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Inflection: Modifies a word to express different grammatical categories (tense, mood, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, case).

Derivation: Forms a new word by adding prefixes, suffixes, or other changes, often altering the word’s meaning and sometimes its lexical category.

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Sign: Composed of the signifier (sound/image) and the signified (concept).

Motivated vs. Unmotivated Signs:

Motivated: There are clues in the signifier to its meaning.

Unmotivated: Arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified.

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Motivation: How much a sign gives clues to its meaning.

Compositionality: A concept is compositional if it can be understood entirely through its parts.

Examples:

behead (remove someone's head)

befriend (make a friend)

bewitch (control by magic)

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Definition:

Compounding is a word formation process where two or more base forms (roots) are combined to form a new word.

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Noun + Noun: schoolboy, butterfly

Noun + Adjective: bittersweet

Noun + Verb: carry-all

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Endocentric Compounds: Have a head that expresses the core meaning and belongs to the same lexical category as the whole compound.

Examples: "schoolboy", "butterfly"

Exocentric Compounds: The lexical category or meaning is not directly determinable from the head.

Examples: "red-hot", "scarecrow"

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It is a word formation process in which there are changes the lexical category

of a word without changing its phonological shape.

EXAMPLES:

Zero Derivation/Conversion

Process: Changing a word’s lexical category without altering its form.

Examples:

Nouns to verbs:

"Don’t hair me."

"I broomed her."

"I’m lawning."

Verbs to nouns:

"A call."

"Total the car.

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Word Formation: Conversion (Zero Derivation)

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Compounding and Zero Derivation in Word Formation

Compounding: This process makes new words by joining two or more roots. There are endocentric compounds with a clear main part that gives the word its core meaning (e.g., school-boy) and exocentric compounds without a clear main part (e.g., butterfly). This shows how different parts of speech can combine to create unique meanings.

Zero Derivation (Conversion): This method changes a word’s grammatical category without changing its form. It allows words to have different roles in sentences while keeping the same spelling. Examples include "ink" used as both a noun and a verb, and "total" as a verb and an adjective.