And logos which denotes ‘learning, a department of knowledge’. Thus, the literal

partition
segregate
split
subdivide Types of Antonyms
There are three different types of antonyms: complementary, gradable, and relational.
Complementary antonyms are opposite words which have only one possible alternative. There are no

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other possible opposites for either words in the pair. For example: dead and alive, odd and even,
entrance and exit. Ex: If a number is not even, then it is odd.
Gradable antonyms are opposite words that have a range of possible opposites between them. They
represent extremes, but other words can be used to specify in between these extremes. For example:
early and late, empty and full, light and dark. Some examples of gradable antonyms of dark include:
dim, radiant, well-lit, aglow, fluorescent, luminous, and bright. Relational antonyms are words which
are considered opposite because of their relationship within certain contexts, although there may
not exist a grammatical opposite of either word. For example: doctor and patient, parent and child,
teach and learn. Ex: In a classroom, there are teachers and students. Teachers teach, while students
learn. Polysemy and Homonymy are two similar concepts in linguistics. Both of them refer to words
having multiple meanings. Polysemy refers to the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word
or phrase. Homonymy refers to the existence of two or more words having the same spelling or
pronunciation but different meanings and origins. This is the main difference between polysemy and
homonymy Polysemy refers to words or phrases with different, but related meanings. A word
becomes polysemous if it can be used to express different meanings. The difference between these
meanings can be obvious or subtle. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a word is
polysemous or not because the relations between words can be vague and unclear. But, examining
the origins of the words can help to decide whether a word is polysemic or homonymous.
The following sentences contain some examples of polysemy.
He drank a glass of milk.
He forgot to milk the cow.
The enraged actor sued the newspaper.
He read the newspaper. In linguistics, homonyms are words which are either homographs – words
that have the same spelling – or homophones – words that have the same pronunciation –, or both.
Using this definition, the words row, row and row are homonyms because they are homographs: so
are the words see and sea, because they are homophones.
that are spelled the same way but differ in meaning or the relation between two words that are
pronounced the same way but differ in meaning
Homonymy is the relationship between words that are homonyms—words that have different
meanings but are pronounced the same or spelled the same or both. It can also refer to the state of
being homonyms. The word homonym can be used as a synonym for both homophone and
homograph Morphology is the study of words. Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have
a meaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free
morphemes can occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme Morphology
is the study of how parts of words, called morphemes, create different meanings by combining with
each other or standing alone. For example, if you take the morpheme cookie and add the suffix –s,
you create a new word—cookies, a plural form with a slightly different meaning than the singular
form. Morphology is the study of words. Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a
meaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free
morphemes can occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An example
of a free morpheme is "bad", and an example of a bound morpheme is "ly." It is bound because
although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be attached to another morpheme to produce

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a word.
Free morpheme: bad
Bound morpheme: -ly
Word: badly
When we talk about words, there are two groups: lexical (or content) and function (or grammatical)
words. Lexical words are called open class words and include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
New words can regularly be added to this group. Function words, or closed class words, are
conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns; and new words cannot be (or are very rarely)
added to this class.
Affixes are often the bound morpheme. This group includes prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and
circumfixes. Prefixes are added to the beginning of another morpheme, suffixes are added to the
end, infixes are inserted into other morphemes, and circumfixes are attached to another morpheme
at the beginning and end. Following are examples of each of these:
Prefix: re- added to do produces redo
Suffix: -or added to edit produces editor
Infix: -um- added to fikas (strong) produces fumikas (to be strong) in Bontoc
Circumfix: ge- and -t to lieb (love) produces geliebt (loved) in German
There are two categories of affixes: derivational and inflectional. English Morphemes
Free
Open Class
Closed Class
Bound
Affix
Derivational
Inflectional
Root There are six ways to form new words. Compounds are a combination of words, acronyms are
derived from the initials of words, back-formations are created from removing what is mistakenly
considered to be an affix, abbreviations or clippings are shortening longer words, eponyms are
created from proper nouns (names), and blending is combining parts of words into one In grammar,
compounding, also called composition, is when two or more words are combined together to form a
new word. For example, the word underground is a combination of the words under and ground.
Compounding is a source of word formation present in almost all languages of the world. It involves
joining two words together to form a new word. Examples of compound words in English include:
dry clean
horseshoe (horse+shoe)
ice cream
outrun (out+run)
sidewalk (side+walk) The three main classes he distinguishes are copulative compounds,
determinative compounds, and secondary adjective compounds Shortening – any form of a word that
is “shrunk”.
e.g. don’t (do + not), YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), UNESCO (the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), etc.
Contraction (= fusion) – another generic term – two words which are combined together and are

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pronounced as one new word (typically functional words such as auxiliary verbs, articles, and
prepositions).
e.g. don’t (do + not), shouldn’t (should + not), wanna (want + to), au (Fr. à + le), etc.
Clipping – dropping (clipping) of a part of a word:
a) initial (= fore = apheresis) – the front part of the word is dropped
e.g. (tele)phone, (air)plane b) medial (= syncope) – the middle part of the word is dropped
e.g. math(ematic)s, spec(ification)s
c) final (= back = apocope) – the hinder part of the word is dropped
e.g. info(rmation), gas(oline)
d) complex (= mixed) – two or more instances (one or more types) of clipping used together to form
a new word
e.g. (re)frige(rator) – initial and final clipping, sci(ence)-fi(ction) – final clipping used twice
Blending* – formation of a new word with a distinctive meaning out of two or more other words
e.g. smog (smoke + fog), hangry (hungry + angry)
Abbreviation – creation of new words based on another word or words that are shortened to its or
their initial letter(s) only
a) acronym – the abbreviated word is pronounced as a whole new word rather than letter by letter
e.g. UNESCO (pronounced [juːˈnɛskəʊ])
b) initialism (= alphabetism) – the abbreviated word is pronounced letter by letter
e.g. OCR** (pronounced [əʊ siː ˈaːr])
Abbreviation in more detail as it is of particular interest from the perspective of modern language
use. Abbreviation is a highly productive way of forming new words in English. Below are just a few
examples that I have come across recently doing my routine work such as reading a book on post-
secondary education and communicating with my colleagues via instant messaging:
hru*** – how are you
diy – do it yourself
np – no problem
eom – end of message
eod – end of day
ty – thank you
ttyl – talk to you later
lol – laughing out loudly
asap – as soon as possible
btw – by the way lovey-dovey
chiller-killer
There are words that are formally very similar to rhyming compounds, but are not quite compounds
in English because the second element is not really a word--it is just a nonsense item added to a root
word to form a rhyme. Examples:
higgledy-piggledy
tootsie-wootsie
This formation process is associated in English with child talk (and talk addressed to children),
technically called hypocoristic language. Examples:

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bunnie-wunnie
Henny Penny
snuggly-wuggly
Georgie Porgie
Piggie-Wiggie
Another word type that looks a bit like rhyming compounds comprises words that are formed of two
elements that almost match, but differ in their vowels. Again, the second element is typically a
nonsense form:
pitter-patter
zigzag
tick-tock
riffraff
flipflop
Derivation Derivation is the creation of words by modification of a root without the addition of other
roots. Often the effect is a change in part of speech.
Affixation (Subtype of Derivation)
The most common type of derivation is the addition of one or more affixes to a root, as in the word
derivation itself. This process is called affixation, a term which covers both prefixation and
suffixation.
Blending
Blending is one of the most beloved of word formation processes in English. It is especially creative
in that speakers take two words and merge them based not on morpheme structure but on sound
structure. The resulting words are called blends.
Usually in word formation we combine roots or affixes along their edges: one morpheme comes to an
end before the next one starts. For example, we form derivation out of the sequence of morphemes
de+riv+at(e)+ion. One morpheme follows the next and each one has identifiable boundaries. The
morphemes do not overlap.
But in blending, part of one word is stitched onto another word, without any regard for where one
morpheme ends and another begins. For example, the word swooshtika 'Nike swoosh as a logo
symbolizing corporate power and hegemony' was formed from swoosh and swastika. The swoosh
part remains whole and recognizable in the blend, but the tika part is not a morpheme, either in the
word swastika or in the blend. The blend is a perfect merger of form, and also of content. The
meaning contains an implicit analogy between the swastika and the swoosh, and thus conceptually
blends them into one new kind of thing having properties of both, but also combined properties of
neither source. Other examples include glitterati (blending glitter and literati) 'Hollywood social set',
mockumentary (mock and documentary) 'spoof documentary'.
The earliest blends in English only go back to the 19th century, with wordplay coinages by Lewis
Carroll in Jabberwocky. For example, he introduced to the language slithy, formed from lithe and
slimy, and galumph, (from gallop and triumph. Interestingly galumph has survived as a word in
English, but it now seems to mean 'walk in a stomping, ungainly way'.
Some blends that have been around for quite a while include brunch (breakfast and lunch), motel
(motor hotel), electrocute (electric and execute), smog (smoke and fog) and cheeseburger (cheese
and hamburger). These go back to the first half of the twentieth century. Others, such as stagflation
(stagnation and inflation), spork (spoon and fork), and carjacking (car and hijacking) arose since the

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1970s.
Here are some more recent blends I have run across:
mocktail (mock and cocktail) 'cocktail with no alcohol'
splog (spam and blog) 'fake blog designed to attract hits and raise Google-ranking'
Britpoperati (Britpop and literati) 'those knowledgable about current British pop music'
Clipping
Clipping is a type of abbreviation of a word in which one part is 'clipped' off the rest, and the
remaining word now means essentially the same thing as what the whole word means or meant. For
example, the word rifle is a fairly modern clipping of an earlier compound rifle gun, meaning a gun
with a rifled barrel. (Rifled means having a spiral groove causing the bullet to spin, and thus making
it more accurate.) Another clipping is burger, formed by clipping off the beginning of the word
hamburger. (This clipping could only come about once hamburg+er was reanalyzed as
ham+burger.)
Acronyms
Acronyms are formed by taking the initial letters of a phrase and making a word out of it. Acronyms
provide a way of turning a phrase into a word. The classical acronym is also pronounced as a word.
Scuba was formed from self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. The word snafu was
originally WW2 army slang for Situation Normal All Fucked Up. Acronyms were being used more
and more by military bureaucrats, and soldiers coined snafu in an apparent parody of this overused
device. Sometimes an acronym uses not just the first letter, but the first syllable of a component
word, for example radar, RAdio Detection And Ranging and sonar, SOund Navigation and Ranging.
Radar forms an analogical model for both sonar and lidar, a technology that measures distance to a
target and and maps its surface by bouncing a laser off it. There is some evidence that lidar was not
coined as an acronym, but instead as a blend of light and radar. Based on the word itself, either
etymology appears to work, so many speakers assume that lidar is an acronym rather than a blend.
A German example that strings together the initial syllables of the words in the phrase, is Gestapo ,
from GEheime STAats POlizei 'Sectret State Police'. Another is Stasi, from STAats SIcherheit 'State
Security'. Acronyms are a subtype of initialism. Initialisms also include words made from the initial
letters of a Phrase but NOT pronounced as a normal word - it is instead pronounced as a string of
letters. Organzation names aroften initialisms of his type. Examples:
NOW (National Organization of Women)
US or U.S., USA or U.S.A. (United States)
UN or U.N. (United Nations)
IMF (International Monetary Fund)
Some organizations ARE pronounced as a word:
UNICEF
MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) Compounding forms a word out of two or more root
morphemes. The words are called compounds or compound words.
In Linguistics, compounds can be either native or borrowed.
Native English roots are typically free morphemes, so that means native compounds are made out of
independent words that can occur by themselves. Examples:
mailman (composed of free root mail and free root man)
mail carrier

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dog house
fireplace
fireplug (a regional word for 'fire hydrant')
fire hydrant
dry run
cupcake
cup holder
email
e-ticket
pick-up truck
talking-to
Some compounds have a preposition as one of the component words as in the last 2 examples.
In Greek and Latin, in contrast to English, roots do not typically stand alone. So compounds are
composed of bound roots. Compounds formed in English from borrowed Latin and Greek morphemes
preserve this characteristic. Examples include photograph, iatrogenic, and many thousands of other
classical words.
Note that compounds are written in various ways in English: with a space between the elements;
with a hyphen between the elements; or simply with the two roots run together with no separation.
The way the word is written does not affect its status as a compound. Over time, the convention for
writing compounds can change, usually in the direction from separate words (e.g. email used to be
written with a hyphen. In the 19th century, today and tomorrow were sometimes still written to-day
and to-morrow. The to originally was the preposition to with an older meaning 'at [a particular
period of time]'. Clock work changed to clock-work and finally to one word with no break
(clockwork). If you read older literature you might see some compound words that are now written
as one word appearing with unfamiliar spaces or hyphens between the components.
Another thing to note about compounds is that they can combine words of different parts of speech.
The list above shows mostly noun-noun compounds, which is probably the most common part of
speech combination, but there are others, such as adjective-noun (dry run, blackbird, hard drive),
verb-noun (pick-pocket, cut-purse, lick-spittle) and even verb-particle (where 'particle' means a word
basically designating spatial expression that functions to complete a literal or metaphorical path), as
in run-through, hold-over. Sometimes these compounds are different in the part of speech of the
whole compound vs. the part of speech of its components. Note that the last two are actually nouns,
despite their components.
Some compounds have more than two component words. These are formed by successively
combining words into compounds, e.g. pick-up truck, formed from pick-up and truck , where the first
component, pick-up is itself a compound formed from pick and up. Other examples are ice-cream
cone, no-fault insurance and even more complex compounds like top-rack dishwasher safe.
Davomi lovely -dovey db ketgan Phraseological units are (according to Prof. Kunin A.V.) stable word-
groups with partially or fully transferred meanings ("to kick the bucket", “Greek gift”, “drink till all's
blue”, “drunk as a fiddler (drunk as a lord, as a boiled owl)”, “as mad as a hatter (as a march hare)”).
Phraseology is the study of fixed sets of words or “phrases.” Generally, efforts in phraseology are
related to explaining the meanings and histories of these sets of words. Linguists use this kind of
research to know more about how speakers of a given language communicate to each other through
multi-word sets, often called “lexical sets” or “lexical units V.V. Vinogradov identifies the following
types of phraseological units: 1) phraseological adhesions; 2) phraseological unity; 3) phraseological
combinations. Phraseological adhesions are a type of word combinations with the highest degree of

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semantic cohesion of components and lack of motivation values. pointed out three types of
phraseological units, namely phraseological fusions, phraseological unities and phraseological
collocations. Phraseological fusion is a combination of words whose meaning has changed
completely
Phraseological fusions are such units which are completely non motivated word groups; For
example. to kick the bucket to get one's goat, to show the white feather. In these word groups the
meaning of the whole expressions is not derived from the meaning of components phraseological
unity, imagery is characteristic. Together, the words acquire a figurative meaning. Usually
phraseological units of this type are tropes with metaphorical meaning In phraseology, a collocation
is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words that make it
up. This contrasts with an idiom, where the meaning of the whole cannot be inferred from its parts,
and may be completely unrelated Phraseological fusions are completely non-motivated word-groups,
such as red tape- “bureaucratic methods”; heavy father-“serious or solemn part in a theatrical play”;
kick the bucket-“die” and the like. The meaning of the components has no connections whatsoever,
at least synchronically, with the meaning of the whole group. Idiomaticity is, as a rule, combined
with complete stability of the lexical components and the grammatical structure of the fusion.
Phraseological unities are partially non-motivated as their meaning can usually be perceived through
the metaphoric meaning of the whole phraseological unit. For example, to show one’s teeth, to wash
one’s dirty linen in public if interpreted as semantically motivated through the combined lexical
meaning of the component words would naturally lead one to understand these in their literal
meaning. The metaphoric meaning of the whole unit, however, readily suggests ‘take a threatening
tone’ or ‘show an intention to injure’ for show one’s teethand ‘discuss or make public one’s quarrels’
for wash one’s dirty linen in public. Phraseological unities are as a rule marked by a comparatively
high degree of stability of the lexical components.