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 boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define: a new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form (see conversion). Word formation can also be contrasted with the formation of idiomatic expressions, although words can be formed from multi-word phrases (see compound and incorporation).
Morphological word formation
There are two subcategories; words created by derivation, words created by compounding, and words created by conversion.
Derivation
Derivation is the process of forming new words from existing ones by adding affixes to them, like shame + less + ness → shamelessness. In cases in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories, this is known as agglutination, as seen in agglutinative languages.
Conversion
This also known as zero-affixation, In case the class of the word is change from one word class to the other without any change in the form of the word. for instance, "water" as in " give me aglass of water and "water" as in "Selorm will have to water the garden this evening".
Blending
A blend is a word formed by joining parts of two or more older words. An example is smog, which comes from smoke and fog, or brunch, which comes from 'breakfast' and 'lunch'.
Sub-categories of blending are:
- Acronym (a word formed from initial letters of the words in a phrase, like English laser from light amplified by stimulated emission of radiation)
- Clipping (morphology) (taking part of an existing word, like forming ad from advertisement)
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_formation
