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Neologisms Or Word Formation Processes Languages are living entities. They keep expanding their lexicons (vocabularies) by using different processes. The methods commonly used by all languages for creating new words are the same. These methods are discussed in brief below. 1. Coining Entirely new words which did not exist earlier keep entering the lexicons of languages almost regularly. This happens when speakers invent (or coin) new words to name new concepts or objects entering their culture. They just put together a new sequence of sounds to match the new meaning. 2. Acronym Formation An acronym is originally an abbreviations using the initials of the words of a term or by combining parts of different words in the term. With the passage of time, these abbreviations come to be used as words. In course of time, people even forget their origin and remember them as words. Radar (radio detecting and ranging), laser (light amplification stimulated by emission of radiation...

Morphology   Lexicon or Vocabulary The list of the words of any language is called its lexicon (vocabulary). It is however impossible to prepare an exhaustive (complete) list of the lexicon of any language. The lexicons of all languages keep expanding as new words continue to enter them from time to time. Phonology Phonology is a subfield of linguistics which studies the structure and syntactic patterning of the phonemes of a language. It tries to determine the phonemes of a language, how they are articulated and according to what rules they combine with one another to form larger units like syllables and words. Morphology Morphology   is the subfield of linguistics which studies the internal structure of words and the relationships among them. It is the study of the morphemes, the minimal units of a language having grammatical significance and meaning. It tries to determine and classify the morphemes, to study their meanings and the rules they fol...

The Structure of a Syllable From the point of view of structure, words can be divided into syllables. A syllable can occur as a monosyllabic word i.e. a word consisting of one syllable only. Examples of such syllables which are also monosyllabic words are a, an, of, for book, just, dog etc. It is a part of a word when the word is polysyllabic (consists of more syllables than one). A syllable may consist of 1 to 8 phonemes. One of them is always a vowel. The remaining phonemes, if they are there, are consonants. The syllable is an obligatory element of a syllable. There can be no syllable without a vowel. Consonants are optional elements. They may or may not be there in a syllable. So the number of consonants in a syllable can be anything from zero to eight. They are the marginal elements in a syllable. They occur on the sides of the vowel. There is one and only one vowel in a syllable. It forms the nucleus (the central element) of ...