Speakers frequently (perhaps always) have only partial knowledge of the meanings of the words they use, and may have demonstrably wrong information about them. When it comes to morphologically complex words, we must therefore expect the same to be true, and ‘meaning’ of a new word to be more specific than the linguistic structure of that word indicates. The meaning conveyed by inflection is more precise than the meaning conveyed by derivational affixes.

A number of word-formation patterns, no longer productive in modern English, have nonetheless left traces in the form of words which are no longer perceived as being morphologically complex. The factors that cause the individual patterns to die away illustrate what is needed for a word-formation pattern to remain productive.

It is suggested that the label ‘back-formation’ is inaccurate from the point of view of language users, since there is no undoing of linguistic structure. Verbs like houseclean are not back-formations but exist as compounds in the minds of language users.

Various types of construction that have been described as coordinative compounds are discussed, and it is argued that many of them have some other structure.

Much of the theorizing about compounds in English is taken wholesale from studies of other Germanic languages, perhaps particularly German, on the assumption that, as a Germanic language, English has compounds which work in the same way as the compounds in related languages. Yet a close consideration of the ways in which the various languages work and have worked shows that there are important differences, and suggests that we should not be too quick to assume that ‘compound’ means the same thing in all Germanic languages.

Reduplicative patterns are relatively restricted in English, as are their functions. As well as outlining the patterns, and introducing a new pattern, this chapter considers the ways in which these structures are used.

Recursiveness is one of the features of the syntactic structure of any language, and morphology also shows recursiveness, even if it is strongly restricted, and the way in which it operates is not the same across all kinds of morphological structure. A new way of considering recursion in suffixation is proposed.

A widely accepted principle in morphological studies is that inflectional affixes should not be found between a root and a derivational affix or internally in a compound. Many of the apparent exceptions to this general principle in English can be argued not to be genuinely exceptional, but some types, including an innovative type, appear to contradict the usual patterns, though it is not clear why this should be the case.

In summarizing the book, this chapter reconsiders some of the major recurrent issues that have been covered, issues such as the notion of a rule of word-formation, productivity and the difficulty in dealing with genuine examples from usage. There has also been a focus on understanding where the boundaries of categories lie. It is stressed that the questions that are discussed here could equally be discussed in books which focus on other aspects of language study, and that word-formation is just one area in which these issues can be tackled.

Although the term ‘lexeme’ is of increasing importance in linguistics, the term is often not defined in a way which allows for firm decisions about where its boundaries lie. Various points of contention are illustrated, and it is shown that French and anglophone traditions on the nature of the lexeme differ.

The effect of phonetics on word-formation in phonaesthemes, diminutives and the influence of rhyme are discussed. A new way of looking at phonaesthemes is proposed, to avoid some contradictory findings.