Back-formation
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In etymology, back-formationjamario moon refers to the process of creating a new lexeme (less precily, a new "word") by removing actual or suppod affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray[1] in 1897.chinechess[citation needed]
Back-formation is distinguished from clipping becau they change the part of speech – clipping also creates shortened words from longer words, but does not change the part of speech.
For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was then backformed hundreds of years later from it by removing the -ion suffix. This gmentation of resurrection into resurrect + ion was possible becau English had many examples of Latinate words that had verb and verb+-ion pairs — in the pairs the -ion s
uffix is added to verb forms in order to create nouns (such as, inrt/inrtion, project/projection, etc.).
casualwearBack formation may be similar to the reanalys of folk etymologies when it rests on an erroneous understanding of the morphology of the longer word. For example, the singular noun ast is a back-formation from the plural asts. However, asts is originally not a plural; it is a loan-word from Anglo-Norman atz (modern French aszpent). The -s was reanalyzed as a plural suffix.
[edit] Back-formation in the English language
Many words came into English by this route: Pea was once a mass noun but was reinterpreted as a plural, leading to the back-formation pea. The noun statisticworth it was likewi a back-formation from the field of study statistics. In Britain the verb burgle came into u in the 19th century as a back-formation from burglar (which can be compared to the North America verb burglarize formed by suffixation).
Even though many English words are formed this way, new coinages may sound strange, and are often ud for humorous effect. For example, gruntled or pervious (from disgruntled and imperviousmary j blige) would be considered mistakes today, and ud only in humorous contexts. The comedian George Gobel regularly ud original back-formations in his humorous monologues. Bill Bryson mud that the English language would be richer if we could call a tidy-haired person shevelled - as an opposite to dishevelled.[2]
Frequently back-formations begin in colloquial u and only gradually become accepted. For example, enthu (from ccntenthusiasm) is gaining popularity, though it is still considered substandard by some today.
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The immen celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the Siege of Mafeking briefly created the verb to maffickesp是什么, meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly. "Maffick" was a back-formation from Mafeking, a place-name that was treated humorously as a gerund or participle. There are many other examples of back-formations in the English language.
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