back-formation

Back-formation is the process or result of creating a new word via morphology, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes associated with the corresponding root word.Crystal, David. ''A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Sixth Edition'', Blackwell Publishers, 2008. James Murray coined the term ''back-formation'' in 1889. ('' Oxford English Dictionary Online'' preserves its first use of 'back-formation' from 1889 in the definition of ''to burgle''; from ''burglar''.)

For example, the noun ''resurrection'' was borrowed from Latin, and the verb ''resurrect'' was then back-formed hundreds of years later from it by removing the ''-ion'' suffix. This segmentation of ''resurrection'' into ''resurrect'' + ''ion'' was possible because English had examples of Latin words in the form of verb and verb+''-ion'' pairs, such as ''opine/opinion''. These became the pattern for many more such pairs, where a verb derived from a Latin supine stem and a noun ending in ''ion'' entered the language together, such as ''insert/insertion'', ''project/projection'', etc.

Similar phenomena

Back-formation may be similar to the reanalyses or folk etymologies when it rests on an erroneous understanding of the morphology of the longer word. For example, the singular noun ''asset'' is a back-formation from the plural ''assets''. However, ''assets'' was not originally a plural; it is a loanword from Anglo-Norman ''asetz'' (modern French ''assez''). The ''-s'' was reanalyzed as a plural suffix.

Back-formation varies from clipping – back-formation may change the word's class or meaning, whereas clipping creates shortened words from longer words but does not change the class or meaning of the word.

Words can sometimes acquire new lexical categories without any derivational change in form (for example, ''ship'' (in the nautical sense) was first a noun and later was used as a verb). That process is called conversion or zero-derivation. Like back-formation, it can produce a new noun or a new verb, but it involves no back-forming.

In English

Back-formation may be particularly common in English given that many English words are borrowed from Latin, French and Greek, which together provide English a large range of common affixes. Many words with affixes have entered English, such as ''dismantle'' and ''dishevelled'', so it may be easy to believe that these are formed from roots such as ''mantle'' (assumed to mean "to put something together") and ''shevelled'' (assumed to mean "well-dressed"), although these words with those meanings have no history of existing in English.

Many words came into English by this route: ''pease'' was once a mass noun (as in " pease pudding"), but was reinterpreted as a plural, leading to the back-formation ''pea''. The noun ''statistic'' was likewise a back-formation from the field of study ''statistics''. In Britain, the verb ''burgle'' came into use in the nineteenth century as a back-formation from ''burglar'' (which can be compared to the North American verb ''burglarize'' formed by suffixation).

Other examples are
* Singular " sastruga", plural "sastrugi" (from Russian): new Latin-type singular "sastrugus" has been used sometimes
* Singular " syringe", from plural "syringes"; the original Greek singular is '' syrinx''. Similar in nature is " phalange", from plural "phalanges"; the original singular being '' phalanx''..
* Singular '' tamale'', from the plural ''tamales''; the original Spanish singular is ''tamal''.
* Verbs "edit" from ''editor'', "babysit" from ''babysitter'', and "spelunk" from ''spelunker''
* Verb "donate" from ''donation''
* Verbs "euthanase" or "euthanize" from the noun ''euthanasia''.
* Verb "prepone" from the verb "postpone" to mean "to advance." While used predominantly in Indian English, the earliest known use is from the works of John Irland, and predates the use of English in India.

The verb ''translate'' is a back-formation from ''translation'', which is from Latin ''trāns + lāt-'' + ''-tio''. ''Lāt-'' is from the very irregular ( suppletive) verb ''ferō'' 'to carry.' ''Trānslāt-'' in Latin was merely a semi-adjectival form of ''trānsferō'' meaning ' omethinghaving been carried across nto a new language (cf. ''transfer''). The result of the action ''trānsferō textum'' 'to translate a text' was a ''textus trānslātus'' 'a text that has been translated.' Thus the verb in English is really from a (semi-)adjectival form in Latin.

Even though many English words are formed this way, new coinages may sound strange, and are often used for humorous effect. For example, ''gruntled'' (from ''disgruntled'') is used only in humorous contexts, as when P. G. Wodehouse wrote, "I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled", or the character Turk in the American sitcom '' Scrubs'' told another character, "I don't disdain you! It's quite the opposite – I dain you." As it happens, ''gruntle'' and ''dain'' are both attested much earlier, but not as antonyms of the longer forms.

Back-formations frequently begin in colloquial use and only gradually become accepted. For example, ''enthuse'' (from ''enthusiasm'') is gaining popularity, though today it is still generally considered nonstandard.

The Latin preposition ''versus'', meaning against, has frequently been mistaken by children and teenagers as the present tense of a verb "to verse." A reference to a school sports competition "the Sharks ''versus'' the Jets" might be interpreted as "the Sharks are versing the Jets." While this use of the verb has been reported in North America and Australia since the early 1980s, very few dictionaries have accepted it as standard.

The immense celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the Siege of Mafeking briefly created the verb ''to maffick'', meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly. "Maffick" is a back-formation from ''Mafeking'', a place-name that was treated humorously as a gerund or participle. There are many other examples of back-formations in the English language.

A butler is often described as "one who buttles," a verb which remains non-standard.

River names

Back-formations are frequent amongst river names in the England due to a number of reasons. Place names of Brittonic origin are especially susceptible to Folk Etymology and back-formations due to language and knowledge of the place names dying out with the arrival and settlement of Anglo-Saxon tribes. Frequently river names are derived from nearby settlements with the suffix -ford. Typically because it is assumed that the first half of the name is in reference to the river or stream. Below are some examples of these ''-ford back-formations''.

River Alre

The river Alre in Hampshire, was named due to a false assumption that the nearby village Alresford was named after the river which it was located near. In reality its name comes from the Old English ''alor''. Klingelhöfer, E. C (1992) Manor, vill, and hundred : the development of rural institutions in early medieval Hampshire. Ontario, p. 177

River Chelmer

The River Chelmer in Essex is named after the town of Chelmsford (''Chelmeresford'') which is derived from the Saxon personal name ''Cēolmǣr''.

In other languages

Israeli Hebrew

Back-formation in Israeli Hebrew often violates the prescriptive rules of the Academy of the Hebrew Language.See p. 56 in Ghil'ad Zuckermann (2020), '' Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond''
Oxford University Press
/ . For example:
#משאבּ ''masháb'' "resource" (prescriptive form: משאב ''mash'áv'') is a back-formation from the plural form משאבּים ''mashabím''.
#עקרבּ ''akráb'' "scorpion" (prescriptive form: עקרב ''‘aqráv'') is a back-formation from the plural form עקרבּים ''akrabím''.

See also

* List of English back-formations
* Folk etymology
* Backronym
* Retronym
* Rebracketing or juncture loss
* Onomasiology
* Unpaired word

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Back-Formation
Linguistic morphology
Word coinage