Word Formation Processes Used in Kurdish Community Facebook Platform

Word formation is an essential aspect of linguistic evolution. This study is entitled "Word Formation Processes Used in Kurdish Community Facebook Platform".  A wide range of research has been conducted for explaining  word formation processes in many languages, this study investigates (10) types of word formation processes such as (Inflectional and derivational morphemes, Compounding, Borrowing and some others) in four different Kurdish Facebook pages which are (Rudaw, Dengi Parwarda, and Erbil Life). The study is limited to the year (2024). The main research question is what are the most commonly used word formation processes in the selected Kurdish Facebook pages. The study aims to identify the most and least frequently used word formation processes in Kurdish online communication, compare their occurrences, and analyze their impact on the linguistic landscape. It focuses particularly on newly formed words in digital communication, examining popular methods, language mixing (Kurdish with Arabic or English), and abbreviation trends. This study contributes to Kurdish linguistics by emphasizing how social media platforms foster the formation and spread of new lexical items, thus documenting an ongoing shift in language use among Kurdish speakers. It also offers insights into sociolinguistic patterns within the Kurdish digital community, showing the influence of globalization and digitalization on everyday communication. By focusing on a relatively under-researched area, it fills a gap in digital communication studies and provides a foundation for further exploration of language evolution in Kurdish-speaking online environments. The study adopts a qualitative and quantitative approach, and utilizes Yule’s (2010) framework of word formation processes to analyze (4) Kurdish Facebook posts. It has been concluded that inflectional morphemes are the most frequently used, followed by derivational morphemes, compounding, and borrowing, while conversion, clipping, blending, reduplication, and initialism occur less frequently.