Forming IT

How new words are structured.

This unit looks at word formation, or morphology, to see some of the patterns in the way new technology words are made. In their word formation, spelling and pronunciation, new words are likely to be constrained by the lexis, phonology and grammar of the language: for example, it would be hard to have a word like 'cgsxhewltd', which would not fit with existing patterns of consonants, vowels, morpheme shapes, or spellings.

Linguists have developed a taxonomy or system for classifying types of word formation and the volume of new technical words coming into the language is an opportunity to see these classifications in action; it is also possible that there are some interesting differences in patterns of some of these new words.

The British National Corpus Online Corpus of approx. 100 million words.
Corpus Linguistics @ LancasterInformation about field of corpus linguistics - past to present.
Free Online Dictionary of Computing Dictionary of NCT technical terminology.
What Is? IT Specific Encyclopedia
The Oxford English Dictionary Online
Word Smith Tools Download linguistic analysis software from Liverpool University.
Word Smith Tools Alternative link.
Acronym Finder List of over 168 000 acronyms associated with computing.
Linguistic Annotation Large selection of downloadable corpus analysis software.
CHILDES database Massive downloadable e-corpus of child language aquisition.
'Your Dictionary' Index of online dictionary resourses
Corpus Lingustic Research German site researching into the use of technology for linguistic research, especially corpus analysis.
Independent Newspaper online
The Times Newspaper online
The Guardian Newspaper online
The Sun Newspaper online
The Jargon File An analytical dictionary of 'Hacker jargon'.