Introduction

Abstract

This book is about word formation. In the history of linguistics, word formation has been considered from various perspectives. An important distinction that can be made in classifying these perspectives is the one between the American and the European tradition. In the American tradition, word formation rules are rules for combining morphemes into words. In the European tradition, word formation rules are rules for producing new words as names for new concepts. These two perspectives are not necessarily in conflict with each other, but they put an emphasis on different aspects of word formation.