Some morphologists make a distinction between morphological productivity and morphological creativity. When processes of lexeme formation are truly productive, we use them to create new words without noticing that we do so. Similarly, when hearers are exposed to a productively formed complex word, they understand it, but usually don’t note that it’s a new word (at least for them). This is not to say that speakers and hearers never notice productively formed new words, just that often such words slip by without notice. Morphological creativity, in contrast, is the domain of unproductive processes like suffixation of -th or marginal lexeme formation processes like blending or backformation. It occurs when speakers use such processes consciously to form new words, often to be humorous or playful or to draw attention to those words for other reasons.

For example, speakers might use the unproductive suffix -th to form an adjective like coolth (in contrast to warmth), consciously trying to be clever or witty. Another example might be the suffix -some that occurs in English in words like twosome, threesome, and foursome. Theoretically this suffix might be infinitely productive because its bases are cardinal numbers. But it’s really only attached to the numbers two through four or five. We would probably only coin a new word like seventeensome if we were trying to be funny. Such a use would be creative, rather than productive use of this lexeme formation process.

Let’s now look more closely at the case of blending in English. Blending, as we saw, is the creation of new words by putting together parts of words that are not themselves morphemes. Relatively few blended words have become lexicalized words in English (brunch, smog), but the technique is frequently used for coining words by advertizers and the media, precisely because such words are noticeable. McDonald’s, for example, creates a word like menunaire from menu and millionaire to catch your eye (or ear), and make you pay attention to their pitch.

Websites that track new words often have a disproportionate number of blends, and most of those words are culled from the popular press. For example, in the new words posted on the Word Spy website (www.wordspy.com) from May 28 to July 10, 2007, there were six blends:

All six of these words were found in popular media – newspapers such as Newsday and The Plain Dealer, wire services (Associated Press), or magazines (The Economist). All were intended to catch the reader’s eye and therefore make for lively reading, and we might deem them successful because they found their way to Word Spy. In contrast, websites like Word Spy don’t pick up other new words with -ness. Word-spotters are far less likely to notice new forms that come from truly productive lexeme formation processes than new blends or the sporadic creative coinages that still come from unproductive processes.

As Bauer (2001) points out, however, it is not always possible to draw a sharp line between productivity and creativity. Take the diminutive suffix -let in English (booklet, wavelet, eyelet). A look at the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that this suffix enjoyed a vogue in the nineteenth century (over 200 first attestations in this century), but declined markedly in its productivity in the twentieth century (only 21 first attestations). Although these numbers may be a function of the current state of the dictionary – the third edition, which is likely to add new forms, is as yet incomplete – the numbers are still suggestive.2 The apparent marked decline in productivity may account for my sense that when a new form with -let is coined, it often sounds self-conscious. For example, in my household a very small poodle is referred to as a poodlet and a very small beagle as a beaglet; these forms are meant to be amusing, and I doubt that they would slip through unnoticed by anyone who heard us using them. Similarly, in a biography of Julia Child (great TV chef and cookbook author), her husband is quoted as referring to her as his wifelet – surely meant to be funny, as Julia was over six feet tall!3 If I’m right about this, this suffix may have slipped below the line of productivity, with new forms being marginal, and therefore perceived as creative.