Portfolio lingüístic Presentation | Page 25

Backformation. A very specialized type of reduction process is known as backformation. Typically, a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (usually a verb). A good example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into use and then the verb televise was created from it. Other examples of words created by this process are: donate (from “donation”), emote (from “emotion”), enthuse (from “enthusiasm”), liaise (from “liaison”) and babysit (from “babysitter”).