the prefix
un- to a work like bend to create the word unbend, which has a lexically different definition than the original word.
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