Abstract
A COMPENSATION METHOD FOR POSSIBLE LEXICAL GAPS IN TURKEY TURKISH: BACK-FORMATION
Bauer (1983: 201-239) determines the word formation methods for English as compounding, neo-classical compounds, prefixation, suffixation, conversion, back-formation, unpredictable formations, clipping, blends, acronyms, word manufacture, mixed formations. Though in Turkish there are many methods for word formation. While the number and term equivalents of these methods change according to researchers (Uzun 2006, Akalın 2014, Sarı 2015), they can be said as derivation, clipping, ellipsis, mixing, initialisation, back-formation, transmutation, generalisation, reduplication, combination, copying, onomatopoeia, improvisation, matching, borrowing, compilation, scanning, intonation, nativization. Whether some of these methods are really word formation method or not can be discussed but it isn’t the topic of our study.
The prevailing word formation method of an agglutinative language Turkish is derivation (addition). Thus the methods below are being used for word formation at times. In this paper, we will dwell on back-formation that is used frequently in western languages but used far less in Turkish according to our knowledge.
Keywords
Back-formation, lexical gap, word formation, morphology, dictionary.