Chapter 3   Major Word Formation (1)

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Contents: affixation, prefixation, suffixation, classification of prefixes and suffixes, compounding, characteristics of compounds 

Objectives: 

1. Have a systematic study of the most productive word formation: affixation and compounding. 

2. Cultivate students’ ability to guess the meaning of words according to the information of word formation. 

3. Enlarge students’ vocabulary through the basis information of word formation

Difficult points:  types of prefixes and suffixes; differences between prefixes and suffixes; characteristics of compounds 

Procedures: 

Step I  Brief review of the last lecture 

Step II  Presentation 

1.Introduction to word formation and the necessity to study them 

2.Definitions of affixation, prefixation and suffixation. 

3.Classification of prefixes and suffixes and have a comparative study of them. 

4.Analysis of the definition and characteristics of compounds with examples

Step III Answer students’ questions 

Step IV Homework 

Exercises

1.      Decide whether the following statements are true or false. Put F and T in the brackets. 

(  ) a. The most productive ways of word-formation are affixation, compounding and conversion. 

(  ) b. Shortening includes clipping and blending. 

(  ) c. Prefixation and suffixation are two subbranches of affixation. 

(  ) d. Suffixation is the formation of new words by adding prefixes to stems. 

(  ) e. Compounding is the formation of new words by joining two or more stems. 

(  ) f. The limited number of verb compounds are created either through conversion or back-formation. 

(  ) g. Verb compounds in the way of back-formation are formed mainly by dropping prefixes. 

(  ) h. Conversion is the formation of new words by converting words of one class to another class. These words are new only in a  grammatical sense. 

(  ) i. Blending is the formation of new words by combining part of two words or a word plus a part of another word. 

(  ) j. Clipping, a way of making a word is to shorten a longer word by cutting a part off the original and adding a new part to the original . 

(  ) k. Words formed through acronymy are called initialisms or acronyms, depending on the spelling of the words. 

(  ) l. Back-formation is the method of creating words by removing the supposed suffixes. 

　

 

Key:

1. a. T     b. T      c. T      d. F     e. T      f. T 

  g.F      h. T      i. F      j. F      k. F     l. F