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Library's collection Library's IT development CancelThis study focuses on the word formation processes of computer terms used in
Chip Community Forum. O ?Grady &Dobrovolsky (1993, p. 120) sets forth that a
characteristic of all human languages is potential to create new words. With
regard to the facts (1) that computer is so widely used nowadays, (2) that Chip
Community Forum is a media of communication for computer geeks in which so
many computer terms can be found, (3) that those terms are formed through some
processes, and (4) that by knowing the word formation process, people can be able
to know the meaning of the computer terms, the writer, therefore, is interested in
conducting a study on word formation processes used in computer terms in Chip
Community Forum. In particular, this study aims at finding out what word
formation processes the computer terms belong to and what word formation
process occurs the most frequently. The analysis was based on word formation
process theories as proposed by Yule (2006) and O'Grady & Guzman (1996). The
writer acquired the data of this study from Chip Community Forum in
http://forum.chip.co.id/ in the period of August 18 to September 1, 2007. Totally
there were 200 computer terms found within those two weeks. The findings show
that word formation processes used by computer terms are Acronyms,
Backformation, Blending (or Blends), Borrowing, Clipping, Coinage, Conversion,
Compounding, Derivation and Onomatopoeia. However, there are some computer
terms formed through other than those processes, which, in this study the writer
categorized them as Miscellaneous. Findings also show that one term could also
undergo more than one process, namely multiple processes. Furthermore, the
writer found that Acronym (42.57%) is the most predominantly process used in
forming the computer terms. The second process is Compounding (14.06%), and
the third are Clipping (10.08%) and Derivation (10.08%). To follow are
Borrowing (4.82%), Blending (3.61%), Coinage and Conversion (2.01% in each
process). Finally, both Onomatopoeia and Backformation (0.40% in each process)
are the least used processes.