Univerbation
Template:Short description In linguistics, univerbation is the diachronic process of combining a fixed expression of several words into a new single word.[1]
The univerbating process is epitomized in Talmy Givón's aphorism that "today's morphology is yesterday's syntax".[2]
Examples
Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Some univerbated examples are always (from all [the] way; the s was added later), onto (from on to), albeit (from all be it), and colloquial gonna (from going to) and finna (from fixin' to).
Although a univerbated product is normally written as a single word, occasionally it remains orthographically disconnected. For example, Template:Wikt-lang (French, Template:Literally) acts like a single adjectival word that means 'cheap', the opposite of which is Script error: No such module "Lang". ('costly') as opposed to Script error: No such module "Lang". ('a bad deal').
Similar phenomena
It may be contrasted with compounding (composition).[3] Because compound words do not always originate from fixed phrases that already exist, compounding may be termed a "coercive" or "forced" process. Univerbation, on the other hand, is considered a "spontaneous" process.[4]
It differs from agglutination in that agglutination is not limited to the word level.[3]
Crasis (merging of adjacent vowels) is one way in which words are univerbated in some languages.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
See also
References
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- ↑ Brinton, Laurel J., & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2005. Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 48.
- ↑ Givón, Talmy. 1971. Historical syntax and synchronic morphology: an archaeologist's field trip. Chicago Linguistic Society 7 (1):394–415, p.413.
- ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".
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