Processes

Different etymologists will classify the processes and directions in different ways, but this is the one used here for processes:

1) analogy;

2) compounding;

3) reduplication;

4) derivation;

5) back-formation;

6) base-creation;

7) shortening.

Analogy. Of these processes, analogy may be the most significant; some linguists have argued that all the processes involve some sort of analogy. (Other linguists disagree.) In any case, analogy in effect matches an already existing pattern with the demands of a new context. The new context produces a new word or a new usage of an old word. For example, “defense” /difε ns/ used to be a noun only, but now is commonly also used as a verb /difε ns/ by sports commentators and fans, as in “to defense against the Cowboys’ front four”. Everybody uses analogy to some extent, but children in particular are prone to doing so during the overgeneralizing stages. “I toed to town” is a common analogy with the regular {ed} past-tense inflectional affix. My daughter, Joni, was once told to “Behave! ” (phonetically: [bı ’heiv]). Her answer was, “I’m being have! ” (phonetically: [‘bı ı ŋ heı v]), an analogy with linking-verb-predicate-adjective constructions such as: “Be good! ” —“I’m being good! ”

Many standard constructions and words have come into Modern English by way of analogy. There was, for example, an Old English verb, drincan /drinkon/, “to drink”, and a noun, drenĉ /drε nĉ /, “a drink”. The verb drincan produced a converted form, the noun drinc, which has come down to us as “drink”, while the old drenĉ disappeared as a noun. But drenĉ also produced a conversion, the verb drenĉ an, which is now our word “drench”. The conversions from verb to noun to verb were made by analogy of the respective noun-verb derivational suffixes. So Modern English has one verb, “drench”, and one noun, “drink”, as well as the original verb (“drink”).

The other processes involve a systematic jugglingof morphemes:

Free + Free: compounding, reduplication.

Free + Bound: derivation.

Free – Bound: back-formation, shortening.

+ Free: base-creation.

Compounding and reduplication. Compounding, discussed earlier when we were examining free bases, simply combines two or more bases into one new word: {road} + {block} = “roadblock”; {stop} + {light} = “stoplight”; {over} + {see} = “oversee”. Note that the resulting compound word means something different from the sum of its parts; it is a new word. Reduplication, the repetition of phonologically similar free morphemes, almost always produces a comic effect because of the near rhyme in key phonemes: “mish-mash”, “helter-skelter”, “zigzag”. Consequently, reduplicated words appear more often in colloquial or slang use than in formal utterance.

Derivation and back-formation. Derivation, possibly the most common etymological process after analogy, and back-formation, which is far less common, are in effect opposites of each other. As we mentioned in the section on bases and affixes, derivation adds affixes to a base, as in {com} (affix) + {pound} (base) + {ing} (affix), “compounding”. Where that process derives words by the addition of affixes, back-formation deprives a base of its apparent affixes, producing a new word in the form of an unadorned base. The verb “edit”, for instance, comes from the Latin noun editor, one who gives out, that is, one who publishes and distributes copies of something. The suffix {or} on the bound base {edit} dropped off, resulting in a back-formed free base. “Sidle”, meaning a sort of crablike shuffle, is backformed from the Middle English adverb sideling, beside or alongside of “nestle”, to cuddle close to, comes from an Old English noun, nestling, a creature still young enough to be confined to its nest. In all three instancesthe bases — {edit}, {sid< e> l}, and {nestl} — came intoexistence after a longer word had already been in use.

Shortening. Shortening (sometimes called abbreviation) is like the process called synecdoche in poetry: a part is substituted for a whole. In poetry, it is common to find such substitutions as “the crown” for “the king” or “the monarchy”; in diachronic morphology, we find “cab” substituting for “cabriolet”, “extra” for “extraordinary”, or “varsity” for “university”. In “varsity”, the graphic shift form < e> to < a > reflects the common British pronunciation of short < e > as [a], where Americans would say [ε ]. […]

Base-creation. As its name suggests, a base-creation makes up bases, using morphemic relations as guidelines. A base-created word often echoes natural sounds onomatopoetically, as in “hiss”, “mumble”, “hum”, or “drizzle”. There is, of course, no such thing as a completely new word, since we are limited generally by the sounds the human speech organs can produce and particularly, by habit as much as anything else, to the sounds with which we are familiar. Thus, while the word “drizzle” (as either noun or verb) is a base-creation, it is also phonologically and etymologically related to the Middle English noun mizzle, a fine mist. Even the brand name Kodak, often cited as an example of “pure” base-creation, did not come out of thin air. Whether its creators intended it or not, “Kodak” follows a familiar English phonological pattern. It consists of two syllables with the accent on the first syllable and an alternation of consonant and vowel sounds. Compare [’kowdæ k] with these transcriptions of common nouns that follow the same phonetic pattern of first-syllable stress and consonantal-vocalic alternation: [’nowtı s], [’rı vε r], and [’tuwtə r].