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1. Write a short introduction about word formation processes. [20] In our daily use of language we are often not aware of word formation processes which create, invent, produce or form new words in a language. Most of the times we have no problems with understanding these new words and we know immediately the various forms of that new word and include them all in our vocabulary. Sometimes we may even build them ourselves. This ability to adopt, understand, and use such a new word results from the fact that these word formation processes are based on certain rules and regulations. Thus, these word formation processes are explained in the following and examples are given of how the results of those processes are used in the English language.

Firstly, coinage, one of the least common processes of word formation in English is the creation of a totally new word. This word formation process is not frequent, however large corporations attempt to outdo one another to invent short eye-catching names for their products. Some examples of these could include: aspirin or xerox. Sometimes the products that the companies want to sell simply take over the name of the creator or inventor. In such case the new word is called an eponym. Some well known eponyms include: sandwich, or hoover. They are very frequently used in science where units of measurement are named after people, like: hertz, volt, Celsius.

Compounding, yet another word formation process include two different words which are joined together to denote one thing. For example, flower-pot is a compound made of two words: flower and pot, but it does not denote two things, it refers to one object. Some English compounds include: windmill, waterfall, fingerprint, scarecrow. Compounds are pronounced as one unit, but sometimes difficulties in writing arise: some compounds are written with hyphens: full-time, good-looking; some are written separately: bank account, mini skirt and some can be written in both ways.

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Blending is very similar to compounding, but it is characterised by taking only parts of words and joining them. Famous English examples include: smog which combines smoke and fog, guesstimate made of guess and estimate, Spanglish which is combination of Spanish and English, brunch from breakfast and lunch, telethon made of television and marathon.

Another one which is borrowing, is the taking of a word from one language and incorporating it into another. The English language has been very absorbent and took over words from all over the world, some of them include: biology, butter, ozone from German; jackal, kiosk, yogurt from Turkish; barbecue from Spanish; sofa from Arabic among others. There is also a special type of borrowing called calque or loan translation. Here there is a direct translation of the elements that a term consists of in the source language into the target language. For example the English 'word worldview' is thought to be the calque of the German 'Weltanschauung', 'antibody' calques German 'Antikrper'.

Clipping is shortening or reducing long words by deleting one or more syllables. In short, multi-syllabic words are reduced to monosyllables. It is very common in English which can be seen on the following examples: information is clipped to info, advertisement to advert or ad, influenza to flu, telephone to phone, gasoline to gas, professor to prof and many more.

Also there is backformation, which is a process in which a word changes its form and function. Word of one type, which is usually a noun, is reduced and used as a verb. To show it on an example; the English word 'arms' meaning weapon was backformed to 'arm' to mean provide weapons, similarly 'edit' was backformed from editor, or 'typewrite' from typewriter, 'babysit' from babysitter.

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Conversion is a change in function of a verb without changing its form. Nouns start to be used as verbs like: bottle - to bottle, bottling: Im bottling the compote; butter - to butter, buttered: Ive buttered the bread. Also verbs can become nouns: must - a must: watching this film is a must; guess - a guess: It was a lucky guess.

Furthermore, Acronym is a word formed from initial letters of a few words in a phrase or a name. Some acronyms are pronounced by saying each letter separately, as in CD, DVD, VCR, IBM, FBI. Some are pronounced as words, like; AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency).

Derivation is probably the most common word formation process in the English language. It is achieved by adding affixes: prefixes are added at the beginning of a word, for example re-, un-, mis-, pre-, dis-; suffixes are added to the end of a word, for instance -ful, -less, -able, -or and infixes which are inserted inside a word, but infixes are unusual in English.

Hence, the above mentioned word formation processes are the most frequent or important in the English language, but it is rarely the case that only one process occurs in one word. Words can be loaned and then backformed, later on gaining an affix. There are practically no boundaries to those processes other that human ingenuity.

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2. Analyse the importance of word formation mechanisms in maintaining the vitality of a language. [20] Language, in the world, is the essential means of communication, both for intellectual and for social messages. It is also an extremely complex and challenging system of rules and principles, which nevertheless children and young people acquire with apparent ease and great rapidity. The learning of any language, its nature, function and development, can provide insight into human modes of thought and social interaction. Therefore, within this modern world, in order to maintain the vitality of a language it is vital to think over the importance of word formation mechanisms. To begin with, by borrowing words into a language there is the benefit of filling lexical and semantic gaps, that is, expressing new concepts and ideas for which the borrowing language has no terms, such as in the fields of science, politics, culture and especially in cooking and music. Similarly, borrowing helps in vocabulary enrichment of a language. By containing words of many different languages, it is likely to appear familiar to the speakers of those lending languages and thus, learners will find it comparatively easy to learn if the vocabulary shares lexical similarities with their native tongue. For instance, taking English and creole as examples, both languages borrow many vocabularies from French. Therefore, the latter's speakers will not be reluctant to learn or speak these two languages, hence maintaining their vitality. On the other hand, compounding increase the awareness in relation to Chinese children's vocabulary acquisition and character reading. Results show that compound awareness develops relatively early among Chinese children and improves with age and explains unique variance in vocabulary and character reading, after controlling for age and phonological awareness. At the same time, the contribution made by compound awareness to vocabulary is much larger than the contribution made by phonological awareness. Thus, these results demonstrate that compound awareness plays a central role in Chinese childrens literacy development, particularly in

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vocabulary acquisition. More than seventy five percent of the words in Chinese are compound words formed by combining two or three morpheme. As such, it is believed to play an important role in vocabulary growth as it allows access to the meaning of morphologically complex words, mediated through the smaller parts that children are already familiar with (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Even emerging research has shown that compounding as a word formation mechanism is essential for word identication, spelling, and reading comprehension not only in alphabetic languages such as English and French (Carlisle, 2000) but also in non-Latin based languages such as Hebrew and Arabic (Ravid, 2002). Moreover, blending as we note is the merger of only parts of words and clipping is the reduction of long words by deleting one or more syllables both help in maintaining the vitality of a language. This is so because, people, especially the youngsters often look for small words to refer to things. For example, in order to use motor and hotel, the word mortel is easy and simple to use to refer to both of them and even as clipping for the word brother, 'bro' is used. Therefore, had blending and clipping as a word formation mechanisms not existed, people would have probably adopted an another simplified word of other languages, resulting in the extinction of those words in the English language. Additionally, coinage known as the creation of new words also contributes in the vitality of a language. This can be supported by the fact that when a language create a new word, it has the ability to increase its vocabularies and at the same time it is not dependent on other languages to create new terms in order to refer to certain new inventions. Thus, the language is considered as superior over other languages when the latter borrow certain words from it. As such, the former is not on the threat of being extinct or lose its value. However, though the above arguments show the bright side of the word formation mechanisms, even its shortcomings do exist. For instance on the side of borrowing, if a

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language borrows too much of a word from a specific language or other languages, instead of increasing its vocabulary or making it familiar to other language, the native people may find it more easier to learn that particular language. Consequently, the language is in a great danger of extinction, for example in the local context we borrow many words from English and French. Thus, in the years to come, creole may lose its vitality and people may no more speak creole as a language. Even blending and clipping are at times beyond pronounceability and spellability, and far from clear. They seem to be the rejection of forms that lead to the splitting up of consonant clusters from either of the original words. Also, generally speaking, the category of blends is not well-defined, and blending tends to shade off into compounding, affixation and acronym. Subsequently, both blending and compounding will hardly make a language lively, instead the words will be used for fun making. Additionally, even compounding suffers from the fact that at times it is difficult to understand the correct meaning of the word and may be misinterpreted in a language. Eventually, in the above analysis, we have seen both the importance, advantages and even the drawbacks of word formation mechanisms in language. Therefore, it can be concluded that though the word formation mechanisms carry along some negative aspects, it is undeniable that they do contribute for the vitality of a language, which many unknowingly do not give them the name word formation mechanisms if not being studied.

Bungshee Pratibha Miss Tejshree Auckle 3. Make a list of five borrowings in Mauritian creole. [5] (a) Portable (b) Chien (c ) Avion (d) Laptop (e) Portefeuille

4. Using one of the word-formation mechanisms listed above, try to coin a new creole word that could possibly replace each of the above mentioned five words. [5] (a) Portable (b) Chien (c ) Avion (d) Laptop - port - wowh wowh - oiseau electrique - lap

(e) Portefeuille - pochcash 5. For each new word, write down the word formation mechanism that you have used. [5] (a) Portable (b) Chien (c ) Avion (d) Laptop - port - wowh wowh - lap - Backformation - Onomatopoeia - Back Clipping - (poche+cash) Blending

- oiseau electrique - Compounding

(e) Portefeuille - pochcash

Bungshee Pratibha Miss Tejshree Auckle Bibliography Yule G. 1996. The study of language. Cambridge:CUP.

Brown K. (Editor) 2005. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 2nd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier.

Crystal D. 2005, The Cambridge encyclopedia od the English language - 2nd edition. Cambridge: CUP.

Carstairs-McCarthy, A. (2002). An Introduction to English Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (Chapter 2) Boorj, G. (2005). The Grammar of Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bauer, Laurie English word formation.- (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics) McBride-Chang, C., Bialystok, E., Chong, K.-K. Y., & Li, Y. (2004). Levels of phonological awareness in three cultures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 89, 93111. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2004.05.001.