Word family

A word family is the base form of a word plus its inflected forms and derived forms made with suffixes and prefixes[1] plus its cognates, i.e. all words that have a common etymological origin, some of which even native speakers don't recognize as being related (e.g. "wrought (iron)" and "work(ed)").[2] In the English language, inflectional affixes include third person -s, verbal -ed and -ing, plural -s, possessive -s, comparative -er and superlative -est. Derivational affixes include -able, -er, -ish, -less, -ly, -ness, -th, -y, non-, un-, -al, -ation, -ess, -ful, -ism, -ist, -ity, -ize/-ise, -ment, in-.[1] The idea is that a base word and its inflected forms support the same core meaning, and can be considered learned words if a learner knows both the base word and the affix. Bauer and Nation proposed seven levels of affixes based on their frequency in English.[3] It has been shown that word families can assist with deriving related words via affixes, along with decreasing the time needed to derive and recognize such words.[4]

  1. ^ a b Hirsh, D.; Nation, I.S.P. (1992). "What vocabulary size is needed to read unsimplified texts for pleasure?" (PDF). Reading in a Foreign Language. 8 (2): 689–696. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-08-18. Retrieved 2023-11-18.
  2. ^ "Word family Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster". Archived from the original on 2022-07-02. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  3. ^ Bauer, L.; Nation, I.S.P. (1993). "Word families". International Journal of Lexicography. 6 (4): 253–279. doi:10.1093/ijl/6.4.253.
  4. ^ Nagy, William; Anderson, Richard C.; Schommer, Marlene; Scott, Judith Ann; Stallman, Anne C. (1989). "Morphological Families in the Internal Lexicon". Reading Research Quarterly. 24 (3): 262–282. doi:10.2307/747770. hdl:2142/17726. ISSN 0034-0553. JSTOR 747770.