Word Formation Process - Compounding Process (A full Report)

PREFACE

Alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin, it is the best expression which I like to address to the Almighty God, Allah SWT in this opportunity. I realize that I can’t do anything without the blessing and the mercies from Allah SWT. This Paper is written as a partial of fulfillment of the requirement for Morphology Assignment to follow the final examination in the 4th semester.
In composing this paper, I face a lot of troubles but with the motivation, the suggestion, the encouragement, the support and the guidance from many people especially my friend and my lecture, eventually I am able to overcome the problems and finish this paper. I realize that this paper is still far from perfect. Therefore, the constructive and the criticism are awfully appreciated to develop this paper in order to it becomes more valuable. I expected that this paper can be useful for the people who want to learn about Morphology, especially the people who want to know about the compounding word process.

Gorontalo, June 2009

Hasir Y. Uti

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Basic Consideration

Morphology is a branch of linguistics field. As a mater of fact, there are several linguistics fields that have to learn, for instance phonetics and phonology, syntax, semantic, lexis and pragmatic. It all we need to learn in order to make our knowledge about English language wider. We have to know all about that and it should be learned in its steps. The first we should learn about phonetics and phonology then move to morphology and so on. If we just learn not in its order, maybe you will be confused. It is because each part has its relation with the other parts. In addition, we have to understand each part before we move to the next part. Beside the example above, there are some branches of linguistic that are merged with the other field, such as sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, stylistics and others. Actually, I don’t want to talk about the whole linguistic fields, but I just want to talk about one of them that I mentioned above. In this paper, I will talk about Morphology and the word formation process especially in Compounding process.
Talking about morphology, it means that we talks about word or morphemes and its formation. As a system of language, words or morphemes have significant role. The changing of the word form can change the meaning and the group types of the word, for example, the word play-player and tall-taller. The first word play-player and the second word tall-taller have a different term. The word play becomes player by adding a suffix (-er) add the last letter and it changes the meaning and its group from verb to noun. While the second word tall-taller has the same process with the first one but it has the different term that it doesn’t change the group of the word. The word changes from tall to taller, but it is still an adjective. It just changes the meaning of the word. Overall, the little changes in a word can change the meaning of the word itself. In creating a new word, we couldn’t just add a morpheme in a word wherever we like. But it has the roles and processes.
There are many processes of creating a new word. The processes are rarely observed by people. They just know about the usage of the word in a language and it is acceptable in public relation. They don’t care whether they know about the process creation or not. Actually, the word formation process is indentified in some types, for example, loan word/borrowings, blending, clipping, acronyms, affixations, back-formations, conversions, compounding and etc. They are some examples of word formation words and we all have to know about it. It is important for us to make our knowledge about the word processing process. Therefore, In this paper, I will just talk about compounding process which is a part of them that we need. Compounding is the word formation process that creating a new word by combining words in one and has a different meaning. It is formed by adding a different word in another and it becomes have 2 roots and one meaning. Compounding word can be found in our daily life. There are some terminologies that we found, such as, software, inbox, wiseguy, coldblood, girlfriend, toothbrush, wallpaper and etc. Those are some examples of compounding words and maybe one of them you didn’t know the meaning is. It is important for us to know about the compounding process. We have to know that to enlarge our knowledge about word creating process in order to make us understand the part of language.
The compounding process is used in all languages. You can easy to discern the usage of the compound words in short stories, novels, articles, newspapers, books, and etc. Some word formations are also used in there but, in this case I prefer to search the using of compounding words.

1.2 Problem Statements1. How to find compound words and how to classify it?
2. How to distinguish compounding process and any other formation process?
1.3 Objectives
1. To improve the knowledge about the word formation, especially about compounding.  2. To understand the term and condition in combining the words.1.4 Scope and delimitation
In this paper I will use a short story by Stephen Crane with title ‘the dark-brown dog’. I will search the compounding word in his story and its form and class. 1.5 Significant of Research

This research is surely for the student in a University. This is should be learned by the student in English Department in order to understand the process of word creation. This can help them to correct any errors in their writing and they will know how the word formulated. They also will be able to classify the word form and its meaning and they will not make any errors in their writing and in giving the meaning to the words.

1.6 Reason for choosing the topic

Everyone has the interests in one object of research. It also occurred on me. I am as a writer has the interests in this topic because I think this topic is the interesting. The compounding words are often used in a books, novels, magazine and etc that we read in our daily life. Sometimes, I found the compounding word that I don’t know what it means in my language. I just guess the meaning of the word based on it roots. As a result, I was wrong and the meaning was far from the roots means. Maybe some people have the same experience with mine and maybe they don’t know about it. That is my reason to choose this topic. By knowing the compounding word process, we will be able to correct that error if it happens to us.

1.7 Methodology

The method that will be used in this research is Descriptive Method. This method will be used to explain how to combine the word to be overlapped in compounding process. The combining is pretty easy because we don’t need to reduce or shortening the word. Therefore, It needs more explanation about how to combine it.

1.8 Technique of collecting the data

The instrument that I used in this paper is collecting the data from the internet. Actually, I didn’t have any books that telling about the word formation process, so I decided to find it on the internet. I think internet is the good instrument to collect the data because we can find many referential resources that tells about the word formation. I have found many sites that contain about morphology and the word formation process. I took some of them and make summarize of its explanation. To be certain, I used internet for finding my paper.

1.9 Technique of analyzing data

The technique which is used in this analyzing is qualitative. This technique is used because this technique is really appropriate with the study of word formation process. I take the source from the internet and choose which one is easier to understand by the people. I also added the example in it.

CHAPTER II

THEORETICAL BASES

Word formation process is included in morphology substance. We all know that morphology is the study about the word in a language. Actually, the term of word formation process doesn’t have a clear cut but it is already accepted in its usage. Word formation process is sometimes referred to all process connected to the changing of the word form. For example, we can find it in affixation which is the matter of morphology. In a wider situation, word formation is also the process of creating a new lexis unit.

Word formation can be found in all language in the world, including English language. Word formation is addressed to the process of creating a new word in a language. This doesn’t mean that the new word is cognitively “formed” every time the native speaker uses it. There are also some word formations that may not be in use any longer. For example, the –ly in friendly or ghostly is not anymore used to create the new adjective. But noticed the way in which word was formed anew at one point in the past helps us to see the relationship with the other words. For example, in the word ghostly we could find that that word was originally derives from the stem ghost with ending –ly. Other means are still used frequently in English, such as the ending –ness.

The common way in forming the words is affixation. Affixation means that a bound morpheme is merged to a free morpheme, or stem. There are three places that the bound morpheme can be put. They are in before, after and in the middle of the stem. The affixes that put before the stem are called prefixes, for example the word unlock. The affixes that put after the stem are called suffix, for example, the word lockable. The ones that put in the middle of the stem are labeled infix. This affix is rare in English word, but in Indonesian word it is occurred, for example the word gerigi. The word derives from gigi and then the morpheme –ri- put in the middle of that word. Instead of talking about the affixation, we had better talk about the kinds of word formation process.

There are some ways that is used to create a new word in a language. It is identified into some kinds, they are: Coinage, Acronym, Blending, Clipping, Borrowing, Compounding, Back formation, Conversion, and Suppletion. The kind of word formation processes is important in the English languages, but it is rarely the case that only one process occurs in the word. In this paper I will talk about the word formation process especially in compounding process.

What is compounding?

In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound). Compounding is a word that consists either of two or more elements that are independent words, such as loudspeaker, baby-sit, or high school or specially modified combining forms of words, such as Greek philosophia, from philo- ‘loving,” and Sophia, “wisdom” (http://www.dictionary.com).

Compounding or word compounding refers to the faculty and device of language to form new words by combining or putting together old words. It means the new word is formed by two or more words that are called a root. In the other side, compound, compounding or word-compounding occurs when a person attaches two or more words together to become one word that has a new meaning. The meanings of the words interrelate in such a way that a new meaning comes out which is very different from the meanings of the words in isolation, for example, the word housewife which its means as the wife which is her work in a house. It doesn’t the have a same meaning when we isolate that word.

The compounding formation in a language can be the noun phrases that include a noun modified by adjective or attributive nouns. Due to the English tendency towards conversion, the two classes are not always easily distinguished. Most of English compound that consist of more than one word can be constructed recursively by combining two words at a time.

The compounding formation is really easy to discover. As you know, we can know that the word is compounding by isolate it to their roots. By that we can what are the roots of the word and what the meaning when it is combined. The meaning is sometimes far from the roots meaning, so we couldn’t just guess the meaning of the word without take a check if it has another meaning than its roots.

Forms of compounding word
There are three forms of compound words:

• The solid or closed form in which two usually moderately short words appear together as one. Solid compounds most likely consist of short (monosyllabic) units that often have been established in the language for a long time. Examples are housewife, lawsuit, wallpaper, etc.

• The hyphenated form in which two or more words are connected by a hyphen. Compounds that contain affixes, such as house-build(er) and single-mind(ed)(ness), as well as adjective-adjective compounds and verb-verb compounds, such as blue-green and freeze-dry, are often hyphenated. Compounds that contain particles, such as mother-of-pearl and salt-and-pepper, are also often hyphenated.

• The open or spaced form consisting of newer combinations of usually longer words, such as distance learning, player piano, lawn tennis, etc. Sources: http://www.experiencefestival.com/english_compound
Classification of compound word

All the compounding words are included in the form above. Besides the form of compounding words, there are 2 classifications of the compound words. The classifications are:

1. Semantic Classifications
A common semantic classification yields 4 types:

1. An endocentric compound consists of a head, i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example, the English compound doghouse, where house is the head and dog is the modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog.

2. Exocentric compounds (called a bahuvrihi compound in the Sanskrit tradition) do not have a head, and their meaning often cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound white-collar is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing.

3. Copulative compounds are compounds which have two semantic heads.

4. Appositional compounds refer to lexemes that have two (contrary) attributes which classify the compound.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound
2. Formal Classifications

English, words, particularly adjectives and nouns, are combined into compound structures in a variety of ways.

1. Noun + Noun

The most common type of word formation is the combination of two (or more) nouns in order to form a resulting noun:

Noun + Noun = Noun Examples: landmine, wallpaper, toothbrush

The first of the two compounds may be descriptive or both compounds may create a whole new meaning altogether. It is also possible to form words whose components are equally important to or descriptive of its meaning, for example, a washer-dryer refers to an object combining two functions.

2. Verb + Noun

Here verbs describe what is done with an object or what a subject "does", in short, a new noun is formed, usually referring to something concrete, and the verb defines the action related to it:

Verb + Noun = Noun: draw + bridge = drawbridge.

A drawbridge is a bridge that can be inclined in order to allow ships to pass, or "drawn". Here, the noun is the direct object.

3. Noun + Adjective

Nouns and adjectives can also be compounded in the opposite order:

Noun + Adjective = Adjective

Camera + shy = camera-shy (Shy in respect of appearing or speaking before cameras).

In this case, the resultant is an adjective, while the noun explains the objective. Another possibility is that the noun supports the adjective, i.e. as an intensifier: Dirt-cheap = cheap as dirt; paper-thin = thin as paper Those rules do also apply to the linking of nouns and participial adjectives: English-speaking; soul-destroying; frost-bitten More common and shorter compounds appear as one word whereas those longer and less common are linked by a hyphen.
4. Adjectives + Noun
Another major type of word formation is the compounding of Adjectives and nouns: Adjective + Noun = Noun: Brown + bear = brownbear

In this case, the adjective defines or describes the character of the noun ( a brownbear is a bear that is brown). It is also possible, however, to link the two segments and end up with a totally new word, for example, yellowpress refers to newspapers specializing in sensational news items. If the meaning of the compound does not immediately register through analysis of the segments, the latter is the case. Then, only a look in the dictionary will help.

Other Compounds There are various other types of compounds. A selection of which is shown below.Adjective + Adjective
Bitter-sweet, deaf-mute, aural-oral, Anglo-Saxon
Adjective + Participle
Far-reaching, far fetched, narrow-minded, single-minded, high-climbing, low-yielding, red-painted, bare-handed Note: It is as well possible to combine adjectives with participles not originating from verbs.
Adjective + Verb
To blackmail, to dry-clean, to blackpaint, to whitewash
Noun + Verb
To proofread, to babysit, to brainstorm, to sightsee, to tape-record

Preposition + V/adv/N Understand
underwater, underwear, undertaker, underweight and etc.

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH AND DISCCUSSION

3.1 Research

Compounding is commonly used in a language, not only in English language, but also it occurred in the other languages of the world. We can see it through magazine, article, internet, and etc. To find the compound word and to classify which the word belongs to, we have to know all about the theory about the compounding itself.

After know all about the compounding process, we have to practice what we get about the compounding. For example you read the book and find the word that you think included in compound word. In here I took the short story as my object of research. I want to know whether the compound words are often used or not and how the people possible put the meaning of the word compound. I took Stephen Crane’s story as the story to find the word compound. It is about 37 paragraphs in this short story. The title of the story is “A dark brown dog”.

Stephen Crane A Dark-Brown Dog A Child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulder against a high board-fence and swayed the other to and fro, the while kicking carelessly at the gravel. (Paragraph 1) Street-corner and board-fence (nouns) This is a hyphenated form of compounding process. You can easily see it by the hyphen that was written there. These words are constructed by both nouns (noun + noun). Sunshine beat upon the cobbles, and a lazy summer wind raised yellow dust which trailed in clouds down the avenue. Clattering trucks moved with indistinctness through it. The child stood dreamily gazing. (Paragraph 2) Sunshine (noun) This word is the closed form. You can see that this word has 2 roots that each of them has its mean. This word consists of a noun and a verb. They are ‘sun’ and ‘shine’. If we just separate this word into “sun shine” it will be have the different meaning. The word “shine” will become a verb. Summer wind (noun) This is an open or spaced form. ‘Summer wind’ is constructed by N + N. After a time, a little dark-brown dog came trotting with an intent air down the sidewalk. A short rope was dragging from his neck. Occasionally he trod upon the end of it and stumbled. (Paragraph 3) Dark-brown (adjective) You must have known that this is the compounding by looking the hyphen and its roots. It consists of adjective + adjective. Intent air and sidewalk (noun) Intent air is a spaced form while sidewalk is closed form. Intent air was constructed by a noun + noun and sidewalk was constructed by noun + verb. They are above is just the sample of the story. There are more paragraphs that contain the compound words in it. I didn’t write all the paragraphs because I think it is too many to write in. Actually, I have found some compounding words in the short story. The following lists are the compounding word that I found in the story: 1. Grave crime (N + N= N)
2. Footpad (N + N= N)
3. Door-step (N + V= N)
4. Stairways (N + N= N)
5. Panic-stricken (N + Participle = Adj.)
6. Door home (N + N = N)
7. Way heeded (N + N = N)
8. Savage temper (N + N = N)
9. Household (N + V = N)
10. Large-folk (Adj. + N = N)
11. Outstretched (Adj. + Participle= adj.)
12. Safeguard (adj. + N = N)
13. Underfeeding (Prep + V = N)
14. Dog-soul (N + N = N)
15. Joyous gambol (adj. + V= N)
16. Coffee-pot (N + N = N)
17. Flower-pot (N + N = N)
18. Clothes-pins ( N + N = N)
19. Alleyway ( N + N = N)
20. Downstairs (adj. + N = Adv.)
21. Backward (adj. + N = N)

I think you all know the classification of the lists above. So, I think I don’t need to classify it one by one. It is easy to classify which form are the words included. You just see if it is closed, hyphened or separated/spaced.

3.2 Discussion

Compounding process can change the word class and in language. You can see above that sometimes the word is changed its class. When the word combined with the other one, it changes the meaning of the words, the class of the words, and the word stress. It means that we have to be careful and aware about the compound word itself. We couldn’t just assume its class, meaning (sometimes could), and the word stress.

The meaning and the class of the compound word is easy enough to find. We can use our dictionary to find the word classes and the meaning. As I said before that, sometimes the meaning of the compound words are different from it roots. For example, when the people say word “Understand”, maybe you have known the meaning is. But lexically, if we isolate the word according to its roots, it will have a different meaning became under =below and stand = stay. Maybe for the people who don’t know the meaning, they will give the meaning lexically to be “stay below”, that what I thought. But, I am not sure that it was like that, because the word Understand is really familiar to our ears. About the class of the word, you can see it in dictionary if you don’t know which class the words are included.

The two parts above maybe is easy but about the word stress maybe is pretty difficult to know. We will need the native speaker to pronounce the compound words. We have to make the differences between the compounding and the other words, such as the compound word “Sunshine” with “sun shine”. According to psycholinguist Steven Pinker, the second one is accented more heavily. Sound patterns, such as stresses placed on particular syllables, may indicate whether the word group is a compound or whether it is an adjective-+-noun phrase. A compound usually has a falling intonation. For example, the compound word Blackboard is stressed "bláckboard" while the word phrases black board is stressed like “bláck bóárd" (Note that this rule does not apply in all contexts).

The compounding process is easy to distinguish with the other processes. This process isn’t the same with any other process, such as conversion, borrowing, clipping, acronym, prefixes and others. In this process we use the free morphemes at all. It doesn’t use bound morphemes like prefixes. Besides, this process doesn’t make a shortening and clipping the word, but it use the whole word to combine with the others. So, the word will be easy by seeing if the words have the roots which are the free morphemes or not. That is how we can distinguish the compound process with the others.

CHAPTER IV

CLOSING

4.1 Conclusion

From the discussion above, we know that the word formation process is really important for us to be known. We have to know all kinds of the word formation itself in order to make our knowledge about the word imported. You know that the compounding process is one of the processes in word formation. It means that we have to know about it and how the process of making compound word. In compounding, the word is made by using two free morpheme joined together without any changing. It has three ways to form the words; they are closed form, hyphened form, and spaces word. The classifications of the compound word are divided into semantic classification and formal classification. Each classification has its sub that we need for classifying the compound word.

In finding the meaning, the classes and the stress of the compound word we have to know all about the compounding process firstly. We need it for understanding the process of compound word. In finding the meaning of the compound word, we have to be careful to give the meaning in the word because sometimes the meaning of the compound words is far from its roots. We need to use the dictionary to help us to find the real meaning. Beside for finding the meaning of the compound word, we also need the word to classify which classes the words are in. if you know the classification, maybe you don’t need to use it. Separated from compound words stressing, we need the native speaker to pronounce the compound word. If we are wrong in stressing the compound word, we will have the different meaning except in writing form. It will be easy to find it if in writing. Finally, we know about the all the compound word generally.

4.2 Suggestion

As a writer, I hope this paper will be one of your references to learn about the word formation process in morphology. I suggest you to learn about the compounding word processing and others word processing. This is really important for all of you to know all about this, because this is the bases of the language. As you know, word second part of language after the letter in phonetic. In addition, the word is the base of the sentences construction also the paragraph also this paper. At least, all of you can read this paper to add your knowledge about the morphology even though I know this paper is still far from perfect. Finally, I wish this paper can be helpful for all of you. 

SOURCES

http://articles.directorym.net/Education-s100.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound

http://www.dictionary.com http://www.experiencefestival.com/english_compound

http://www.experiencefestival.com/english_compound

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/morphology

http://www.paulnoll.com/Books/Clear-English/English-compound-1.html

http://www.americanliterature.com/Crane/Crane.html

http://www.hamline.edu/personal/aschramm/linguistics2001/5mrphana.html