Transcript 二. Back-formation逆生法

BACK-FORMATION
----By Group 8, Class 2
Back-formation
 I. Definition:
 Back-formation is an abnormal type of wordformation where a shorter word is derived by
deleting an imagined affix from an already
existing longer word in the vocabulary.
 beg ← beggar
 edit ← editor
 The nouns beggar, editor appeared first in the
English language , and then the verb beg and
edit.
The majority of back-formed words are
verbs, for verbs can develop (or generate)
a number of nouns, and various types of
participial adjectives.
to create →
creator, creation, creating, created
Therefore, when people come across one
or more apparently deverbal nouns, they
often take it for granted that there must be
a corresponding verb.
In etymology, back-formation is the
process of creating a new lexeme, usually
by removing actual or supposed
affixes.The resulting neologism is called a
back-formation, a term coined by James
Murray in 1889. (OED online first definition
of 'back formation' is from the definition of
to burgle, which was first published in
1889.)
Back-formation is different from clipping –
back-formation may change the part of
speech or the word's meaning, whereas
clipping creates shortened words from
longer words, but does not change the
part of speech or the meaning of the word
 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 segmentation of
resurrection into resurrect + ion was possible
because English had examples of Latinate
words in the form of verb and verb+-ion pairs,
such as opine/opinion. These became the
pattern for many more such pairs, where a verb
derived from a Latin supine stem and a noun
ending in ion entered the language together,
such as insert/insertion, project/projection, etc.
 II. Classification:
 According to its origin, back-formation may
be formed from the following parts of speech
(词类).
 A. Verbs back-formed from nouns ending in –
er , -ar , -or, -sion , -tion, etc.（P.82）
 to automate(使自动化) ←automation
 to edit← editor
 to televise(电视播送)to televise← television
 to appreciate← appreciation
to negate(否定; 否认)← negation
to butch（屠宰）← butcher
to destruct ← destruction
to audit（审计）← Auditor（审计员）
to spring-clean(大扫除)←spring-cleaning
to proofread（校对）←proofreader
 B. A few nouns back-formed from
adjective
 greed (n.) ← greedy (adjective)
 gloom（昏暗, 阴暗）(n.)← gloomy
(adjective）
C. Verbs back-formed from nouns in other
forms or from adjective:
 to diagnose← diagnosis（noun）
 to enthuse (使热心)← enthusiasm
 to laze（懒惰，混日子）← lazy
 to drowse (打瞌睡)←drowsy
D. Many new back-formation verbs come from
compounds:
 to house-keep ←housekeeper
 to sight-see ←sight-seeing
Conclusion:
Back-formation is considered to be the
opposite process of suffixation. As we
know, suffixation is the formation of new
words by adding suffixes to bases, and
back-formation is therefore the method of
creating words by removing so-called the
supposed suffixes. This is because many
of the removed suffixes are not true
suffixes but inseparable parts of the words.
 Back-formed words created by back-formation
can be used to enhance different styles of
writing: some in political or scientific styles of
writing, some in colloquial or journalistic style.
 In modern English, a number of back-formed
words have become the common core in the
English vocabulary, such as air-condition,
automat, beg, edit, televise, etc.