Languages are constantly expanding through the formation of new words, which can be derived from related words, blended together, borrowed from other languages, or clipped. The first words were metaphors that represented something so absolutely that they could conjure a mental picture. Derivation and merging are important ways in which word formation occurs.
Many children have thought that the words came from books and that, somewhere, there was a huge master tome containing every word in the language. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite the efforts of some self-styled language policemen, all languages are expanding like rivers of sound. The substance of language is, after all, the sound that has been married to an idea to form a word that can be shared between speakers. For some, linguistics, the formation of words or the study of how new words are coined and enter the language stream, is an area of absolute fascination.
Anyone who has reached a certain age has been saddened to see the favorite words of youth slip into relative disuse and horrified by the kind of confusing slang that replaces it. In fact, anything two speakers decide is a word is a word. For people speaking to themselves, there may be exceptions to the two person requirement.
This does not mean that semi-private verbal inventions will last as words. For the formation of a word to be worth studying, the word itself must have staying power. It has to become something that spreads from one area to another, also something that can jump the line of grammar and transform itself from, say, a noun into a verb. Words can be derived from related words, made up by blending two words together to create a meaning that eclipses the two, or borrowed from another language. They can also be mixed or clipped.
At the dawn of linguistic time, the first handful of words were metaphors, grunts or mumbles that represented something so absolutely that they represented that thing, whether it was there or not. For example, an early imaginary speaker who convinced his tribemates that the sound glurm meant “sun” now had a word that could be used to conjure a mental picture even on a rainy day. People didn’t have many words in that ancient time, but they no doubt had many ideas, and the words that were available started generating themselves through derivations.
Derivation-based word formation would be the result if glurm quickly began to mean “the course of a day” as well. Glurm-a could mean a trip of a handful of days and glurm-o could be a longer trip. The stars might be called glurmallala, or little suns, and the night, perhaps, might be called nonoglurm, or no sun. While this is a fanciful explanation, derivation is, in fact, an important way in which word formation occurs.
If these ancient speakers had another word, motala, for moon, gluing the word for sun and the word for moon together in glurmmotala could create a new word. Glurnmotala could mean “month,” a word that is more than the sum of its parts. This is exactly how English words like neighborhood and cerebellum were coined.
Another type of word formation is the result of merging. When two words share both sound material and the desire to mate, the result is a sort of linguistic overlap. Anyone who calls themselves a chocoholic, for example, knows how fitting mixed words can be. Word clipping occurs when there is too much to say and there is no time to say it or when the speaker is simply tired. It is understandable, for example, when the flu is reduced to the flu.
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