Reflections on English Word-Formation

Everyone is interested in words, from questions of why they mean what they mean, to whether something is a 'real' word. Looking back over a five-decade career, the author considers ways in which word-formation has been studied, raises fundamental questions, and looks for data that might help untangle old controversies.

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.