5 Morphology and Word Formation key concepts

Borrowing involves copying a word that originally belonged in one lan-
guage into another language. For instance, many terms from Mexican cui-
sine, like taco and burrito, have become current in American English and are 
spreading to other English dialects. Borrowing requires that the borrowing 
language and the source language come in contact with each other. Speak-
ers of the borrowing language must learn at least some minimum of the 
source language for the borrowing to take place. Over its 1500 year history 
English has borrowed from hundreds of languages, though the main ones 
are Latin (homicide), Greek (chorus), French (mutton), Italian (aria), Span-
ish (ranch), German (semester), and the Scandinavian languages (law). From 
Native American languages, American English has borrowed place names 
(Chicago), river names (Mississippi), animal names (opossum), and plant 
names (hickory). 
The borrowed word never remains a perfect copy of its original. It is 
made to fit the phonological, morphological, and syntactic patterns of its 
new language. For example, the Spanish pronunciation of burritos is very 
different from the English pronunciation. At the very least, the two languag-
es use different /r/s and /t/s, and the plural marker {-s} is voiced in English 
but voiceless in Spanish. 
See our chapter on the History of the English Language in Book II for 

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Delahunty and Garvey 
 
138
more on borrowing.
registers
 
and
 
words
Although most of the words we use every day can be used in almost any 
context, many words of the language are restricted to uses in certain fields, 
disciplines, professions, or activities, i.e., registers. For example, the word 
phoneme is restricted to the linguistic domain. Interestingly, some words 
may be used in several domains with a different meaning in each, though 
these meanings may be a specific version of a more general meaning. For ex-
ample, the word morphology is used in linguistics to refer to the study of the 
internal structure of words and their derivational relationships; in botany 
to refer to the forms of plants; in geology to refer to rock formations. The 
general, abstract meaning underlying these specific meanings is the study 
of form.
Besides words that may be used in almost any context and those that are 
technical or discipline specific, there are words that play important roles 
in academic discourses generally, for example, accuracy; basis; concept and 
its related forms, conception, conceptual, conceptualize; decrease; effect; fac-
tor; indicate and its related forms, indication, indicative; and result. As such 
words are used across disciplines, generally without local idiosyncrasies of 
meaning, they are important words for English learners, both native and 
non-native speakers. For a useful overview of the attempts to create lists of 
such academic (or subtechnical) words and a new list of them, see Cox-
head (2000) and the references therein (another academic word).