Morphology


Shortenings

Other major yet much less productive word-formation processes revolve around the concept of shortening. Although each process encompasses a different approach to shortening, they share one common feature: "their output is shorter that their input" (Kortmann 2005, 106).

As visualized in the chart below, there are 5 major groups within the field of shortening:

DATEI EINFÜGEN!

Consider the following examples from these 5 groups:

  1. Clippings
    • plane - airplane
  2. Blends
    • brunch - breakfast + lunch
  3. Acronyms
    • NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization
  4. Alphabetisms
    • OED - Oxford English Dictionary
  5. Backformations
    • edit < editor