Morphological Productivity and Wugs
A brief look into the creation of new words
Besides being a cute little blue doodle, the “wug” is actually a very interesting linguistic tool used to test the plural morpheme. Just think, what would you call two of these creatures? Most people surveyed would say “wugs” with the [z] allomorph attached at the end. Even children and toddlers who were asked this question came up with the same answer.
The answer isn’t always as clear cut as this though. For instance imagine that this creature is a lankus:
Now what would two of these squid-like creatures be called? Some may say “lanki”, similar to the plural “octopi” and “cacti”. Others may say that perhaps “lankuses” would be a better fit, seeing as these -i plurals are slowly being phased out of our vocabulary. Even still there may be those who would say “lankus” similar to how the plural for sheep is just sheep.
So yes, clearly while there are some seemingly common understandings of how our language operates, there is still a gray area with no hard and fast consensus. Perhaps this is a good thing though, because it leaves plenty of room for experimentation and the creation of new words. Think about it, people create new words all the time: manspreading, smoothbrained, and many others that you may have come across in life and in scrolling.
The process of creating new words is known as morphological productivity and occurs across languages. It is further defined, by Schultink in 1961 as, “…the possibility for language users to coin, unintentionally, an in principle uncountable number of new words by means of the morphological process that underlies the form-meaning correspondence in some words they know”. Just as we were able to derive the plural form of “wug” from other words — take “mugs” or “dogs” for example — the same can be done in other circumstances. But, as the “lanki” example demonstrated, it is not always so clear cut. Morphological productivity exists on a kind of scale, with the most productive words being those that can most easily be extended and built upon and the least productive being the most stagnant.
There are many examples of productivity in English. Besides from just slamming words together and creating plurals, words can be created from the reinterpretation of their morphological structure. Morphemes are sounds or groups of sounds can by themselves contain some sort of meaning. For instance, book is one morpheme and books would be two. The -s conveys plurality. On the other hand, lotion would only be one morpheme as it cannot be further broken down into smaller parts. When word’s morphological structures are reinterpreted, we get words like cheeseburger. Hamburg ~ hamburger ~ hamburger ~ cheeseburger. In another example, our tense markers can change to become more similar to each other. Prime : primed :: climb : climbed while it was once clomb.
These are just some examples of how words are constantly changing and evolving, and how a little blue bird can teach you a lot about how language and our brains work.
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