Analysis of the role and use of prefixes in word formation in modern german compared to english

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to formulate and summarise the research on word formation in German in comparison with English. The literature review made it possible to conduct a typological analysis of word formation rules in German and English to classify the scope of current research in this area. The results showed that the paradigm shift of recent years has led to increased attention to issues related to language use and empirical issues, theories, and methods of word formation not only from a synchronic perspective but also from a diachronic one. The fact that words are formed distinguishes them from a competing process, phrase formation, in which phrases, i.e., groups of words, form collocations rather than words, i.e., groups of words to verbalise concepts. Since a phrase verbalises a concept in the same way as a word, these two methods compete both at the intra- and inter-linguistic levels. We conclude that it is the potential of word formation that distinguishes modern language from primitive language. The comparative compilation of German and English word formation models has led us to the typology of language.