Notes in Contrastive Analysis: Words and Word-Formation Processes

The following excerpts of a lecture of words and word-formation processes. Language input are from respondents who speak Tagalog, Korean, and English.

MORPHOLOGY is a branch of Linguistics that deals with the study of the formation of words and word formation processes.


1. Etymology is the study of the origin and history of a word; e.g., Etymology = (Greek, etymon 'original form' + logia 'study of')

Tagalog derived the names of subjects from English (see Borrowing below) like Sikolohiya (Psychology) and Bayolohiya (Biology); whose etymologies can be traced as in English. In Korean, however, the names of subjects are compounds of Korean words that are calques from English (see Borrowing below).

2. Coinage is the invention of totally new words; e.g., Kleenex, Teflon, Tylenol, Xerox, etc.

3. Borrowing is the process of getting loan words from other languages. For example, in Tagalog and Korean, chocolate and hotel are both loan words from English. Carabao ('water buffalo') and boondocks ('a place far away from civilization'; not 'mountain') are Tagalog words in English; and kimchi and taekwondo ('the way of the legs and fist') are Korean words in English.

Another form of borrowing are loan phrases or calques, which are phrases translated word-for-word from the donor language to the borrowing language.

An example are the Korean words for boyfriend and girlfriend. According to our Korean informants, these words are "new"; they are not used by older generations of Koreans.

Another example of loan translations are names of subjects in Korean: 

The names of subjects in Korean (above) are calques of the etymologies of the English words: Simlihak ('mind' + 'study' = Psychology) and Sengmulhak ('life' + 'study' = Biology). Both are also examples of Compounding in Korean. Below, the Tagalog Bahay-bata ('house' + 'child' = Womb) is an example of Compounding in Tagalog.

4. Compounding is the process of combining two or more whole morphemes together to form a new word. This is a very common process in English. An example in Tagalog is bahay kubo or 'nipa hut' (but literally, 'cube house') and bahay-bata ('house' + 'child' = womb)

Examples of Compounding in Korean.

5. Blending is the process of forming a new term by using only parts of morphemes (see Clipping) below. Examples in English include motel (motorist + hotel) and brunch (breakfast + lunch).


6. Clipping is the process of reducing a word into it's brief (abbreviated) form; e.g., doctor --> doc and veterinarian --> vet.

7. Acronymy is the formation of words using the initial letters (e.g., Department of Science and Technology -- > DOST) or syllables (e.g., Department of Education --> DepEd) of a group of words. An example in Tagalog is the KKK, or Kataastaasang, Kagalanggalangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan ('Highest and Most Respected Society of Children of the Nation').

Examples of Acronymy in Philippine English, Tagalog, and Korean. According to our Korean informant, Koreans only use English for acronyms and that English acronyms can be "spelled" in the Korean syllabary.

8. Inflection is the process of giving the different "forms" of a word (allomorphs). This does not change the part of speech or the meaning of a word. For example, English noun plurals: pencil --> pencils and verb tenses: to walk --> walked (past) and walks (present singular) and walk (present plural). (The form will walk is NOT an inflection; but the use of the modal will). Note that the English plural and the tenses of the verb are formed using suffixes.

Korean noun plurals (above) and possessives (below). In Korean, "dl" is the plural morpheme (that can be used with any class of noun) and "ui" is the possessive morpheme.

Tenses of the verb in Tagalog (above) and Korean (below). Tagalog uses prefixes (and reduplication in present and future) while Korean uses suffixes like English. "Geot" becomes "Geol" in the past and future because the latter is easier to say with the suffixes "ut da" and "ul geot i da". (The "geot" in the future suffix "ul geot i da" is a different "word" from geotda, 'to walk'.

Two unique affixes in Tagalog are infixes (gitlapi) within a word and circumfixes (kabilaan) on both the front and after the word (and cannot be treated as separate affixes like the English international).

9. Derivation is the process of forming words by changing the part of speech of a word. In English we have the noun ease, the verb to ease (and it's inflections eased, eases, and ease), the adjective easy and the adverb easily.