Making new words
Subtitle: morphological derivation in English
By: R.M.W. Dixon, Language and Culture Research Centre, James Cook University
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 448
ISBN-13: 9780198712374; 9780198712367
Subjects: Morphology; Word formation; New words; Suffixes and prefixes; English language
Description: 'Making New Words' provides a detailed study of roughly 200 prefixes and suffixes which create new words in today's English. Alongside a systematic discussion of these forms, Professor Dixon explores and explains the hundreds of conundrums that seem to be exceptions to general rules: why do we say un-distinguished (with prefix un-) but in-distinguishable (with in-); why un-ceasing but in-cesssant? Why, alongside gold-en, do we say silver-y (not silver-en)? Why is it wood-en (not wood-ic) but metall-ic (not metall-en)?
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 435-438) and indexes.
Table of contents: title: Preliminaries; title: How to make new words; title: Criteria; title: affixes, semi-affixes, and compounds; title: What we describe; title: Un-expected, mis-judged, dis-organized counter-revolution : making negative words; title: Ultra-patriotic, extra-special, pre-election pseudo-promise : keeping the same word class; title: Be-feather, smart-en, em-power, beauti-fy, moral-ize : making new verbs; title: Moon-like, death-ly, angr-y, mysteri-ous, memor-able : making new adjectives; title: Eager-ness, bidd-ing, pay-ment, owner-ship, satisf-action : making new nouns; title: Care-ful-ly, side-ways, home-wards, crab-fashion : making new adverbs; title: Un-relent-less-ly de-west-ern-iz-ing non-mean-ing-ful infra-structures : combining affixes; title: Envoi : the way of words; title: Appendix 1 : list of adjective and verb semantic types, with sample members; title: Appendix 2 : alphabetical directory of adjectives and verbs in the list of semantic types.