Morphological Study of Covid-19 Terminologies: An Indian Context

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19, a world-wide pandemic, greatly affected the world leading to the death of the thousands of people world-wide. This unceasing event not only impacted the health of human beings but it also greatly impacted economy, education, and of course language, too. If we navigate through the aftermath of COVID-19, the impact of it on English language can be easily identified. It has led to many linguistic innovations which serve as a rich data base for the linguistic study. The present study aims to do morphological analysis of the terminologies that have emerged during the pandemic, COVID-19 in India. The main objective of the research is to identify and analyze the various morphological processes through which the terminologies have been created. The data for the present study were collected from various sources of print and electronic media which included newspapers, magazines, and social media platforms like face book. The sample size consisted of 50 terminologies which were identified and analyzed morphologically. The findings of the study highlight that various types of morphological processes such as affixation, compounding, blending, coinage, borrowing, abbreviation and acronyms are involved in the creation of the COVID-19 terminologies. The creation of new terminologies can be seen in terms of linguistic innovations which have greatly affected the lexicon of English language. The study attempts to contribute something meaningful to the field of morphology.