CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW

LEXICOGRAMMAR
Lecturer:
Johannes Jefria Gultom, S.Pd., M.Hum.

Arranged by:
Sabrina Jenny Insani Simanjuntak
2223121089

ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS

MEDAN STATE UNIVERSITY

2023
 PREFACE

Praise and gratitude we pray to the presence of God Almighty for His blessings and
gifts so that I can complete this Critical Book Review properly and on time. We do not forget
to thank our supervising lecturer, Sir Johannes Jefria Gultom, S.Pd., M.Hum. , who has shared
her knowledge with us and thank you for her guidance so that i can do this CBR as well as i
can.

I have compiled this Critical Book Review paper to fulfill the assignment for the
lexicogrammar course. Apart from that, I have prepared this paper with the hope that it can add
to our knowledge and that of our readers for our criticism and knowledge about the book we
have reviewed. I also do this CBR preparation to further train our skills in compiling the right
CBR for the future for our college assignments.

I realize that this CBR is far from perfect and there are still many shortcomings,
therefore we really appreciate suggestions, feedback and constructive criticism from readers,
both friends and lecturers, for better papers in the future. Thus we arrange this paper as well as
possible.

i
 TABLE OF CONTENT

PREFACE ............................................................................................................................................... i
TABLE OF CONTENT ........................................................................................................................ ii
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1
A. THE BACKGROUND FOR WRITING CBR ....................................................................... 1
B. THE PURPOSE OF WRITING CBR ..................................................................................... 1
C. THE IDENTITY OF BOOK .................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER II SUMMARY OF THE BOOK ...................................................................................... 3
A. SUMMARY OF BOOK 1 (Main Book)................................................................................... 3
B. SUMMARY OF THE BOOK 2 (Comparison Book) ............................................................. 6
CHAPTER III SUGGESTIONS AND CRITICISMS ....................................................................... 9
A. THE STRENGTHS OF BOOK 1 ............................................................................................ 9
B. THE STRENGTHS OF BOOK 2 ............................................................................................ 9
C. THE WEAKNESSES OF BOOK 1 ......................................................................................... 9
D. THE WEAKNESSES OF BOOK 2 ....................................................................................... 10
E. INTERRELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BOOKS ................................................................. 10
F. SUGGESTION ........................................................................................................................ 10
G. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 10

ii
 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

A. THE BACKGROUND FOR WRITING CBR

I compiled this Critical Book Review to fulfill an assignment from Lexicogrammar courses.
Apart from fulfilling course assignments, I compiled this CBR to increase my knowledge about
word formation proces. I compiled this cbr with the aim of knowing more about how a word is
formed from various processes. Apart from that, the preparation of this CBR also trains my
accuracy in compiling a report, deepens my reading skills, and finds important points in a book.

This Critical Book Review is also useful for readers who want to quickly find the gist of
each chapter and the conclusions in the book. Readers can easily understand the contents of the
book through CBR and can compare two books while also finding the strengths and weaknesses
of the two books.

B. THE PURPOSE OF WRITING CBR

The purpose in preparing this critical book review are as follows:

1. To deepen reading skills.

2. To train the ability of the author to analyze the book.
3. To find out the content, purpose and strengths and weaknesses of a book and compare
it with other books.
4. Helps to see the continuity between the two books.

C. THE IDENTITY OF BOOK

Identity book 1 (Main Book) :

Tittle : Word Formation in English
Authors : Ingo Plag
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
City Publish : New York
Year : 2003
Edition : First Edition
Pages : 239 pages

1
ISBN : 978-0-511-07686-2
Cover:

Identity book 2 (Comparison Book) :

Tittle : English Words
Authors : Francis Katamba
Publisher : Routledge
City Publish : New York
Year : 2005
Edition : First Edition
Pages : 195 pages
ISBN : 0-203-20531-6
Cover:

2
 CHAPTER II SUMMARY OF THE BOOK

A. SUMMARY OF BOOK 1 (Main Book)

CHAPTER 5 DERIVATION WITHOUT AFFIXATION

• OUTLINE
This chapter deals with non-affixational word-formation processes. First, three major
problems of conversion are discussed. This is followed by an introduction to prosodic
morphology with a detailed analysis of some morphological categories that are expressed by
chiefly prosodic means, such as truncated names, -y diminutives, clippings, and blends. Finally,
abbreviations and acronyms are investigated.
1. Conversion
Apart from the perhaps more obvious possibility of deriving words with the help of affixes,
there are a number of other ways to create new words on the basis of already existing ones. We
have already illustrated these in the first chapter of this book, when we briefly introduced the
notions of conversion, truncations, clippings, blends, and abbreviations.
a. the bottle to bottle the hammer to hammer
the file to file
the skin to skin
the water to water
b. to call a call
to dump a dump
to guess a guess
to jump a jump
to spy a spy
c. better to better
empty to empty
hip to hip
open to open
rustproof to rustproof
d. poor the poor
rich the rich
well-fed the well-fed

3
 blind the blind
sublime the sublime
As can be seen from the organization of the data, different types of conversion can be
distinguished, in particular noun to verb (1a), verb to noun (1b), adjective to verb (1c), and
adjective to noun (1d). Other types can also be found, but seem to be more marginal (e.g. the
use of prepositions as verbs, as in to down the can).
2. Prosodic morphology
Prosodic morphology deals with the interaction of morphological and prosodic information
in determining the structure of complex words. In section 4.3, we discussed cases of
phonology-morphology interaction that involved suffixation. We saw, among other things, that
the attachment of a certain suffix can be responsible for a specific stress pattern that holds for
all members of the pertinent morphological category. For instance, all nouns in -ity carry
primary stress on the antepenultimate syllable, all -ic adjectives have stress on the penult, and
all nouns in -ee have stress on the suffix.
2.1. Truncations: truncated names, -y diminutives, and clippings
Truncation is a process in which the relationship between a derived word and its base is
expressed by the lack of phonetic material in the derived word. Examples were already given
in chapter 1 and are repeated here for convenience:
(6) a. Ron (← Aaron) b. condo (← condominium)
Liz (← Elizabeth) demo (← demonstration)
Mike (← Michael) disco (← discotheque)
Trish (← Patricia) lab (← laboratory)
The examples in (7) below involve suffixation by -y (orthographic variants of which are -ie and
sometimes -ee), but their form seems also to be heavily influenced by truncation, which is the
reason why we treat them in this chapter and not in the section on suffixation in the previous
chapter.
(7) Mandy (←Amanda)
Andy (← Andrew)
Charlie (← Charles)
Patty (← Patricia)
Robbie (← Roberta)
Given that all three types of formation are rather common and comparatively productive, the
obvious question is how such words are formed, and what kinds of rules or restrictions are at
work. In previous work on these categories such forms have usually been regarded as highly
idiosyncratic, and name truncations, -y diminutives, and clippings have been argued to be
outside grammatical morphology.
2.2. Blends

4
 Another large class of complex words whose formation is best described in terms of
prosodic categories is blends. Blending differs from the processes discussed in the previous
section in that it involves two or (rarely) more base words (instead of only one), but shares with
truncations a massive loss of phonetic. (or orthographic) material. Blending has often been
described as a rather irregular phenomenon but, as we will shortly see, we find a surprising
degree of regularity. Definitions of blends in the morphological literature differ a great deal,
but most treatments converge on a definition of blends as words that combine two (rarely three
or more) words into one, deleting material from one or both of the source words.
Furthermore, the two words are of the same syntactic category, mostly nouns. In spite of
their resemblance to copulative compounds we deal with blends in this chapter because their
formal properties make them belong to the realm of prosodic morphology, as we will shortly
see.
Blending rule:
AB + C D →AD
3. Abbreviations and acronyms
Apart from the prosodically determined processes discussed in the previous section, there
is one other popular way of forming words, namely abbreviation. Abbreviations are similar in
nature to blends, because both blends and abbreviations are amalgamations of parts of different
words. Like truncation and blending, abbreviation involves loss of material (not addition of
material, as with affixation). Abbreviation differs, however, from truncation and blending in
that prosodic categories do not play a prominent role.
(20) BA Bachelor of Arts
DC District of Columbia
EC European Community
Apart from words composed of initial letters, one can also find abbreviations that incorporate
non-initial letters:
(21) BSc Bachelor of Science
Inc. Incorporated
Norf. Norfolk
Ont. Ontario
The spelling and pronunciation of abbreviations offer interesting perspectives on the formal
properties of these words. Consider the following abbreviations with regard to their spelling
and pronunciation differences:
(22) ASAP, a.s.a.p. as soon as possible
CARE Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere
e.g. for example
etc. et cetera

5
 B. SUMMARY OF THE BOOK 2 (Comparison Book)

CHAPTER 9 WORDS GALORE

1. Lexical revivals
The reverse can also happen. Sometimes a word that had become a museum piece is dusted
down and put back in circulation, albeit with a changed meaning. Barber (1964) cites frigate,
corvette and armour as examples of lexical revivals. Frigate and corvette had become moribund
words only used technically in historical books to describe types of obsolete, small, fast
sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury fighting ships. The word armour had also become obsolete
after the end of the age of chivalry and the disappearance of medieval knights in shining
armour.
2. Metaphors
Figurative language is yet another source of lexical terms. Wornout figures of speech often
end up becoming conventional lexical items. We speak of ‘the legs of tables and chairs’ because
leg, meaning ‘limb’, was metaphorically extended to furniture. We speak of ‘the tongue of a
shoe’ by analogy to the tongue of an animal. For the same reason we speak of ‘the eye of a
needle’ and ‘an ear of corn’, ‘the foot of a mountain’ and ‘the brow of a hill’. As seen, many
dead metaphors are based on body parts. However, metaphors and metaphorical extensions of
meaning from other sources are not difficult to find.
3. Clipping
Clipping is the term for the formation of a new word-form, with the same meaning as the
original lexical term, by lopping off a portion and reducing it to a monosyllabic or disyllabic
rump. This phenomenon has been around for a long time. George Campbell, writing in 1776,
objected to what he saw as the barbarism of shortening polysyllabic words and retaining just
the first syllable or just the first and second syllables, as in:
hyp for hypochondriac rep for reputation
ult for ultimate penult for penultimate
incog for incognito hyper for hypercritic
extra for extraordinary mob for mobile crowd
However, BACK-CLIPPING, where the end of the word is trimmed, is by far the
commonest: Back-clipping, ammo ammunition, info information, rep representative, homo
homosexual. Clipping accompanied by [I] (-ie/-y) suffixation is especially common in
nicknames and familiar versions of names. It is not easy to predict what part of a name is going
to be retained because the principles that determine the version of the clipping process that
applies in a particular instance are not clear.
4. Acronyms and Abbreviations
The shortening of words is taken to its logical conclusion in acronyms. Words forming a
complex expression referring to the name of an organisation, company or a scientific concept
may be reduced to their initial letters alone which together represent sounds that form perfectly

6
acceptable syllables and hence can be pronounced as words. Words formed in this way are
called acronyms.
SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
HALO High Altitude Large Optics
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
RAM Random access memory
Sometimes shortened forms are created using the initial letters of words which do not give
permissible syllables. They fail the phonological test. In such cases, each letter is sounded
separately. We call such forms abbreviations rather than acronyms. The term acronym is
restricted to forms that are pronounceable as normal words. In the last few decades there has
been an explosion in the growth of abbreviations. A short list is given in I am sure you can
think of dozens more.
EC European Community
UN United Nations
IBM International Business Machines
5. Fads and Copycat Formations
Word-formation is subject to fashion. A word in vogue often gives rise to copycat formations
which are fashionable for a time, and then quickly become dated. Let us take the 1980s in-word
yuppie. It spawned a number of words formed by analogy, such as:
woppies :Wealthy Older Professional Persons
yummies :Young Upwardly Mobile Marxists
dinkies :Double-Income-No-Kids
nilkies :No-Income-Lots-of-Kids
6. Back-Formation
Normally words are formed by adding affixes. Less commonly the reverse happens and a
word is formed by removing affixes from a base. This is called BACK-FORMATION.
Typically this happens when there is an apparent gap in the lexicon, i.e. there ‘ought to be’ a
word from which an apparently affixed word is derived, but there is not.
On whose work this account of back-formation is based, the verb peddle was formed from
the noun pedlar, and the verb juggle was formed from the noun juggler by a series of deductive
steps. If a noun meaning ‘someone who does X’ ends in [e] (spelled variously as -er/-or/-ar),
there exists a corresponding verb which is minus the suffix, e.g. keep ~ keeper, ride ~ rider etc.
But in fact, the verbs did not exist in the case of pedlar and juggler. So speakers formed them
by dropping the suffixes from the nouns.

7
 7. Blends
Blends are hybrid words. They are compounds made in an unorthodox way by joining
chunks of word-forms belonging to two distinct lexemes. This word-formation method has
grown in popularity in recent decades. Many ordinary words are blends. Like acronyms, some
of them are so well installed in the lexicon that most speakers are unaware of the fact that they
are hybrid words rather than simple roots.
smog smoke+fog
spam spiced+ham
brunch breakfast+lunch
privateer private+volunteer
stagflation stagnation+inflation
chunnel channel+tunnel
Oxbridge Oxford+Cambridge
pornotopia pornography+Utopia
napalm naphthenic+palmitic
guestimate guess+estimate
Reaganomics Reagan+economics
telethon telephone+marathon

8
 CHAPTER III SUGGESTIONS AND CRITICISMS

A. THE STRENGTHS OF BOOK 1

Each book must have its own strengths and weaknesses, therefore constructive criticism
and suggestions are needed from readers. The advantages that I see from this book are:

1. In terms of preparing the material, this book is very good and detailed in every theory.
Making this book filled with facts based on theory from various sources.
2. In this book the author not only writes theories based on his thoughts but also includes
the thoughts of other experts who make this book rich in explanations and material.
3. This book is also equipped with practice questions to help students hone the skills of
the material presented in this book.
4. The book is also equipped with various diagrams, table and mind mapping to explain
complicated material so that it is easy to understand the material presented.

B. THE STRENGTHS OF BOOK 2

Just like the first book, the second book also has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Here are some of the advantages of this book:

1. In this book the author not only writes theories based on his thoughts but also includes
the thoughts of other experts who make this book rich in explanations and material.
2. This book provides a lot of examples for each material.
3. Just like the first book, the second book also provides exercises to broaden the reader's
knowledge and hone it.

C. THE WEAKNESSES OF BOOK 1

I found several shortcomings in this book, including:

1. In this book, there is also some language that uses punctuation marks that are not well
understood, such as the ' sign in some sentences.
2. The content of this book is quite heavy to read because it uses quite formal English. So
reading this book requires intention and concentration to understand its contents for
second language learners or beginners.

9
 D. THE WEAKNESSES OF BOOK 2

Just like the first book in the second book we found some weaknesses in this book, as
follows:

1. Although this book is very complete and detailed, the content of this book is quite heavy
to read because it uses quite formal English. So reading this book requires intention and
concentration to understand its contents for second language learners or beginners.
2. The formatting of the writing and paragraphs in this book is a little tricky because it is
not neat enough to distinguish the paragraphs. There are also some paragraphs that are
not indented.
3. The headings and subheadings in this book are a little confusing because they are not
made clearly so that it looks unattractive and less neat.

E. INTERRELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BOOKS

There is a clear connection between the main book and the comparison book regarding the
structure of sentence formation. Both books explain affixation, clipping, acronym,
abbrevitation, backformation and blending. This shows that this book is related, if the material
of the main book is incomplete, it can add from the comparison book and vice versa. Both
books also have exercises to hone students' skills.

F. SUGGESTION

Basically, both books are quite good and complete in terms of material and practice
questions. The suggestion from me as a reader as well as criticising this book is for the format
and arrangement of titles to be structured as much as possible to make it easier for readers to
understand each material.

G. CONCLUSION

We have looked at a number of word-formation processes that do not involve affixes as

their primary or only means of deriving words from other words or morphemes. We have seen
that English has a rich inventory of such non-concatenative processes, including conversion,
truncation, blending, and abbreviation. Each of these mechanisms was investigated in some
detail and it turned out that, in spite of the initial impression of irregularity, a whole range of
systematic structural restrictions can be determined. As with affixation, these restrictions can

10
make reference to the semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties of the words involved
and are highly regular in nature.

11