Reflections on English Word-Formation

Offers a new way of looking at the phenomenon of word-formation in English through re-evaluating some of its central tenets.

Laurie Bauer (Author)

9781009559973, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 August 2025

252 pages
28 x 19 x 2 cm, 0.523 kg

'The book is well-suited for readers seeking a deeper understanding of morphology, encouraging reflection, critical inquiry, and active engagement with the subject. From a personal point of view, Prof. Bauer's expertise on the subject matter combined with a careful understanding of the reader's needs and the prominent presence of her own voice enriches the reading experience and positions the book as an essential work for a comprehensive exploration of the subject, while remaining particularly accessible and engaging.' Ana González-Martínez, Linguist List

We are all familiar with coming across a new word, whether it has just been invented or whether we have just not met it before. How do we invent new words? How do we understand words that we have never heard before? What are the limits on the kinds of words we produce? How have linguists and grammarians dealt with the phenomenon of creating new words, and how justified are their ways of viewing such words? In this concise and compelling book, Professor Bauer, one of the world's best-known morphologists, looks back over fifty years of his work, seeking out overlooked patterns in word-formation, and offering new solutions to recurrent problems. Each section deals with a different morphological problem, meaning that the book can either be read from start to finish, or alternatively used as a concise reference work on the key issues and problems in the field.

Conventions and abbreviations
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Part I. Basic Questions: 2. Reflections on the background to the study of word-formation
3. Reflections on why we need word-formation
4. Reflections on the recognition of novelty in words
5. Reflections on blocking and competition
6. Reflections on potential and norm
7. Reflections on definition by stipulation and on word-class
8. Reflections on analogical word-formation
9. Reflections on the nature of the lexeme
Part II. Semantic Questions: 10. Reflections on how words mean and what this implies for complex words
11. Reflections on tautology and redundancy
Part III. Syntactic Questions: 12. Reflections on recursion
13. Reflections on problems with heads in word-formation
14. Reflections on coordination in word-formation
Part IV. Interfaces: 15. Reflections on the interface between morphology and phonology: morphophonemics
16. Reflections on the interface between word-formation and syntax
17. Reflections on the interface between word-formation and phonetics
18. Reflections on the interface between word-formation and orthography
19. Reflections on the interface between word-formation and borrowing patterns of word-formation in English
Part V. Patterns of Word-Formation in English: 20. Reflections on the limits of conversion
21. Reflections on back-formation
22. Reflections on coordinative compounds
23. Reflections on the irregularity of prepositions
24. Reflections on reduplication
Part VI. Historical Questions: 25. Reflections on dead morphology
26. Reflections on compounds in English and in wider Germanic
Part VII. Questions Involving Inflection: 27. Reflections on inflection inside word-formation
28. Reflections on canonical form
29. Reflections on the spread of regular inflection to simple and derived forms
30. Conclusion
Indexes.

Subject Areas: Linguistics [CF]