Word formation Word formation In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define: a new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form. See 'conversion'. There are a number of methods of word formation. A blend is a word formed by joining parts of two words after clipping. An example is "smog", which comes from
Grammatical number ("He goes" versus "They go"). English treats zero with the plural number. Old English did contain dual grammatical numbers. The Finnish language has a plural form of almost every noun case (except the comitative, which is formally only plural). However, when a number is used, or a word signifying a number (monta- many), the singular version of the partitive case is used. and where no specific number is mentioned, the plural version of the partitive case is used and in the possessive (genitive) In modern Romance languages, nouns, adjectives and articles are declined according to number (singular or plural only).