Different languages, such as English and Arabic, have differences in word formation. English relies heavily on affixation, while Arabic relies on the combination of roots with morphological patterns.

Masayoshi Shibatani, Taro Kageyama, Word Formation in a Modular Theory of Grammar: Postsyntactic Compounds in Japanese, Language, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 451-484 ...