ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY

2.2 Word Families

 

Another approach to grouping lexemes is creating word families. Words are grouped into the families according to their morphology. A word family “consists of a base word and all its derived and inflected forms” (Bauer & Nation, 1993, p.253). The following group of words belongs to the same word family: legal, illegal, legalize, and legalese. L. Bauer and P. Nation propose a set of levels into which families are divided. They apply eight criteria which are used to determine the level at which a particular affix should be placed: frequency, productivity, predictability, regularity of the written form of the base, regularity of the spoken form of the base, regularity of the spelling of the affix, regularity of the spoken form of the affix, and regularity of function. “These criteria determine the level at which an affix is placed, and they also place restrictions on what particular words can be included as part of a word family at a given level” (1993, p.256). At the first level, “each form is a different word” (p.258) and does not have a morphological marking – an item has a zero ending. Some examples are bear (to have children), bear (tolerate), bear (to carry), and bear (animal). So, there is no family.

The second level deals with inflectional suffixes. Words with the same base but different inflections belong to this word family. The inflectional categories used here are plural, third person singular present tense, past tense, past participle, present participle, gerund, comparative, superlative, and possessive. The following example with the base head illustrates this level: heads (plural), heads (third person singular present tense), head’s (possessive case), headed (past participle), and heading (present participle).

The third level deals with the most frequent and regular derivational affixes such as -able,
-er, -ish, -less, -ly, -ness, -th, -y, non-, and un- .

The fourth level constitutes a word family with the following affixes such as -al (legal),

-ation (collaboration), -ess (goddess), -ful (careful, joyful, and sinful), -ism (atheism), - ist (atheist), - ity (purity), -ize (generalize), -ment (achievement), -ous (curious and continuous), and in- (innovative). “From a theoretical perspective, it is clear that the suffix -ation has a number of variants” (Bauer & Nation, 1993, p.274): –ion, -sion, -ation, and -fication. Some examples are electrification, identification, authorization, fertilization, formulation, adoration, affirmation, and submission.

The fifth level deals with regular but infrequent affixes. It adds “a number of affixes whose behavior is fairly regular, which may be productive, but which, because they are not widely generalized, do not individually add greatly to the number of words that can be understood” (p.260). Some affixes belonging to this level are -age (cellarage, flowerage, frontage, shrinkage, wreckage, and breakage), -ese (Japanese, officialese, and legalese), -esque (picturesque), -ant (consultant),
-an (African), -ette (roomette), -dom (thralldom, stardom, kingdom), and others.

The seventh level contains classical roots and affixes. “All the classical roots which abound in English words and which occur not only as bound roots in English (as in embolism) but also as elements in neo-classical compounds (such as photography)” (Bauer & Nation, 1993, p.262) belong to this level. Common prefixes belonging to this level are ab-(abnormal), ad-, com-, de-(devalue), dis-(disappear), ex-(ex-husband), and sub-(subway).

The concept of a word family is important for “a systematic approach to vocabulary teaching” (p.253), for deciding the vocabulary load of texts, and for the compilation of dictionaries. This approach provides lexicographers a more secure basis for the treatment of affixes and derived words in the dictionaries (Jackson &Amvela, 2007, p.21).