 Good morning. For some time we have been talking about various levels of the structure of language. We began with talking about the structure of an individual speech sound. Then we spoke about organization of speech sounds and now last week perhaps we began talking about word formation in all languages of the world, in all natural languages you have processes that allow formation of new words. Today and tomorrow and also perhaps another class or so later we will look at these processes and we will see if there is a grammar which constrains these word formation processes or is it that anything goes with anything. You might remember in the last class I said that it is difficult to define a word. Some people say meaningful combination of sounds which is again a very subjective thing or some people say minimal unit. Now what is a minimal unit? We used a word called, can you give me the new word that we used in the class last week? Anybody please? Morpheme. Do you remember? You can note. We said that rather than talk about word which is again the same thing. This word comes from Greek which means nearly the same thing. Look up a dictionary and look up the etymology of this word and you will find that it is more or less the same thing. In the end word is a notion we know but we cannot define like many things in nature. We do not have even now objective definition for lots of things lots of concepts we use otherwise. We said last week you might look up your notes or the slides I sent you that morpheme at least is one independent unit, one minimal unit. You cannot break the word down to further sub parts than a morpheme. We will further talk about it. We will continue to talk about the concept of morpheme and word formation processes therefore are studied in a sub part of linguistics in another section of linguistics which we know as morphology. Please write the study of word formation processes and we call it morphology. Like you know the study of organization of sounds what do we call it? Please study of organization of speech sounds. Phonology, production of speech sounds, phonetics. When we talk about word formation processes we are talking about morphology. We will continue talking about some word formation processes. We cannot go in great details in this introductory course but we will have an overview of what are some of the important features, some of the important processes and constraints on word formations in natural languages. Are we together? Are you with me? Everybody please? Yeah, lovely. All new words can be done in only either of the two manners there is no third way. Either you have word plus word and new word is equal to either a word plus word. There is already a word and you add another word. So, there is class and there is representative. So, you say class representative and it means Mahesh. It acquires a new meaning. In some other class it means Ashwin. In some other class it means Deepak. In some other class it means X or Y. So, you already have existing words. You have one word, you have another word, you put them together and you make a new word out of them. You have Raja, you have Kumar and you get Raj Kumar which means a particular kind of Kumar, a particular prince who lives at Buckingham palace, etcetera, etcetera. Number one, number two, the second possibility is you can have word plus, please note this word, please note this word, affix, a little particle, smaller than word but not much smaller. You cannot break it further. We will again, in this class today, we will talk about the kinds of affix or kinds of affixation. But at the moment I want you to understand that in all languages of the world, no matter whether you speak them in Nepal or you speak them in the United States of America, no matter where and which language, all languages have word formation processes by which they coin new words and new words come in only either of the two ways. Either they are word plus word or they are word plus affix. Look at some examples at the screen. Say for example, the first example, history teacher. The word history is there, the teacher is there and you put them together and you get history teacher or you have word plus affix. So, person is there and there is an affix. Affix is some part of the word. In this case, what is the affix? In this case, please kindly beatx, please kindly tell me what is the affix in this case? A, L, L. This is the affix. So, you add it and you get personal or you could have the affix coming at the head of the world. Look at the next example. You have connect and you want another word. You want to say that this person is not connected. So, what do you do? You add an affix. What affix is here? D, I, S, this. So, you have affix plus word. It also shows that depending upon languages, affixes can come after the word, before the word, sometimes within the word. I will give you some examples later. Or you can sometimes have affix plus affix or a non-independent unit plus non-independent unit and you can get a word. Say, for example, you have personal where person can occur. You have person plus all. So, you get personal. Sometimes you can have only affix plus affix. Say, for example, you have per plus meet and it gives you new word. You can have re plus meet. You can have sub plus meet. You can have lots of other words and in all languages of the world, not just English, Sanskrit, Latin, German, French, many Indian languages like Malayalam or rich in this kind of derivation. You get lots of words you can make in this manner. We will look at some of those examples a little later. But I want you to understand that all new words in all languages of the world are formed through these processes. Either they are word plus word or they are word plus affix. Sometimes it can be only affix plus affix. Some people call them root. Some people call them stem. When you look up books on morphology, you will find some variation in terminology. Those variations are not meaningless, but you know I do not have time to go into great details of these variations here. But I want you to understand that it is like nature in other aspects. We use existing resources to acquire new resources. It is a no invention. Nothing that we have made has been made out of the blue in that sense. We have had something. We have improvised. We have adapted. We have added. We have subtracted and we have got the new thing. Nature follows the same rule in this case as well. You can sometimes have affix plus affix plus affix or you can have word plus affix. There can be permutations. There can be combinations. Imagine you have three stones A, B, C. How many combinations can you get quickly? You can have A, B, C. Then B takes please. You can have C, V, A. You can have B, C, A. If repetition is allowed, you can have A, A, B, C. Or you can have A, A, B, C. Possibilities exist. There are enormous possibilities. That is why, look at the beauty of nature. When you do some engineering in languages, you should be able to keep this in mind that all languages use limited resources, finite resources to generate infinite, non-limited output. But those non-limited outputs, can I have your attention please? Those non-limited outputs come out of these limited resources. In all languages of the world, new words are formed by, B takes please complete the sentence, putting word plus word together or word plus affix together or sometimes affix plus affix together. Very simple. There is no other process. The second question is, are there constraints? Can we put anything anywhere? Can we put any two words in any manner we like? Can we put any two affixes in any manner we like? Are there variations? Are they of many different kinds? Let us look at some of them, how they come together. I will mail these slides to you. You can look at some of those definitions. What is a compound word? What is a phrase word? Word plus word sometimes is called compound word. When they behave like one and word plus word is sometimes called a phrase when they occupy a particular box in a sentence. Please look up the book or I will explain it to you later. A phrase is a group of words or a single word which performs a syntactic function. It can be a subject. It can be an object. It can be a verb phrase. It can be a noun phrase. Then it becomes a phrase. Otherwise, compound words or those words like I have said which can be more than one but performing one function, making one meaning. When you say class representative, it means one thing. When you say prime minister, it means one thing. When you say boy's hostel, it means one thing. When you say blood circulation, it means one thing. There may be two words, but they mean one particular thing. Then we have the compound words. That is true of all languages. Look at these words. When you say film society, what kind of society is it? The first word is important, but it makes one word. You can talk about it as one word. You can say I am going to club. You can say I am going to film society. At IIT, we have an OAT society. We have a film club or film society. Similarly, garbage can. What kind of can? Not the juice can. Not the milk can, but garbage can. Here the first word is important. Pen holder, writing table, table lamp. But there may be compounds where second word is important. Look at pick pocket or cut throat or red head or dare devil or kill. We have these things in nearly all languages of the world. I will give you some examples from Telugu. You can also help me. There may be occasions when both words are equally important. When you talk about deaf mute, when you talk about sarang sastra, what is more important? Sarang. I expected as much. Sastra is such a boring affair even for us, though that is the only thing that you can talk about in later life. But in the word formation, sometimes you may put two words together such that both words are equally important, such as here. Can you give me some parallels from Telugu where two words are equally important? I can give you examples from my mother tongue. We can say dahi doodh, curry rice, jhor baat or in lots of places east of Varanasi, we say fish and rice or fish rice, mach baat. Like you say when you go to temples, you say gauri, Shankar, Mahadev, Parv. Yes, please. I would say Andhra Telangana. I will say Varangal, Hyderabad. I will say Tapthi Godavari. I will not say Tapthi Sariyu because Sariyu is obviously less important. A father son, mother child, poet, translator, actor, director, you can have lots of words which behave like one, but when you break them, you find that both are important. What am I talking about? I am trying to tell you that when two words come together, behave like one, though meaning wise, one part may be more important or another part may be more important or sometimes both parts may be equally important. But as far as word formation is concerned, this is it. This is how they go. Are there only two words come together? In English we find three words come together, four words come together, shopping mall, car park or five words come together, hotel fort canning, staff club or we find sometimes six, seven, you know. When my friends from biotech, biotechnology, chemical engineering departments write papers and ask us to sometimes read for our enlightenment and their correction, then you find they have six, seven words in one go behaving as one word, catalysis process or reverse osmosis, catalysis process lab, etcetera, etcetera. We tell them please, why do not you use sometimes off and in and to and that sort of smaller things to help us, but language has no restriction. English language or like many other languages do not say you can have only one word or two words. We in India have entire verses. How many of you remember that shloka in the praise of Durga, ayi giri nandini, they are nothing but compounding of words, shanta, karam, vijang, shayanam, badman, avam, you know it goes on, kaushalyaar, avam, you know, like supra vatam when you go to Tirupati. Anybody from Tirupati here? I am told that all children in Tirupati learn it before they are born. So, all of these things, all of these things, can I have your attention? There are all of these things show that there is no upper limit on how many words you can have coming together. Even then there is an order. We will look at that in later classes. You can, can you have only nouns together? Well, you can have noun plus noun. Look at examples in English and I will also ask you to add to one. So, please open your notebook. You can have noun plus noun like, you know, you have tall booth, you have security check, you have country house, country club, ring road. Can you give me another? Boys hostel, girls hostel, both nouns. Give me some others. Guest house, something else? Blackboard, lovely. Blackboard is not noun plus noun. It is black is adjective. Give me noun plus noun, please. Sorry. Come on. You see, there is no, it is not a shame making a mistake in the classroom. Classroom is the only place where you can make a mistake and yet grow. Don't make these mistakes outside, okay? Right, bathroom, yes. The least visited place in the hostel, yeah. Wrist watch, yes. Wrist watch, lovely. Come on, please. Okay, some more. Please write on noun. Everybody should have at least one. Your original, your own, okay? Look at the adjective in noun and all, it is not that only English has it. No matter how highly we think of English, other languages also have these processes. Say for example, adjective in noun, you have low land where low is adjective, land is land or high land, you know, in place of mountains. Sometimes, you know, we talk mountains are pretty high, but when you talk of places which are not so high and yet high, we talk of high lands, a black bird, highway, red line buses, you know, green light. If you go to Delhi, they talk about red line, blue lines. If you go to London, then metro's trains are named like that, red line train, blue line train, green line train, God. They have an entire rainbow buried inside the city, okay? Can you give me some example of adjective in noun? Somebody said some, you gave me some smart example. Somebody gave me a blackboard. That's a good example of, you know, but blackboard has become generic now. Lot of people talk about this also as blackboard when this is obviously green board. So, we call it green blackboard, okay? Right? Sorry? A hot plate, yes. Very useful thing actually, particularly for those in the hostels. Please come on, give me some example. Hard work, yes. One BTEC once told me, you know, somebody told a BTEC boy, hard work never kills anyone. And I remember some batches ago, a BTEC boy said, but why take the risk, sir? Okay? Okay, come on, please. Give me some example of everybody, please. At least one. Anurag, where are you? Save my life, please. Sahitya, where are you? Okay? Please, a semester. Okay? Give me some example. Ah, lovely. That's wonderful, really. Sunny day, bright night. Okay? Similarly, we can have verb compounds coming together, two verbs, okay? A verb plus noun, search party, hangman, okay? Crashland, rattlesnake, hovercraft, playboy. All of these things are possible, they happen. Or you can have preposition plus noun, off color, uphill, okay? Underage, overboard, bypass, by law. Look at the, look at the versatility of languages, their resources. You know, how many prepositions you have? In every language of the world, you have limited number of prepositions. Nouns, pronouns, sorry, nouns, adjectives, adverbs may or may not be limited. But prepositions, articles, some other parts of language are always in limited number. But what you do is, you combine one with another and you get new words out of them. Of course, there are restrictions. Of course, there is a grammar. It's not without that, you know. If you want your computer to generate this kind of vocabulary, you will have to give them the database, but you will also have to give them, give the computer some constraints. We'll talk about them if time permits. You can have adjective plus adjective, regularly, you know. Some people have researched and found that whenever we talk of good things like arts, architecture, music, we use lots of these words, light blue, royal blue, dark red, jet black, okay? Milk white, you know, India is considered one of the top racist countries and people are not looking only for good looking boys and girls. Is the girl fair? Yes. How fair? Milk white? I say milk splits in no time, you know. Have something which is stable, but people do talk about some of these things. Or vermilion red or, you know, lotus red. You know, we do talk about all kinds of things and we have words for them in Telugu. Can you think of, you know, adjective plus adjective pertaining to colors in Telugu? Come on, yes. Tell me, speak louder. Yes. Correct. Okay. Right. Similarly, you can have noun plus adjective. Look at the example country wide, country wide. Can you give me an example for this in Telugu and Sanskrit or any other language? Country wide or peacock blue? Here it is noun plus adjective. In Hindi we call it Mayur Pankhi. In Maitli we call it Majur Pankhi. In my mother tongue, in my mother tongue we have all kinds of, you know, color prejudices. Peacock color, parrot color. Or some people can be crow color. Okay? Okay? Sometimes it is, sometimes it is good to have black, which is beautiful. Okay? So, bottle green, sea green, sky blue, jet black, blood red. Okay? Sorry, world famous does not belong there. You can, you can leave it out. That's a mistake I have made. Look at verb plus adjective. Rather limited. You know, I broke my head over it for about half an hour. Couldn't find more than two examples. But English has some more. Yet, relatively speaking, these examples are limited. But you see, the theory, linguistic theory is not influenced by the actual number of occurrences. You may have only one. But the point here is, it is possible. You can coin, you can make new words. You can, and it is this capacity of making new words that is considered knowledge of language. The day you can impart this capacity to computers, you will have solved a huge puzzle, how we learn language and how we use them. So, you know, you have preposition plus adjectives, opfoid, overexplosive, verb plus verb. Verb plus verb. Do we have them in our languages? Can you give me one example of verb plus verb from our languages, either Hindi or Sanskrit or Marathi? Anybody, please? No matter what, I will give you one mark out of my pocket. I will tell the dean, please. They may not have done something like Wright Brothers, but it was very close. Yeah? Chalti chalti, double wala, duandh wala ho jayega, gauri mahaade, stir fry, they should make one verb. Chalti chalti will go for duplication. Chalti chalti, khaate khaate, ghaate ghaate, haste haste, maarte pittate. Sir, OD. Come again? OD will I add. How would it translate into? Run and play. Run and play. Lovely. Okay, come on. Please give me something else. Okay, something more. Come on, please. Anyone from Hindi? How many people know Hindi in this class? Can you give me some example from Hindi? Give me some. The king Kartabya is noun. Bimura is adjective. I am looking for verb plus verb, stir fry. That's a verb. Like, you know, the point once again is, please think. And at the end semester examination, I am going to ask you to come up with examples from your mother tongue. And I know every mother tongue in India. So please, okay, try and think of some of these things. This list is, you can have all kinds of combinations. Noun verb, like hand wash, hand weave, pressure cook, window shop, valley view. Do you think we have similar examples in our languages? Do you think we have similar examples in our languages? If you think of words related to marriage, festival, you will get some words of this kind. Adjective and verb, you know, like deep fry, double talk, sweet talk, double coat, dry clean, okay, clean sweep for those who, you know, play sticks, gambles, etcetera, etcetera. Preposition plus verb, underrate, overestimate, overeat, overwork. The challenge is for us to think if we have similar things in our mother tongue, okay. And I am very confident you have, okay. I am going to mail all of these slides to Mahesh. Please look at them and do spend about 10 to 15 minutes, definitely not longer than half an hour. Come up with your examples from your mother tongue and you will see, you will find lots of new windows opening and you will see that these processes are by and large universal. Exact manifestation may change. Exact number of examples may differ. Some like, you know, English may have more because English has borrowed from everywhere. We may not have as many because we haven't quote and quote borrowed, you know, as freely. But the processes are likely to be there in all languages. I have taken some examples from my mother tongue. You can look at the English, meaning in English and you can have similar examples from Telugu or Tamil. How many people speak Tamil here? Okay. Please think of matching examples from Tamil. I am confident you have them. Marathi, Hindi, Hindi. Can you think of similar examples? You know, like you said DET room. What would you say in Hindi? Devghar, Devtaka ghar or Pooja ghar. No matter how, you know, American, one American journal once. Are we together? I wonder if you have seen a journal called Span. Have you seen a journal called Span? It is there in the central library. Okay. So, once a Span conducted a survey of Americans, sorry, Indians in America and one of the not very startling revelations it came up with was that no matter how small their apartment, they had a corner which they called Pooja room. Even if it was not a full room, they had a Pooja room. So, what is Pooja room? Pooja room is noun plus noun. Okay. You know, what is kitchen in English? In my mother tongue takes two nouns. Bansa and ghar. In Bangla, it takes two nouns. Ranna, ghar. How many does it take in Telugu, Saithya? Give me those words, Ma. I want you to start an evening proficiency class in Telugu for all the boys in this class. They are so deficient really. Okay. They can only speak hostel jargon. Do you have such words in hostel jargon? Noun plus noun? Boys. Come on. Hazar pen will become adjective plus noun. Can you give me noun plus noun from the hostel jargon? Who is compiling the dictionary of hostel jargon for term paper? Are you? No? Okay. Don't do that. There is already one. If you go online, IITM jargon. We had a German research scholar here once, a lady, and she did a wonderful piece of work. That is the best known part of IIT in Europe. Okay. The jargon. Can you give me some? Noun plus noun from hostel jargon? Okay. Then pain. Okay. Then you know it. Right? But look at the, jump. Look at the gloss. Can I have your attention? Look at the gloss I have given in English. I am sure you have parallels in your mother tongue. Say, for example, Asmashan Ghat, the funeral pyre. What is the Telugu word for that? Noun plus noun. Noun plus noun. Okay. Dhobi Ghat. There is, you know, the best shopping area in Singapore is known as Dhobi Ghat. Okay. Satyanarayan Katha. Okay. Or, you know, chess boards. What is the Telugu word for chess board? That is noun. Their Satrangam is not adjective. Okay. Lots of them, you know. I wonder if you have, if you remember Telugu word for house board. Once upon a time, Telugu speaking people were trading community. Lots of big rivers going directly into the sea. Kakinada, Machli Patnam, Vizaka Patnam. Today they are all, you know, biggest ecological disasters. You have words there. Okay. These are noun plus noun. Okay. Brides father. Do you have word for that? The most helpless person in India? Do you have word for that in Telugu? Okay. Or how do you refer to tamarin tree? Okay. Or banyan tree? Mango orchard. Mango orchard. Anybody from a village here? Other than Rajesh and me? Yeah. What do you, how do you call? How do you refer to mango orchard? That is it. Okay. Or paddy field? Okay. You have one word for that. Our mother's mother's village? That's it. In my mother tongue, we call it nani gaam. And it has a very idiomatic meaning. When you die, you go to nani gaam. Okay. All of these things. You see here, duals. I'm sure you can give me lots here. Both sides equally important. You know, in Sanskrit they are called dwandh, samasa. Have you heard of anyone who did Sanskrit in school here? Okay. So you may have heard of words called samasa. You know, compounding. There can be samasa where first word is important. There can be samasa where second word is important. There can be samasa which takes a new meaning. When you say murli dharan, you do not mean anyone with a murli. You mean, professor and head of my department. A particular person. Or, you know, God up above the world so high. Okay. Similarly, you know, similarly you can have two words equally important. In my mother tongue, we have jorbaat, roti dial, goochini, jaggery and sugar. Equally important. Do you have similar words in Telugu? Give me. Do you have a word for jaggery in Telugu? And sugar. Do you ever use them together? Okay. Or chili and pickle. Chili and pickle. Right. I think I will leave you early today. You know, there is no point going through this entire list. You know, I am going to mail it to you. The point I have tried to make is the following. All words, can I have a minute please before you leave? All words, all new words actually are formed in this manner. I give you a very quick tour of, you know, as we say all India tour. Either they are word plus word or they are word plus affix. Or there are affix plus word or there are affix plus affix. Tomorrow, we will look at constraints on affixation. Okay. How many different kinds of affixes are there and what constraints there are on these affixes. And you tomorrow bring some examples of affixes. Like I said, all in parallels in your mother tongue, not English. Bring some examples of these things from your mother tongue tomorrow. Thank you. Have a good day.