ELT VOICES – INDIA
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR TEACHERS OF ENGLISH
OCTOBER 2014 | VOLUME 4, ISSUE 5 | ISSN 2230-9136 (PRINT) 2321-7170 (ONLINE)
Most Frequently Used Word-Formation Processes in Malaysian Tamil Newspapers MUNIISVARAN KUMAR Bharathiar University
ELT VOICES – INDIA October 2014 | Volume 4, Issue 5
1.0 Introduction
The discussion on the background of the study is important to get a contextual idea of the study. The present study is related to word-formation in Tamil language in Malaysia. Therefore, the discussion of background of Tamil language in Malaysia is important to be discussed with historical evidence.
Tamil language is one of the four main languages in Malaysia other than Malay, English and Mandarin. According to the Department of Information, Ministry of Communications and Multimedia of Malaysia (2010), 7% of the population in Malaysia is the Indian community (1.8 million).
In Malaysia, Tamil language education is offered in the National-Type Primary level Tamil schools. These types of schools use Tamil language as medium of instruction. According to the Ministry of Education Malaysia (2010), there are 523 Tamil schools in Malaysia and as Arasaratnam (1970), mentions the first Tamil school in Malaya was established in 1816 as part of the Penang Free School, Penang.
1.1 Background of Malaysian Tamil Newspapers
Dhandayutham, R. (1973), mentions that the earliest Tamil newspaper in Malaysia was published in the year 1887. There were three newspapers published then. Those newspapers are ‘Ulaga Nesan’ and ‘Singgai Nesan’ which started their publication on 28th March, 27th June of the year of 1887 respectively while ‘Hindu Nesan’ was published by the end of the same year. However, these newspapers cannot be considered as the first published newspapers in Malaysia. According to Dhandayutham, R. (1973), there were previously published newspapers also. ‘Ulaga Nesan’ has mentioned the earliest newspapers such as ‘Vidhya Visarini’, ‘Vaagai Nesan’ and ‘Vijaya Ketanan’ which revealed the existence of several newspapers even before ‘Ulaga Nesan’. The name of ‘Singgai Vartamaani’, ‘Thanggai Nesan’ dan ‘Nyana Suriyan’ have been mentioned by the editor of ‘Singgai Nesan’ (S. K. Maguthum Sayabu).
At present there are six dailies published in Malaysia. ‘Tamil Nesan’ is the oldest among all the surviving newspapers since 1924. Followed by it ‘Malaysia Nanban’ and ‘Makkal Osai’ are regularly published since 1989 and 1994 respectively. Very recently that is from2012
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‘Thinakkural’ and ‘Nam Naadu’ dailies are being published. The sixth newspaper is ‘Tamil Malar’ was started in 1960 but stopped its publication later on was revived during 2013.
1.2 Statement of Problem
The study of word-formation has never been carried out as an independent discipline in Tamil language in a wider perspective. The discussion of word-formation was seen as a part of grammatical process and not studied as an independent area. In the recent decades, scholars from Tamil Nadu, India, such as Paavaanar, Churatha, Radha Cellappan, Sivalingam, Thanga Manian, Rajendran, Subamanikkanar and Jeya Devan have contributed to the field of word- formation in Tamil language through their research studies. Activities through internet via websites, blogs and social platforms such as Facebook are being carried out by some of the researches and bodies in Tamilnadu (India). However, the activities undertaken have only less impact.
Researches undertaken in the field of word-formation in Tamil in Malaysia are not that adequate. A master level dissertation has been done by Muniisvaran (2011) where the word- formation processes in Tamil has been discussed. This study was conducted in a systematic way using the qualitative and simple quantitative methods. Eventhough this dissertation is a research based word-formation study as suggested by scholars and successfully answered the research questions on word-formation process in Tamil language, the coverage of the study was not that wide and so cannot be generalized. Therefore the present study is expected to approach with issues related to word-formation in Tamil language in a deeper way.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
This study has been carried out with a hope to contribute for the enrichment of word- formations study in Tamil. The following are the objectives of this research study:
1. To identify the word-formation processes that are used
2. To identify the most popular word-formation processes used
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1.4 Significance of the Study
Compared to English articles and researches related to word-formation there are very few in quantity and quality in Tamil. This deficiency is indeed due to the lack of awareness among the language users about the importance of language planning, especially in new word-formation. This study has been carried out as a contribution in the field of word-formation.
This study provides an overview of the new word-formation processes undertaken in modern Tamil. The collected words through newpapers could show the expansion and enrichment of Tamil usage.
1.5 Limitations of the Study
This study limits its geographical scope to Malaysia only. The purpose of this study therefore is to contribute to the Malaysian Tamil word-formation activities as discussed earlier. Thus, the collected data for this study are limited to the articles contributed by the Malaysian Tamils only.
At present, there are six Tamil daily newspapers which are regularly published in Malaysia. Those are [tamiḻ ne:caṉ] (த뮿ழ் நேச), [male:ciya naṇpaṉ] (மநே殿ய ே迍ப), [makkaḷ o:cai] (ம埍கள் ஓசச), [tiṉakkuṟal] (鎿ன埍埁ரல்), [nam na:ṭu] (ே믍 ோ翁) and [tamiḻ malar] (த뮿ழ் மேர்). Among the six data for this research have been collected from [male:ciya naṇpaṉ] newspaper only. This newspaper is the most sold out among the Tamil dailies as identified by the Nielsen Audience Measurement (Malaysia).
This newspaper regularly published since 1986. The data collection from the previous years’ newspapers will be irrelevant since this study is concerned with new word-formation only. Therefore, this study limits its scope to the very recent year that is 2013. The data collection has been narrowed to the duration of one year, from 1st January to 31st of December 2013.
The findings of this study should be considered with all these limitations as stated above.
2.0 Review of Literature
The term ‘word’ has been used widely with a specific notion throughout the study. Hence, it is important to define ‘word’ in a more detailed way.
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Bauer (1983), mentioned that there are always some incompleteness where all the aspects of the term ‘word’ in languages are not fully covered. Elbourne (2011) has similar opinion as Bauer and says that giving a complete definition for ‘word’ is implausibly complicated. Ever since the days of Socrates (469 – 399 BC) and Plato (429 – 347 BC), the efforts to determine the position or status of ‘word’ still continues to be unsuccessful in forming an adequate definition and explanation.
There are several terms such as word, lexeme, vocabulary and terminology with slightly distinguished meaning which differs one with another. However, a standardized term is needed for use throughout this study, and therefore ideas discussed by scholars with reference to word study have been considered. Pingali Sailaja (2004) defends that the word ‘lexeme’ is not so popular terminology in linguistics, as it has only low frequency of occurrence. Based on the popularity Pingali Sailaja (2004) uses word as a common term to refer all other concepts.
The term ‘word’ has a broader coverage of meaning which includes concepts of lexeme, vocabulary and terminology with an overview of hyponym diagram.
word
lexeme vocabulary terminology
Figure 1: Word
A lexeme, vocabulary or a terminology can be referred to as word in general. But the classification of lexeme, vocabulary and terminology might not be relevant to all words.
Considering the ideas given by various scholars and based on the justification made by the researcher ‘word’ is used as a standardized term throughout this study.
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2.1 Review of Previous Studies on Word-formation
As far to the knowledge of the researcher there is only one academic dissertation has been done in word-formation of Tamil language by Muniisvaran Kumar (2011). The study focuses on word-formation in advertisements published in Tamil daily newspapers in Malaysia for the duration of one year. The study found that compounding, borrowing and derivation are the most used word-formation processes accordingly. Along with that, the study also found that the editors of the newspapers forming words according to their basic knowledge of the language and none of them have proper knowledge on word-formation in Tamil language.
According to the review of previous studies a conclusion can be made that academic studies on word-formation in Tamil language particularly in Malaysian context is quantitatively very low compared to that of the English language. Discussions on word-formation in the descriptive level are available in Tamil language in the form of books. So, the academic researches should be increased to enhance the development of Tamil language particularly in the field of word- formation.
3.0 Research Methodology
Based on the objectives and research questions and the nature of this study, it has been designed as a descriptive type of study. The depiction of the current status of the word- formation is the foremost concern of the study, and therefore this study has been classified as a descriptive one.
This research is essentially about the study of words and their use. Along with that it also investigates activities toward word-formation process. Thus, this study is a qualitative research. The quantitative mode is used to make comparison of each word-formation processes and brought into percentage form to display the structure of current word-formation in newspapers. Consequently, this study is classified as mix mode of both qualitative and quantitative.
This research has been planned step by step to accomplish the objectives of this study. Thus, the flow of the study has been discussed as follows:
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3.1 Theoretical Framework
This study is intended to classify the new-words collected from the newspapers. A general usage pattern of newly formed words via word-formation processes in Tamil language has been identified through a proper analysis using this theoretical framework.
This theoretical framework is divided into two parts to make analysis using the IMB SPSS software. First part is Case, the object that the study undertaken. Second part is variable, the characteristic of the case.
3.1.1 Case: New-Words
New-words refers to the data collected from the newspapers during the period 1st January to 31st December 2013.
3.2.2 Variable: Word-Formation Process
Identifying the word-formation process is one of the research questions of the study. Therefore, this variable has to be part of the framework. The identification of those processes is important to get a clear-cut picture of word-formation in the Tamil language. This identification becomes significant for future research to test the unpopular processes.
3.2 Instruments of the Study
Proper instruments are required to collect and extract data from the newspaper. The detailed discussions of the instruments of the study are as follows:
3.2.1 Dictionaries
Dictionary for this study as instrument has been selected considering certain criteria. The main criterion is the selected dictionary must have been published one year before of data collection for the reason of studying new words formed in one year duration. The data collection for this study is from 1st of January to 31st December 2013. Therefore the dictionary should have been published in the year of 2012. The second criterion is the dictionary must contain fairly large number of lexical items. Hence, Sura’s Tamil – Tamil – English Dictionary published in
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August of 2012 by ‘Sura Books Limited’ has been selected as the instrument of the study. This dictionary contains 42 thousand lexical items and it is one of the largest dictionaries in Tamil.
3.2.2 IBM SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) Software
This study uses IBM SPSS software for the purpose of statistical analysis of the data. The latest version of IBM SPSS at time of making this study was version 21.0 released in August 2012.
3.3 Data Collection from Newspaper
Firstly, the potential data have been collected from the newspapers manually by reading. Secondly, the collected new words have been verified with the help of the selected dictionary. Those words that are found in the dictionary are not eligible to be considered as new words because they are not new anymore and also they are in the process of standardization. Thus, words that are not attested in the dictionaries are selected as data. In the third step, the collected data has been filled up in the word-formation theoretical framework in IBM SPSS as case ‘new-word’. Then the variable viz. word-formation processes have been filled up.
4.0 Analysis of New-Word
The variable has been calculated using the following method:
Number in frequency X 100% Total number of data
4.1 Analysis of Identification of Word-Formation Processes
The first objective of this study is to identify all those word-formation processes used in forming new words in the Tamil newspaper (Malaysia Nanban) published in Malaysia during the year of 2013. The identified word-formation processes were further analysed to find their ranking with reference to their occurrence, from the most popular to the least popular ones. This analysis is to answer the second research question of this study that is to discover the most popular word-formation processes used in the Malaysian Tamil newspaper in the year of 2013.
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Based on the analysis made using the IBM SPSS software, the following results were obtained:
Ranking Word-formation processes Frequency Percent (%)
1 Compounding 273 55.0
2 Loan translation 83 16.7
3 Derivation 46 9.3
4 Meaning narrowing 6 1.2
5 Archaism 5 1.0
6 Borrowing 4 0.8
7 Meaning change 3 0.6
8 Acronym 2 0.4
8 Clipping 2 0.4
8 Dialectal feature 2 0.4
11 Reduplication 1 0.2
12 Combined processes 69 13.9
Total 496 100
Table 1: Most Popular Word-Formation Processes
The above table shows the identified word-formation processes and their frequency in occurrence along with percentage calculation. As mentioned earlier, a total of 496 words have been collected as newly formed words. Based on the analysis, thirteen word-formation processes were identified. Most of the words are formed using a single process and few others are formed using more than one processes which has been labelled as combined process.
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The result shows that the most popular word-formation process is compounding. It clearly shows that this process is the most favourable and compatible one used in the formation of new words. The frequency of this process is 273 which is more than half from the total number of words, which is 55%.
The second most popular word-formation process is loan translation. This process is used in 83 forms which is 16.7%. The gap between the first and second ranking is very wide, that is occurring in 190 forms (38.3%).
According to the statistical analysis, the combined process stands in third ranking with a percentage of 13.9. But it is not considered as a separate process because there are several other processes which share with this category and this will be discussed separately. Therefore, the third ranking goes to the derivation process with a frequency of 46 that is 9.3%. Based on the analysis compounding, loan translation and derivation are the top three word-formation processes that are used to form new words in the Malaysian Tamil newspaper during the year of 2013.
Apart from the top three processes, there are other processes that are also used for forming new words. There is a wide difference between the top three and the rest of the processes in frequency. The fourth largest process is meaning narrowing with a frequency of 6 (1.2%). The process of archaism stands at the fifth place with 1%. Borrowing is in the sixth place with 0.8%. Followed by that, the process of meaning change is holds the seventh place in the ranking order. The total frequency of this process is 3 which is 0.6%. Acronym, clipping, dialectal features and meaning narrowing are the four processes that share the eighth ranking. These processes have been formed twice that is 0.4%. The reduplication process has been recorded only once, that is 0.2%.
The bar graph below shows the frequency of word-formation processes overview.
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Chart 1: Most Popular Word-Formation Processes
The discussion about the special category in the list namely, the combined process is as follows:
Words used more than one word-formation process have been categorised under the combined process. Based on the analysis using the IBM SPSS software the patterns of combinations have been identified and ranked according to their occurrence along with their percentage value. The following statistic of figures show that:
Ranking Combination Frequency Percent
1 Compounding and Derivation 50 72.5
2 Borrowing and Compounding 6 8.7
3 Conversion and Compounding 5 7.2
4 Loan translation and Derivation 3 4.3
5 Borrowing and Derivation 1 1.4
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5 Borrowing and Loan translation 1 1.4
5 Eponym and Derivation 1 1.4
5 Loan translation and Compounding 1 1.4
5 Meaning change and Derivation 1 1.4
Total 69 100.0
Table 2: Most Popular Word-Formation Processes Combinations
According to the above table the combination of compounding and derivation is the most popular among all the other combinations. This combination has recorded a total frequency of 50 times out of 69 which is 72.5%. The difference between the first and second ranked combination is obviously huge. The gap between first and second ranked combination is 63.8%. The second highest combination is borrowing and compounding with 8.7%
Followed by this the combination of conversion and compounding has recorded the third ranking with a total frequency of 5 and a percentage value of 7.2. Consequently, the combination of loan translation and derivation is ranked as fourth with occurence of 4.3%.
Apart from the above combinations of word-formation processes there are other combinations which are less popular. Such combinations are borrowing and derivation, borrowing and loan translation, eponym and derivation, translation and compounding and meaning change and derivation. These 5 combinations occurred only once with a value of 1.4%.
5.0 Findings of the Study
By raising the first objective, 13 word-formation processes were identified. Those are compounding, loan translation, derivation, meaning narrowing, archaism, borrowing, meaning change, acronym, clipping, dialectal feature and reduplication.
The second objective aims to identify the most popular word-formation process among them. The findings for the second objective is as follows:
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The most frequently used word-formation process is compounding with a high frequency of occurrence 273 times out of 496 identified new words. It shows 55% of frequency and clearly it is the friendlier word-formation process in forming new words in Tamil. Secondly, Loan translation is with 16.7% and followed by derivation process with 9.3% of frequent.
Apart from those top three processes it is identified there are few less popular word-formation processes as well, like meaning narrowing, archaism, borrowing, meaning change, acronym, clipping, dialectal feature and reduplication according to their ranking. These processes are successfully used to form new words. Hence, it is can be concluded that these processes have potential in forming new words in future and have to be explored more in depth.
A total of 9 combinations have been identified and ranked according to their frequency. Obviously, the combination of compounding and derivation shows outstanding score of 72.5% which is also 50 times of frequency. The incomparable huge frequency indicates that this combination is not only a successful one but also user friendly to language users.
Apart from this, borrowing and compounding has occurred 8.7% and followed by conversion and compounding 7.2% of score. Loan translation and derivation is ranked in fourth with 4.3%. Borrowing and derivation, borrowing and loan translation, eponym and derivation, loan translation and compounding and meaning change and derivation are the other combinations which do not show significance as much as the combination of compounding and derivation. These processes have recorded 1.4% score only and ranked as fifth in the list.
5.1 Conclusion
From the above discussions a conclusion can be made namely, compounding is the most popular word-formation process among all the processes. Derivation is the second most popular process followed by loan translation. This shows the above three are the dominents word-formation processes used in Tamil language and identified as most potential processes to produce more words in better quality in the future.
The researcher believes that this study will be beneficial and serve as a purpose for the field of word-formation and language planning in future studies particularly in Tamil language. The findings of this study reflecting the current status as a part of language development. Thus, all these findings could be to be utilized for further studies for solving the issues and problems
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that occur in the realistic and need orientated use of Tamil development for moderd use (communication).
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References
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Dhandayutham, R. (1973). Thartkalat Tamil Ilakiyam. Tamil Puthakalayam: Chennai.
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Muniisvaran Kumar. (2011). Pembentukan kata dalam iklan Tamil. Unpublished Master’s Dissertation, University of Malaya: Kuala Lumpur.
Pingali Sailaja (2004). English Words: Structure, Formation and Literature. Pertinent Publishers: Mumbai.
Tamilvanan. (1987). Tamil pathirikaikalin thotramum valarcciyum. Manimekalai Prasuram: Madras.
Yokammal Mariasomalia. (2006). Bahasa iklan dalam akhbar Tamil Malaysia: Satu kajian diskriptif. Linguistic Dissertation, University of Malaya: Kuala Lumpur.
Yule, G. (4th ed.). (2010). The Study of Language. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
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