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Neoclassical wordformation |
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Neoclassical wordformation is the formation of new words using elements that are not independent words. In contrast to prefixes and suffixes, these elements do not necessarily combine with independent words. They can also combine with each other or with affixes to form new words.
For example, none of the elements in Psychologie, Psychopath, and logisch are independent words. The single elements – we call them formatives – can nevertheless be identified as wordformation entities. See, for example:
| psych |
in |
Psychologie, Psychiatrie, psychosozial |
| log |
in |
Psychologie, Logopäde, logisch |
| path |
in |
Psychopath, Pathologe, pathogen |
These formatives are mostly of Greek and to a lesser extent of Latin origin. They are borrowed from classical languages. Many of the words containing this kind of formatives are not classical, but modern wordformations following classical wordformation patterns. Therefore we call this kind of wordformation neoclassical wordformation and the formatives neoclassical formatives.
Note that the Wordformation Dictionary and the Wordformation Grammar do not distinguish between modern words and words that were formed according to the same patterns in Greek or Latin.
The description of neoclassical wordformation is divided into chapters according to the word class of the derived and compound words. The chapters describe the different wordformation types used to form neoclassical words.
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Neoclassical wordformation
