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terminology. One example of acronyms is
radar
. Not many people know that it is actually not an independent word.
Radar
stands for
radio detection and ranging.
Other examples of acronyms are computer terms
LAN
, which stands for
Local Area Network
and
DOS
, which stands for
Disc Operating System
. The use of acronyms which is more widely spread will make people get
accustomed to the acronyms and ignore what they stand for. Therefore the researcher is also interested in the morphological process. Referring to the fact
that English speakers admit the new product as independent, the researcher is interested in whether affixation can occur in such words. It is quite interesting to
analyse whether acronyms can be affixed and transformed into other syntactic categories or they are stuck and any change impossibly occurs in acronyms.
f. Coinage and eponyms
As stated by O’Grady et al. 2010, coinage is a word created from scratch. Also known as word manufacture, this phenomenon is especially common in the
case of product names, e.g.
kodak
,
dacron
, and
teflon
. A similar process called eponyms uses
people’s name to describe scale or events related to the people’s role, e.g.
boycott
,
watt
, and
richter
. The researcher assumes that the products of coinage and eponyms belong
to certain parts of speech. Whether it is possible to derive the words is something the researcher wants to look for. The words
diskodak
,
endacron
, and
teflonise
are not very familiar to the researcher.
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g. Borrowing
According to Campbell 2004, borrowing is a process in one language to take words from another language and make them parts of its own vocabulary.
The product of borrowing is usually called a loanword. All English verbs do not always originate from one language. English
verbs could be derived, in a whole word or only a part, from many donor languages. For example, the English verb
to surface
was derived from French
sur
and English
face
McKean, 2005, p. 1700 According to Radford, Atkinson, Britain, Clahsen, and Spencer 1999,
new and unfamiliar concepts – new technology, new plants, new animals, and
even, new and unfamiliar foods motivate people to develop words. Besides,
another reason of using borrowing is prestige. Certain culture will be related to
specific terms that other languages do not have. Frequently the certain cultures are prestigious activities, e.g. soup, restaurant French. Campbell 2004 also affirms
it by his statement that “languages borrow words from other languages primarily
because of need and prestige.” A borrowed word is often gradually changed so that it fits the
phonological and morphological structure of the borrowing language or dialect. These borrowings are very often assimilated to the phonological and
morphological structure of the new host language Radford et al., 1999, p. 256. Borrowing words can be combined with English affixes. Radford et al. 1999
21
give an example that the plural form of
pizza
in Italian is
pizze
. However, English applies its own plural morpheme to the borrowed word, hence
pizzas
p. 255.
h. Morphophonology
