''English Word-Formation'' is a 1983 book by

Laurie Bauer Laurence James Bauer (born 9 August 1949) is a British linguist and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington. He is known for his expertise on morphology and word formation. Bauer was an editor of the journal '' Wo ...

in which the author considers the relationship between

word-formation In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either: * the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or * the creation of new lexemes in a particular language Morphological A common method of word form ...

and other areas of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

without trying to provide a fully-fledged theory of word-formation. The book has been credited as the "first detailed study of Present-Day English word-formation".

Content

The book is composed of nine chapters in which he discusses English word-formation as well as what Bauer sees as its main problem areas, which he defines as including restricted productivity,

lexicalization In linguistics, lexicalization is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language's lexicon. Whether ''word formation'' and ''lexicalization'' refer to the same process is controversial within the field of linguistics. M ...

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

, and

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...

. ''English Word-Formation'' begins with an introduction section and moves into its next chapter, which discusses some basic concepts. From there the chapters discuss productivity, phonological issues in word-formation, syntactic and semantic issues in word-formation, an outline of English word-formation, and theory and practice before coming to the book's conclusion.

Reception

István Kenesei reviewed the book in 1985 for ''

Studies in Language ''Studies in Language'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering research in linguistics as viewed from discourse-pragmatic, functional, and typological perspectives. It is published by John Benjamins Publishing Company and was established ...

'', where he criticized the book as not living up to the criteria of other books published through the Cambridge Textbooks in ''Linguistics'' line, which he felt was "partly out of sheer ill fortune, but mostly because of the failure of the approach he has chosen." Scholar Susanne Mühleisen has also criticized ''English Word-Formation'' as "

esting Olching (Central Bavarian: ''Oiching'') is a town in the district of Fürstenfeldbruck, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated approximately 20 km (12 mi) northwest of Munich. Geography Olching lies approximately halfway between Dachau a ...

on rather thin and arbitrary data". In contrast, Dieter Kastovsky praised ''English Word-Formation'' as the best introduction of the English word-formation at the time, praising it as an "extensive and critical survey of the state of the art".

References

{{reflist 1983 non-fiction books Morphology books Cambridge University Press books Books by Laurie Bauer Books about the English language book-stub