Young children often lack words for what they want to talk about. To fill the gaps in their lexicon, they coin new words. They rely on compounding and derivation to do this. This means identifying and analyzing parts of words – roots or stems, and affixes – and learning their meanings, as well as which combinations are possible. Some languages favor compounding and some derivation in word formation. Children are sensitive to which options are the most productive and adopt those first. Two-year-olds offer analyses of word meanings, as in running-stick (I run with it) or high-chair (it is high), and provide analyses of novel compounds where they take account of language structure (head noun first in Hebrew, second in English). They also analyze derived forms with agentive endings. They start to produce novel words from as young as age two, whether compounds in Germanic languages, or derived forms in Romance and Semitic. They begin with simple forms (minimal or no change to the root), advance to compound or derived word forms that are transparent in meaning, and opt for the most productive options in the adult language, with the goal of finding the right words to convey the child-speaker’s meaning.

The present chapter summarizes the patterns of lexical derivation in Slavic languages. Lexical derivation is presented here as word formation. Words are formed in the sentence by word-structure rules that expand root categories like N and A to derived structures like N[A–N] and A[N–A], followed by the lexicalization of the root and suffix categories with morphemes from the lexicon. Differing from the morpheme approach to morphology is the word approach, which assumes a lexicon of words and favors processes over items. The author presents basic patterns of prefixation, suffixation, and suffixless recategorization.

This chapter presents the patterns of composition in Slavic languages. In Slavic, most compounds are nouns (like čel-o-věkъ) and adjectives (like *bos-o-nògъ). Verbal compounds (like blag-o-sloviti ‘to bless’) are less frequent and less productive (as is generally the case in Indo-European languages). The author reviews patterns and phenomena of nominal, adjectival, adverbial, verbal, pronominal, and numeral composition.

This chapter discusses the place of inflectional and derivational morphology in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). After describing how inflection is encoded in the layered structure of the word, the chapter offers an explanatory account of the factors that motivate inflectional marking. The functional orientation of RRG presupposes a view of morphology distributed throughout the different components of the grammatical model. Additionally, the typological commitment of RRG requires paying close attention to the role of inflectional processes not only in dependent-marking languages but also in head-marking languages, since the interface between inflectional morphology and syntax is much tighter in the latter type of language. The chapter then reflects on word formation as a lexicological process which involves the interaction of lexical semantics and morphology. The approach to derivational morphology can be said to be markedly motivated by semantics.

This chapter aims to build an understanding of the differences between words and characters in Chinese by introducing the ways that words and Chinese characters are formed. Particular attention is paid to learning and writing Chinese characters.

This unit challenges and guides students with more difficult material. Songs, poems and demanding newspaper articles broaden and intensify their knowledge of the culture of the Spanish-speaking world. We also exemplify some of the differences in usage and the different ways that Cubans, Argentinians, Mexicans and Spaniards refer to common items. The important differences between word order in Spanish and English, and the consequent complications for translation, are explored. Attention is given to word formation in Spanish so that students can easily recognize related words and how the use of suffixes (diminutive, augmentative and pejorative) can change the meaning of the basic word in subtle and unexpected ways.

This unit challenges and guides students with more difficult material. Songs, poems and demanding newspaper articles broaden and intensify their knowledge of the culture of the Spanish-speaking world. We also exemplify some of the differences in usage and the different ways that Cubans, Argentinians, Mexicans and Spaniards refer to common items. The important differences between word order in Spanish and English, and the consequent complications for translation, are explored. Attention is given to word formation in Spanish so that students can easily recognize related words and how the use of suffixes (diminutive, augmentative and pejorative) can change the meaning of the basic word in subtle and unexpected ways.

After critically reviewing the conflicting theories of word-formation, the integral model in Li 2005 is presented which is shown not only to make a minimal number of postulations but also to cover a wide range of cross-linguistic facts: morphological causativization in Bantu and Semitic, compounding in Chinese and English, the resultative constructions in Chinese, and noun-incorporation in Amerindian. Underlying this chapter is the long-lasting debate in this part of linguistic theorization as well as the methodological implications of the integral solution.

Lexical blends such as Brexit < Britain + exit have been referred to in literature as instances of word play. The playful character of blends underlie their use in such domains as slang, advertising and political media. As has been shown, blending a personal name with a common noun, e.g. Haputin < hapat’ (grab) + Putin goes along with a variety of derogatory language means. Building on the findings in Beliaeva and Knoblock (2020), this study investigates factors that may trigger the use of lexical blending as verbal aggression and aims to explore derogatory meanings of blends referring to people. It is hypothesized that blending a personal name with another word enhances the likelihood of inducing derogatory meaning. Sample texts containing blends are extracted from the Now corpus and the iWeb corpus and analysed for the presence of emotionally coloured lexical elements. The results of the study suggest that the context of blends differs from the context of their non-blended counterparts, and reveal specific features in the use of blended words with human referents.

This chapter introduces students to the study of morphology. We look in a preliminary way at the difficulty inherent in defining what we mean by a word and introduce the term morpheme. We introduce the basic concepts of simple versus complex words. Students learn the distinction between word tokens, word types, and lexemes. We end with a brief introduction to the difference between inflection and derivation.

Meyer-Lübke and his followers attributed the instrumental function of Romance deverbal nouns in -one to the metaphorical extension of corresponding agent nouns. In the present contribution, I argue that no such extension has ever taken place. Rather, the instrumental function has been inherited from Latin and extended analogically in a small number of semantic niches. Reanalysis of denominal nouns in -one relatable to verbal bases may also have been at stake in some instances.