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What are the 11 processes of word formation?

There isn't a universally agreed-upon list of exactly 11 processes of word formation. However, these are some of the most common and widely recognized processes:

1. Affixation: Adding prefixes and suffixes to existing words.

* Prefixes: Un-, re-, pre-, etc. (e.g., unhappy, rewrite, preview)

* Suffixes: -ing, -ed, -er, -ly, -ness, etc. (e.g., walking, baked, worker, quickly, happiness)

2. Compounding: Combining two or more existing words.

* Open compounds: Two separate words (e.g., high school, ice cream)

* Hyphenated compounds: Two words joined by a hyphen (e.g., mother-in-law, well-being)

* Closed compounds: Two words combined into a single word (e.g., birthday, rainbow)

3. Conversion: Shifting a word from one grammatical category to another.

* Verb to noun: E.g., "to email" becomes "an email"

* Noun to verb: E.g., "Google" (noun) becomes "to Google" (verb)

4. Backformation: Creating a new word by removing what appears to be a suffix from an existing word.

* E.g., "editor" becomes "edit"

5. Blending: Merging parts of two words to create a new one.

* E.g., "breakfast" + "lunch" = "brunch"

6. Clipping: Shortening a word.

* E.g., "telephone" becomes "phone"

7. Acronyms: Forming a word from the initial letters of a phrase.

* E.g., "NATO" (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

8. Initialisms: Forming a word from the initial letters of a phrase, but pronounced letter by letter.

* E.g., "FBI" (Federal Bureau of Investigation)

9. Onomatopoeia: Creating words that imitate sounds.

* E.g., "buzz," "meow," "crash"

10. Reduplication: Repeating all or part of a word.

* E.g., "bye-bye," "super-duper"

11. Borrowing: Adopting words from other languages.

* E.g., "karaoke" (Japanese), "chutzpah" (Yiddish)

Remember that these processes can sometimes overlap, and the creation of new words is complex. Word formation is a dynamic process, and new words are constantly being created!

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