Glossary
- Coinage
Coinage refers to the creation of entirely new words or terms, often to name new inventions, concepts, or phenomena. These words are typically introduced into a language and may become widely accepted over time. Coinage can occur through various processes, such as brand naming, technological innovation, or cultural trends.
- Conversion
Conversion (also called zero derivation or functional shift) is a word-formation process in which a word changes its grammatical category (e.g., noun to verb, verb to noun) without any change in form. This means the word remains the same in spelling and pronunciation but takes on a new meaning and function in a sentence.
- Derivational rules
Derivational rules are rules in morphology that govern how new words are formed from existing words or roots by adding derivational morphemes (prefixes, suffixes, or infixes). These rules change the meaning of the original word and often alter its grammatical category (e.g., turning a noun into a verb or an adjective into a noun).
- Inflectional rules
Inflectional rules are rules in morphology that govern how words are modified to express grammatical information, such as tense, number, gender, case, or person. Unlike derivational rules, which create new words, inflectional rules modify existing words to fit the grammatical context of a sentence without changing their core meaning or grammatical category.