Word Structure: Morphology

Academic Year 2021-2022

Dr Saza Ahmed Fakhry

Branches of Linguistics
 Branches of Linguistics
1. Phonetics: the study of speech sounds how they are
produced in the vocal tract (articulatory
phonetics), how they are transmitted through the
air (acoustic phonetics), and how they are
perceived by the listener (auditory phonetics).

2. Phonology: the study of the sound system of language how the

particular sounds used in each language form
an integrated system for encoding information and
how such systems differ from one language to
another.
3.Morphology: the study of the way in which words are constructed out
of smaller units which have a meaning or grammatical function, for
example the word friendly is constructed from friend and the
adjective-forming ly. Morphemes is the building blocks of morphology

4. Syntax: the study of how words combine to form sentences

and the rules which govern the formation of sentences.

5. Semantics: the study of meaning how words and sentences

are related to the real or imaginary objects they
refer to and the situations they describe.
6. Pragmatics: the study of the use of language in
communication, particularly the relationships
between sentences and the contexts and situations
in which they are used such as time, place, social relationship between
speaker and hearer, and speakers’ assumptions about the hearers’ belief.

7. Sociolinguistics: the study of language in relation to social

factors such as social class, educational level, age, sex and ethnic origin.
Such areas as the study of language choice in bilingual or
multilingual communities, language planning or
language attitudes can also be included.
8. Discourse Analysis: the study of how sentences in spoken
and written language form larger meaningful units such as
paragraphs, conversations, interviews etc.

9. Stylistics: is a branch of linguistics, deals with the

systematic study of style in language and it as ‘a method of
linking linguistic forms via reader inference, to interpretation
in a detailed way and thereby providing as much explicit
evidence as possible for and against particular interpretations
of texts’.
10.Psycholinguistics: the study of the mental processes
underlying the planning, production, perception and
comprehension of speech, for example how memory
limitations affect speech production and
comprehension. The best developed branch of
psycholinguistics is the study of language
acquisition.
11. Applied linguistics: the application of the methods and
results of linguistics to such areas as language teaching national
language policies translation language in politics, advertising,
classrooms and courts (forensic linguistics).
12. Computational Linguistics has two aims
the technological aim to enable computers to be
used as aids in analysing and processing natural
language and the psychological aim to understand,
by analogy with computers, more about how people
process natural languages. It also includes
research on automatic translation, electronic
production of artificial speech and the automatic
recognition of human speech.
 Morphology
Morphology is the study of words, their internal structure
and the changes they
undergo when altered to form new words (word
formation) or when they have different roles within a
sentence (grammatical inflection).
 What is a Word?
A word is the smallest independent units of language.
Independent means:
do not depend on other words,
can be separated from other units
can change position.
For example:
The man looked at the horses.
s is the plural marker, dependent on the noun horse to receive
meaning.
Horses is a word: can occur in other positions or stand on its own.
A word is one or more morphemes that can stand alone in
a language. Words consist of only one morpheme such as
book, boy, man, etc.
SIMPLE WORDS: have no internal structure (only consist
of one morpheme) e.g work, build, run. They can’t be split
into smaller parts which carry meaning or function.
COMPLEX WORDS: Have internal structure (consist of
two or more morphemes) e.g worker, builder, runner. The
suffix -er added to the root work, build, run to form the
nouns: worker, builder, runner.
 Grammatical word
The 'word' can also be seen as a representation of a lexeme that
is associated with certain morpho-syntactic properties (i.e.
partly morphological and partly syntactic properties) such as
noun, adjective, verb, tense, gender, number, etc. We shall use
the term grammatical word to refer to the 'word' in this sense.

Example: show why cut should be regarded as representing two

distinct grammatical words in the following:
a. Usually I cut the bread on the table.
b. Yesterday I cut the bread in the sink
There is a third one which you can observe in Jane has a
cut on her finger. This grammatical word is cut[noun,
singular]· It belongs to a separate lexeme CUT, the noun.
Obviously, CUT, the noun, is related in meaning to CUT,
the verb. However, CUT, the noun, is a separate lexeme
from CUT, the verb, because it belongs to a different
word-class
 Lexeme, word token and word type

It is useful to have some special terms for how we count words. Let’s say
that if we are counting every instance in which a word occurs in a sentence,
regardless of whether that word has occurred before or not, we are counting
word tokens. If we count word tokens in the following sentence:

My friend and I walk to class together, because our classes are in the same
building and we dislike walking alone.

We see the word token count 21. If, however, we are counting a word once, no
matter how many times it occurs in a sentence, we are counting word types.
Counting this way, we count 20 types in the sentence above: the two tokens of
the word and count as one type.
A still different way of counting words would be to count what are
called lexemes.
Lexemes are the vocabulary items that are listed in the dictionary. The
forms pockling, pockle, pockles and pockled are different
representations of the lexeme POCKLE .
Lexemes can be thought of as families of words that differ only in
their grammatical endings or grammatical forms; singular and plural
forms of a noun (class, classes), present, past, and participle forms of
verbs (walk, walks, walked, walking), different forms of a pronoun (I,
me, my, mine) each represent a single lexeme.
One way of thinking about lexemes is that they are the
basis of dictionary entries; dictionaries typically have a
single entry for each lexeme. So if we are counting
lexemes in the sentence above, we would count class and
classes, walk and walking, I and my, and our and we as
single lexemes; the sentence then has 16 lexemes.
 Morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest unit that has meaning and
serves a grammatical function in a language. A morpheme
can be classified into: free and bound.
Free morphemes are those morphemes which can stand
alone such as write, sail, etc.
Bound morphemes are those morphemes which cannot
meaningfully stand alone such as –er, or, etc. as in the
examples writer, sailor, etc.
Free morphemes have two categories:

a. Lexical words also known as open class items such as nouns,

verbs and adjectives and adverbs, for instance, girl (n.) jump (v.)
red (adj.) boy (n.) look (v.) pink (adj.).

b. Functional words known as closed class items do not have clear

meaning but has grammatical functions such as conjunctions,
prepositions, articles, auxiliaries and pronouns. Functional words
cannot be added to other morphemes, for instance he, she, we, but,
nor, etc.
Open and closed word classes

Open class words include content words that are readily

accept new members such as nouns, lexical verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs.
Closed class refers to the category of function words that
do not readily accept new members such as pronouns,
prepositions, conjunctions, determiners,
qualifiers/intensifiers and interjections.
 Word classes/ Parts of speech

Word class function or “job” example words

describes a verb, quickly, silently, well,
Adverb
adjective or adverb badly, very, really
Pronoun replaces a noun I, you, he, she, some
links a noun to
Preposition to, at, after, on, but
another word
joins clauses or
Conjunction and, but, when
sentences or words
 Bound morphemes
Bound Morphemes refer to those affixes that must be attached to the word. Affixes
have the following types:
a) Prefix – unclean,
b) Suffix – conclusion, freedom,
Bound morphemes have also two categories: Inflectional and Derivational morphemes:
Inflectional Morphemes are those morphemes that indicate the grammatical
function of a word. In English we have 8 Inflectional Morphemes:
• Noun – Possessive noun (‘s), Plural form (s), for example, boy’s, boys
• Verb – 3rd person singular (s), Progressive verb (-ing), Past tense (-ed), Past
Participle (-en). Cleans, cleaning, cleaned, cleaned
• Adjective – Comparative (-er), Superlative (-est) such as heavier, heaviest, etc.
 Derivational Morphemes change the part of speech or the
word classes of the word when added to the free
morpheme. but there are some exceptions.
Example of Class Changing derivational morphemes:
pay (v.) - payment (n.) pay (v) - payer (n.)
Example of Class Maintaining of derivational morphemes :
pink (adj.) - pinkish (adj.) , do (v.) - undo (v.)
 Morphs
Morphs are the actual shape or the realization of a morpheme. They are
defined as “an element of speech or writing that represents and expresses
one or more morpheme.

Langendoen defines morph as “a specific pronunciation associated with

a specific meaning such that the pronunciation cannot be broken down
into meaningful parts whose meanings combine to
form the meaning of the whole”. For example-
1) the word ‘man’ is carrying- 1 morph, 1 morpheme while the word
‘men’ is carrying- 1 morph and 2 morphemes (man + plural), because
the form ‘men’ cannot be divided so it is the actual form of the word
means the ‘the morph’ but this single form is carrying two different
meanings (man + plural) means “the two morphemes”
2) the word “students” is carrying two morphs (student + -s)
as well as two morphemes (student + plural marker).Thus, a
morph can be defined as a physical form representing some
morpheme in a language. It is a recurrent distinctive sound
(phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes)
 ALLOMORPH

Allomorphs are the variants of the same morpheme. They are

said to be the different realizations of one morpheme.
Allomorphs are the positional variants of a morpheme; they
are in complementary distribution means ‘where one occurs
the other cannot occur’. For example- the plural marker /-s/
has three allomorphs /-s, -z, -iz / which occur in three
different environments such as- cats, dogs and buses
where we find that-
1- /-s/ after voiceless sounds such as /p, t, k/ etc. except affricates
and sibilants.
2- /-z/ after voiced sounds such as /b, d, g/ etc. except affricates
and sibilants.
3- /-iz/ after affricates and sibilants.

Similarly, /-t, -d, -id/ are the positional variants (allomorphs) of the
same morpheme /-ed/ the past tense marker. Thus, we can say that
if the different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are
grouped together and are called the allomorphs of that morpheme.
Allomorph is said to be conditioned when its form is
dependent on the adjacent phonemes. The three
allomorphs of the plural marker /–s/ are /-s, -z, -iz/, and
they said to be phonological conditioned since their
occurrence is dependent on the preceding phonemes.
1- /-s/ occurs with morphs ending with voiceless sounds except
‘sibilants’ and ‘affricates’.
For instance- cats, hats, books, caps etc. (-s sound)

2- /-z/ occurs with morphs ending with voiced sounds except

‘sibilants’ and ‘affricates’
For instance- birds, dogs, beds, songs etc. (-z sound)

3- /-iz/ occurs with morphs ending with sibilants (s, z) and

affricates (ch , j).
For instance- roses, churches, judges etc.( -iz sound)
Another example of phonological conditioning of allomorphs can be seen in the
past tense morpheme in English (-ed). The three allomorphs of the past tense
morpheme in English (-ed) are / -t,-d,-id/. And the
phonological conditioning of these allomorphs can be as follows-

1- /-t/ occurs after voiceless sound excepts /t,d/.

For instance- helped /helpt/, walked / walkt/ etc.

2- /-d/ occurs after voiced sounds except alveolar stops such as /t,d/.
For instance- killed, loved etc.

3- /-id/ occurs after morphs ending with alveolar stops.

For instance- wanted, wedded, granted etc.
When the conditioning factor is not determined by any phonological feature but it
is determined by the specific morph to which it is attached. In pairs such as
‘man-men’, ‘child-children’, which seem to contain the ‘plural morpheme’, we
cannot state the variation in terms of phonetic environment. Instead we must refer
to each morpheme separately. This kind of variation among allomorphs is known
as ‘morphological conditioning’. Some other examples of morphological
conditioning are
ox – oxen
sheep – sheep
goose – geese
These words do not follow any specific rule, each one has to be learnt separately.
So this kind of conditioning is known as ‘morphological conditioning’. There is
nothing phonological about it. These selections are specific to the words.
Grammatical conditioning is when the selection of a
particular allomorph is determined by a certain
grammatical class--irregular verbs in English.
Morphological Tree
Root, Stems, Bases, Affixes
 Examples/ Stems
Q Word: reddest Stem: red
Q Word: girls’ Stem: girl
Q Word: boats Stem: boat
Q Word: preapproved Stem: preapprove
Q Word: justifying Stem: justify
Q Word: responded Stem: respond
Q Word: unjustifiable Stem: no stem
Q Word: kindness Stem: no stem
 Examples/Root& Base
Laurie Bauer says, “A base is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added.
This means that any root or any stem can be termed a base.”
reread Base/Root: read
unhelpful Base: helpful Base/Root: help
justifying Base: justify Base/Root: jus
unreliable Base: reliable Base/Root: rely
preponderance Base: ponderance (uncommon) Base/Root: ponder
responded Base: respond Base/Root: spond
preapproved Base: preapprove Base: approve
Base: approved Base: proved Base/Root: prove
Inflection is the process by which affixes combine with
roots to indicate basic grammatical categories such as
tense or plurality (e.g. in 'cat-s', 'talk-ed', '-s' an d'-ed‘ are
inflectional suffixes). Inflection is viewed as the process of
adding very general meanings to existing words, not as the
creation of new words.
 Derivational morphology

Derivational morphology is concerned with forming new

lexemes, that is, words that differ either in syntactic
category (part of speech) or in meaning from their
bases. For example, if we start with an adjective
like happy and add the suffix –ness, we derive the noun
that refers to the state of being that adjective, happiness.
One of the most common ways that English derives new
words is by affixing a derivational morpheme to a base. For
example, if we start with a verb that describes an action,
like teach and we add the morpheme –er, we derive a
morphologically complex noun, teacher, that refers to the
person who does the action of teaching. That
same -er morpheme does the same job
in singer, dancer, baker, and writer.
Verb Suffix Noun
teach -er teacher
sing -er singer
dance -er dancer
bake -er baker
write -er writer
 Adding the suffix –ful to a noun derives an adjective,
like hopeful.
Noun Suffix Adjective
hope -ful hopeful
joy -ful joyful
care -ful careful
dread -ful dreadful
 Adding the suffix–ize to an adjective like final derives a
verb like finalize.
Adjective Suffix Verb
final -ize finalize
modern -ize modernize
social -ize socialize
public -ize publicize
English also derives new words by prefixing, and while
adding a derivational prefix does lead to a new word with
a new meaning, it often doesn’t lead to a category change.
Prefix Verb Verb
re- write rewrite
re- read reread
re- examine reexamine
re- assess reassess
Distinctions between inflectional and derivational
morphemes

Inflectional morphemes (affixes) never change the

grammatical category (part of speech) of a word. For example,
the noun "students" can be produced by adding the plural -s, a
inflectional suffix, to the base "student". The plural -s indicates
that more than one student is concerned, but it does neither
change the grammatical category of the word nor does it
produce a new lexeme. While derivational affixes change the
grammatical category of a word. For instance, the verb “read”
becomes the noun “reader” when we add the derivational
morpheme -er. It is simply that “read” is a verb, but “reader” is
a noun.
Derivational morphemes are recursive. There can be more
than one in a word or words may be derived through the
addition of several derivational morphemes. Inflectional
morphemes are not recursive.
When derivational suffixes and inflectional suffixes are
attached to the same word, inflectional morphemes always
come at the end of a word in English, that is, no other
morpheme can be added after it.
For example: The girl’s shocked the teachers.
The + girl+s + shock+ed + the +teach+er+s

The highlighted affixes above are all inflectional morphemes

 Suffixal Homophones
Homophones are forms that sound the same but have different meanings. both
inflectional and derivational have homophonous forms:

1. The inflectional morpheme {-er comparative (cp)} has two homophones: {-er noun
(n) } & {-er repetition (rp)}.

2. The verbal inflectional suffix {-ing verb (vb)} has two homophones: {-ing nominal
(nom)} & {-ing adjectival (adj)}.

3. The verbal inflectional {-D) pp} has a homophone: the adjectival derivational {-D
adj}.

4. The adverbial derivational suffix {-ly av} has one homophone: the adjectival
derivational suffix {-ly adj}.
1. The inflectional morpheme {-er cp} has two homophones:

a) Derivational morpheme {-er n}, which is attached

to verbs to form nouns as in hunter, fisher, is often called the agent
–er and conveys the meaning of “that which performs the action of the
verb”. It may also be attached to nonverbal stems as in: teenager, New
Yorker; conveying the meaning of “that which is related to”. Both
belong to the same morpheme.

b)Derivational morpheme {-er rp}, which appears at the end of words

and conveys the meaning of repetition as in patter, chatter.
2.The verbal inflectional suffix {-ing
vb} has two homophones:
a) Nominal derivational suffix {-ing
nom} as in meetings, weddings.
b) Adjectival morpheme {-ing adj} as in ‘a
charming woman’.
.
 Verbal Inflectional Suffix Tests

There are two tests to distinguish the verbal {-ing vb} from
the adjectival {-ing adj}:

First Test:
a. The verbal {-ing vb} can usually occur after as well as
before the noun it modifies as in:
• I saw a burning house.
• I saw a house burning
b. The adjectival {-ing adj} can be preceded by a qualifier
(very) or by the comparative or superlative (more and most),
while the verbal {-ing vb} cannot.

It is a very comforting thought.

This is a more exciting movie.
but not
* I saw a rather burning house.
Second Test:
The adjectival {-ing adj} can occur after the verb ‘seems’,
but the verbal {-ing vb} cannot.
The snake seems interesting.
but not
* The snake seems crawling.
3. The verbal inflectional {-D pp} has a homophone in the
adjectival derivational {-D adj } as in:
Helen was excited about her new job.
She was a devoted mother.

The adjectival {-D adj } can be preceded by a qualifier (very,

rather, quite) or (more & most).
b. The test of the verb (seem) is applicable to adjectival {-D aj },
for example, the guests seem departed, but not to verbal {-D
pp}
*The very departed guests had forgotten their dog.
4. The adverbial derivational suffix {-ly adv} is added to
most adjectives to form adverb of manner as in rich, richly,
kind, kindly, happy, happily.
{-ly adv}has as a homophone the derivational suffix
{-ly adj}that is distributed as follows:
a. It is added to monosyllabic nouns to form adjectives that
are inflected with –er, est: love - lovely, friend-friendly,
man- manly, etc.
Prefixation
Week 5
 Affixation: Prefixation
Affixation is the process of attaching affixes (prefixes and
suffixes).
Prefixation is a morphological process of adding prefix to the
base, with or without change the word-class. A prefix is an
affix added before a root or base (Katamba, 1993). The vast
majority of prefixes in English are class-maintaining. For
example, un-, meaning ‘not’, is the prefix in the word unkind,
here, kind is the root. Thus, unkind means‘not kind’,
The word unnecessary consists of the prefix un- and the noun
necessary which means ‘not necessary’, etc.
 Examples:
a. We know that the bridge was unsafe
b. He dislikes sleeping long.
Notice: a prefix un- in example (a) is added before the
adjective ‘safe’. In example (b), the prefix dis- is attached to
verb ‘like’.
 Important
Prefixes in English are derivational affixes as they rarely
change the grammatical category of the word, but bring
the different lexical meaning. For example, appear is a
‘verb’; and disappear (meaning, the opposite of ‘appear’),
is also a ‘verb’. Hence, the prefixes like dis- are called
class maintaining derivational prefix.
In English, class changing derivational prefixes are also
available. For example,
forest belongs to the grammatical category of a ‘noun’
which means ‘an area of land covered with trees and
plants’. When the prefix –re is added to the word ‘forest’,
it changes its grammatical category into the verb reforest
to mean ‘to plant trees on an area of land’. Here, re- is a
class-changing derivational prefix.
It should be noted that some prefixes can function as both
‘class-changing’ and ‘class-maintaining’ derivational
prefixes. For instance, write is a ‘verb’; rewrite (meaning,
‘writing again’) is also a ‘verb’. Here, the prefix re-
changes only the meaning of the word, not the
grammatical category.
Verbal Affixes

The category of verbs remains verbs by adding the following

prefixes to the verbs followed:
Prefix Meaning Verb Verb
re- ‘again’ organize reorganize
un- ‘the opposite of’ cover uncover
mis- ‘the opposite of’ apply misapply
dis- ‘not, the opposite of ’ please displease
The e word organize is a ‘verb’, when the prefix re-‘again’
is attached to it, it becomes reorganize ‘change the way in
which something is organized’. Both words, the root
organize and the derived one reorganize are two different
words having the same word class but different meanings.
The verb organize means “to arrange something or a part
of something into a particular order” whereas the new
derived verb reorganize means “to change the way in
which something is organized”.
 The following prefixes are attached to a ‘noun’ to form a ‘verb’.
Prefix Meaning Noun Verb
‘treat somebody or
be- friend befriend
something as’
en- ‘to cause to be’ title entitle

The lexical item title “the name of a book, poem, painting, piece of
music”, which is a ‘noun’. When the prefix en- ‘to cause to be’ is added
to it, the 'verb' entitle ‘to give a right or claim’ is formed. The suffixes
–ify, -ize and the prefix be-, en- are all class-changing derivational
affixes that convert nouns into verbs
 Notice
Dis- can be used with verbs, nouns, adjectives.

appear, obey disappear, disobey

honest, similar dishonest, dissimilar
advantage disadvantage
agreeable, disagreeable, disagreeably, disaster disasterly
It is important to know what different prefixes mean as
they can help you to understand the additional meanings of
words.
 restructure, revisit,
re- again or back reappear, rebuild,
refinance

disappear, disallow,
reverses the
dis- disarm, disconnect,
meaning of the verb
discontinue

overbook, oversleep,
over- too much
overwork

reverses the unbend, uncouple,

un-
meaning of the verb unfasten
 Negative Prefixes
Negative prefixes are the prefixes that carry negative meaning
in word formation, such as the following prefixes:
un- which means ‘the opposite of’ or ‘not’, non- which means
‘not’,
in- which has meaning as for un-, dis- which has meaning as
for un-, and prefix a- which means ‘lacking in’
Prefix non- is used to express negative meaning of ‘not’. It is
also used to say that someone or something is not a particular
thing, or does not do a particular thing.
 Note that un-, il-, in-, ir-, non-, mis-, dis- de-mean “not” or
“opposite of” in English. The choice of one is governed by
phonological conditions, for instance,
-im is placed before bilabial sounds /p, b, m) as in

balance imbalance
patient impatient
possible impossible
 -in is placed before alveolar and velar sounds /d, k, s/and the labio
dental fricative /v/
visible invisible
sincere insincere
credible incredible

-ir is used before r: relevant irrelevant

-il is used before l: legal illegal
-de compose decompose
-un necessary unnecessary
-dis courage discourage
-non static non-static
Prefixes such as dis-, in-, im-, il-and ir- can be added to
adjectives such as honest, credible, polite, logical and
resistible, to derive the opposite meanings of those
adjectives dishonest, incredible, impolite, illogical, and
irresistible.
The word honest is an ‘adjective’, when the prefix
dis-‘not’ is attached to it, it becomes dishonest. Both
words, the root honest and the new derived one dishonest
are two different words belonging to the word class of
adjectives.
The adjective honest gives the meaning of ‘telling the truth
without cheating the other parties’, whereas the new
derived adjective dishonest means ‘the state of being not
honest with the intention of tricking other individuals’.
Although newly derived adjective dishonest indicates the
opposite meaning of the original adjective honest but they
still belong to the same syntactic category.
There are ten prefixes of degree or size, they are prefix arch-, super-,
out-, sur-,sub-, over-, under-, hyper-, ultra-, and mini-.
arch- carries the meaning of ‘highest’ and ‘worst’,
super- means ‘above’, ‘more than’ and ‘better’ (this prefix can be
added to nouns and adjectives)
out- means‘ to do something faster, longer, etc than…’,
sur- means ‘over and above’,
sub has sense of ‘lower than’ or ‘less than’,
over- has meaning of ‘too much’,
Under means ‘too little’,
hyper means ‘extremely’,
ultra- means ‘extremely’ and ‘beyond’,
mini- has sense of ‘little’.
 Suffixation
According to Aarts etal (2014), a suffix is an affix added at the
end of a word or base to form a new word or an inflectional
form of a word. For example, the word, teachers, contains two
suffixes: -er (meaning, ‘one who ….’) and -s (means ‘more
than one’); and teach is the root or base.
Further, in reader and readable, read is the root or base, -er
and –able (meaning, ‘capable of being’) are suffixes,
respectively.
Some common suffixes in English, their meanings, and
examples are represented in the table, below:
Suffix Meaning Examples
-al relation to elemental, spinal
-ance action disturbance, variance
-er/ -or one who... reader, director
-ful full of truthful, beautiful
-ion action action, dictation
-ise/-ize to make neutralise, visualise
-ity state unity, punctuality
-less without colourless, useless
-ly manner beautifully, truly,
-ment result agreement, amusement
Suffixes are of two types: derivational suffixes and
inflectional suffixes.
Derivational suffixes can be further divided into two
categories. They are class-maintaining and
class-changing. The divisions of the suffixes are presented
in the following diagram:
Class Maintaining Derivational Suffixes

Class-maintaining derivational suffixes are affixes which

are added to an existing lexeme. As a result, a new lexeme
is formed, but the grammatical category of both lexemes
remains the same. For instance, the word economic is an
‘adjective’; when the suffix -al is added to ‘economic’,
then it becomes economical, which is an ‘adjective’ too;
both words ‘economic’ and ‘economical’, though they are
different words, maintain the same word class. Thus, the
suffix -al is an example for class-maintaining derivational
suffixes.
1)Nominal Suffixes

In English, the existing nouns retain the grammatical categories of

the new nouns when the following suffixes are added to them as
summarized in the groups below:
Group 1:concrete nouns remain concrete nouns by adding the
following suffixes to them:

Concrete Noun Suffix Meaning Concrete Noun

murder -ess ‘used to form a feminine’ murderess
president -ency ‘equivalent to’ presidency
The above item president is a ‘noun’, when the suffix –ency
‘state of being’ is attached to it, it becomes presidency which
is also a ‘noun’. The changes occur when the suffix -ency is
added to the word president. The noun president means “a
person in charge of organization while the noun presidency
refers to “the period of time somebody holds as a president’.
Group 2: concrete nouns can be changed into abstract nouns
by adding the below suffixes to them:

Concrete Noun Suffix Meaning Abstract Noun

adult -hood ‘express state’ adulthood
king -dom ‘the condition or state of’ kingdom
leader -ship ‘state or condition’ leadership
The item adult is a ‘concrete noun’ when the suffix –hood
‘express state’ is attached to it, it becomes adulthood
which is an ‘abstract noun’.
The changes occur only in the meaning of the two
lexemes. The existing lexeme adult means “a fully grown
person who is legally responsible for their action” and the
new derived lexeme adulthood refers to “the state of being
adult”.
2- Adjectival Affixes

Adjective Suffix Meaning Adjective

green -ish ‘somewhat,rather greenish

The word green is an ‘adjective’ when the suffix -ish‘is attached to

it, it becomes greenish. Both words, the root green and the new
derived one greenish are two different words belonging to the
category of adjectives but they convey to some extent different
meanings. The adjective green is “a color that is similar to a grass
or the leaves of most plants and trees”, whereas the new derived
adjective greenish refers to fairly green color.
3)Numeral Affixes

The cardinal numerals remain cardinals when the suffixes–teen and –ty
are attached to them as shown below:

Cardinal Numeral Suffix Cardinal Numeral

Four -teen fourteen
Four -ty forty
-th seventieth
In English, the class of numerals retains its grammatical categories when
the suffixes -teen, -ty, are attached to them.
Class Changing Derivational Suffixes

Class-changing derivational suffixes are suffixes which are

attached to an existing word. Then, a new word is formed, and
the grammatical categories of both words are not the same. For
example, the word teach is a ‘verb’; when the suffix -er is
added to ‘teach’, then it becomes teacher, which is a ‘noun’;
and both words ‘teach’
and ‘teacher’ are different words, and at the same time they
belong to the different parts of speech, as well. Thus, the suffix
-er is an example for class-changing derivational suffixes.
In certain places, the derivational suffixes can also cause “a
major grammatical change” which means that “moving the
base from one word class into another as in –less” which
changes a ‘noun’ into ‘an adjective’. For instance, when the
suffix –less ‘without, not having’ is added to the ‘noun’
home, it becomes ‘an adjective’ homeless ‘without home’.
In English, various affixes contribute in ‘class-changing’
derivational affixes by the process of multiple affixation.
For instance, the 'noun‘ nation when the suffix –al
‘relating to’ is added to it, it becomes the 'adjective'
national and at the same time, the 'adjective' national has
the capacity to derive new word including the 'adverb'
nationally as well as the 'noun' nationality. From the
adjective national, the 'verb' nationalize, and the 'noun‘
nationalization can also be formed.
Nominal Affixes

Certain lexical categories such as a ‘verb ’and an

‘adjective’ can be converted into nouns by adding the
following suffixes.
GROUP 1: verbs convert into nouns by adding the
following suffixes: -ance, -ant, -ancy, -or, -ture , -ion, -er,
-ery, -ee, -ment
Verb Suffix Meaning Noun
annoy -ance ‘the action or state of’ annoyance
consult -ant ‘doing or performing’ consultant
consultant -ancy ‘doing or performing’ consultancy
sail -or ‘one who’ sailor
depart -ture ‘the action or result of’ departure
depress -ion ‘act or state of being’ depression
dance -er ‘one who is’ dancer
enquir -ery ‘quality of’ enquiry
‘a person who is the
refer -ee referee
object’
achieve -ment ‘refer to the action’ achievement
The item depress is a ‘verb’, when the suffix –ion ‘act or state
of being’ is attached to it, it becomes depression which is a
‘noun’.

The changes occur in the grammatical category of the 'verb

depress which changes into the noun depression and the
meaning of the two lexemes, the former gives the meaning of
someone who is depressed and the latter refers to a medical
condition of feeling sad.
GROUP 2: Adjectives convert into nouns by adding the
following suffixes:

Verb Suffix Meaning Noun

sad -ness ‘the quality, state or character of’ sadness
fool -ish ‘having the nature of’ foolish
national -ism ‘the state or quality of’ nationalism
brilliant -ance ‘act of, state of’ brilliance
wise -dom ‘state of being’ wisdom
private -cy ‘the state or quality of’ privacy
abundant -ce ‘act of being’ abundance
‘describe the actions or
social -ist socialist
occupations’
absent -ee ‘a person who is the object’ absentee
The item brilliant is an ‘adjective’ that refers to a person
who is extremely“clever”. When the suffix –ance ‘act of,
state of’ is attached to it, it becomes a noun brilliance. It
changes the grammatical category of the existing lexeme
(from a noun into an adjective). This new word makes a
minor
change of meaning “the quality of being extremely
intelligent or skillful”
2.Adjectival Affixes

Adjectival affixes are used to form adjectives from;

other lexical categories. As in the following groups
GROUP 1: Nouns convert into adjectives by adding the
following suffixes:
-al , -ate ,-y ,-ous , -able, -ive, -ly , -ary, -ish, -ful, -ic
Noun Suffix Meaning Adjectives
profession -al ‘relating to’ professional
passion -ate ‘full of or having the quality of’ passionate
cloud -y ‘characterized by’ cloudy
danger -ous ‘full of’ dangerous
fashion -able ‘capable of’ fashionable
attract -ive ‘having the nature of’ attractive
friend -ly ‘resembling’ friendly
revolution -ary ‘connected with’ revolutionary
child -ish ‘relating to’ childish
pain -ful ‘full of’ painful
academy -ic ‘connected with’ academic
In English, the lexical item profession is a ‘noun’ when the suffix –al
‘relating to’ is attached to it, it becomes professional which is an
‘adjective’. Hence, the grammatical category is converted from a noun
profession into an adjective professional and the meaning of the
existing lexeme “a type of job that needs special training or skill” has
been changed to a ‘well trained and extremely skilled’ person.
The lexical item passion is a ‘noun’ when the suffix –ate ‘showing;
full of’ is attached to it, it becomes passionate which is an ‘adjective’,
the meaning of the original lexeme is a “strong feeling of […]
enthusiasm” has been shifted into ‘a person who is enthusiastic about
something’.
GROUP 2: Verbs convert into adjectives by adding the following
suffixes: -ive, -able, -ible, -ent, -dom, -y, -less, -ic, -ory

Verb Suffix Meaning Adjective

assert -ive ‘connection with’ assertive
achieve -able ‘having the quality of’ achievable
reduce -ible ‘having the quality of’ reducible
differ -ent ‘doing or performing’ different
bore -dom ‘the condition of state of’ boredom
anger -y ‘characterized by’ angery
end -less ‘not able to do something’ endless
class -ic ‘relating to’ classic
‘involving the action
sense -ory sensory
concerned’
The lexical item achieve is a ‘verb’ which is connected with
fulfilling a “particular goal”. When the suffix –able ‘having the
quality of’ is attached to it, it becomes achievable which is an
‘adjective’ that refers to a
person who makes considerable efforts. The newly
derived lexeme and the original one has different
meanings and belong to two different grammatical
categories.
The suffixes – ive, able, -ible, -, –dom, –less, –
ory –able, –ent, –y, –ic are all class changing suffixes that
convert verbs into adjectives
Notice

The 'verb' assert ‘state clearly and firmly’ is converted

into an 'adjective' assertive ‘confident personality’, as well
as the 'adverb' assertively ‘confidently’. Here, the
adjectival suffix –ive ‘having a tendency or connection
with’ and the suffix –ly ‘in the manner of’ changes the
word class from a ‘verb’ into an ‘adjective’ and into an
‘adverb’, respectively. These suffixes are called class
changing derivational suffixes as shown below:
3-Verbal Affixes

Verbal affixes are used to form verbs from other

lexical categories listed in the following groups:
GROUP 1:Nouns convert into verbs by adding the
following affixes:

Noun Suffix Meaning Verb

beauty -ify ‘to make or become’ beautify
apology -ize ‘cause to become’ apologize
The above item apology is a ‘noun’ that means “saying sorry
for something that causes a problem”. When the suffix –ize
‘cause to become’ is attached to it, it becomes apologize which
is a ‘verb’. Hence, the grammatical categories of the new
lexeme has been changed while the meaning of the new lexeme
has not considerably been changed since the 'verb‘ apologize
means “saying sorry for doing something wrong”, its
grammatical categories have also been converted.
GROUP 2: Adjectives convert into verbs by adding the
affixes, -en, -ize, t-h

Adjective Suffix Meaning Verb

soft -en ‘to make’ soften
real -ize ‘cause to become’ realize

The above lexical item soft is an ‘adjective’ which means

“smooth and pleasant to touch”. When the suffix –en ‘to
make’ is attached to it, it becomes soften which is a ‘verb’
that means making “something softer”
 Adverbial Affixes
Adverbial affixes are concerned with forming adverbs
from other lexical categories.
Group 1:Nouns convert into adverbs by the following
derivational affixes:
Examples

Noun Suffix Meaning AdVerb

‘in or toward a certain
river -ward riverward
direction’
‘in or toward a certain
heaver -wards heavenwards
direction’
‘indicating direction or
clock -wise clockwise
manner’
length -ways ‘in the direction of’ lengthways
The lexical item length is a ‘noun’ which refers to “the
size or measurement of something from one end to the
other”. When the suffix –ways ‘indicating direction or
manner’ is attached to it, it becomes lengthways which is
an ‘adverb’ that expresses “the same direction as the
longest side of something”
GROUP 2: Adjectives convert into adverbs by affixing –ly
‘as below:

Adjective Suffix Adverbs

brave, -ly bravely
constantly,
constant, honest, ‘in the way
honestly,
persuasive mentioned’ persuasively

The lexical items brave is an ‘adjective’ that means

‘courageous and valiant’. When the suffix –ly ‘in the way
mentioned’ is attached to it, it becomes bravely which is
an ‘adverb’ which means‘ courageously.
 Numeral Suffixes
The cardinal numbers can also be changed into ordinals when
the suffix –th is added to them, as shown below:
Cardinal Numeral Suffix Ordinal Numeral
Seven -th seventh
Seventy -th seventieth

In English, cardinal numerals change into ordinals when the

suffixes -th are attached to them.
 Processes of Word Formation
▪ Word formation is the process of creating new words based on the word itself, or the other
words. This means the new words can be created by shortens the words itself, combining
them to the other words, add affixes to give grammatical information.

▪ Function:
Word formation processes acting in a particular way when attached to the base. Either they are
giving grammatical information or they are creating a new word.

▪ Morphological processes that create new words are called wordformation processes.
 Derivation
Derivation is the process by which affixes combine with roots to
create new words. Derivation uses an affix to build a word with a
meaning and/or category distinct from that of its base In the process
of derivation, a word that is attached to an affix will have change in
the word meaning or the word category.
For example, the free morpheme advertise combine with the suffix
-ment, it becomes advertisement. The bound morpheme –ment in the
word advertisement has changed the word category from a verb into
a noun.
In 'modern-ize', 'read-er', '-ize' and '-er' are derivational suffixes).
Derivation is viewed as using existing words to make new words.
 Compounding
Compounding is the process of creating the new word by combining
two or more words. According to Yule (2006:54), compounding is a
joining of two separate words to produce a single form.
Compound words can be in the form of one word as in halfway,
hyphenated words as in jewel-bright, and separated by space as in
white house.
Compounding is even often regarded as the most productive process
of the English word-formation. It is because compounding is a
process of creating new words by combining two or more existing
words. In English, most compound words are nouns, verbs or
adjectives (Becker & Bieswanger, 2006:91). Compound words can
be the combination of two or more words from the same classes or
different classes.
 Conversion
Conversion is a process that assigns an already existing word to a
new syntactic category. It means
conversion is a word formation process in which a word has changed
in the part of speech of without changing the form of the word. For
example, the noun water in the sentence I drink water becomes a
verb in the sentence She waters the flowers.
Nouns such as bottle, butter, chair and vacation have come to be
used, through conversion, as verbs:
1. We bottled the home-brew last night.
2. Have you buttered the toast?
3. Someone has to chair the meeting.
4. They’re vacationing in Florida
 Blending
Blending is a type of word formation in which two or more
words are merged into one so that the blended constituents
are either clipped, or partially overlap.
An example of a typical blend is brunch, in which the
beginning of the word breakfast is joined with the ending of the
word lunch. Thus, brunch (is a blend of breakfast and lunch),
Another examples is the combination of the beginning of two
words such as in cyborg (is a blend of cybernetic and
organism).
Gasoline+alcohol=gasohol.
Smoke+Fog=Smog.
Smoke + haze= smaze
Smoke + murk= smurk.
Binary+digit=bit
Breakfast+lunch= brunch
Motor+hotel)= motel
Television+broadcast= telecast
Information+entertainment= infotainment, etc.
Clipping is a process that shortens words. Even though
clipping shortens words but it does not change the
meaning and part of speech of the word. Clipping does not
only shorten single words but also phrases. For example,
the clip word ad is clipped from the single word
advertisement, and the clip word zoo is clipped from
phrases zoological garden. Therefore, clipping can be said
as an unpredictable formation.
More examples: pro, lab, doc, bike, doc, auto, sub
 Acronym

The acronym is an abbreviation in the form of the combination of initial

letters or syllables in a phrase or a word, for example,
VIP for Very Important Person,
UV for UltraViolet,
SciFi for Science Fiction, and
WiFi for Wireless Fidelity.
An acronym is the type of word formation which is common in
organization names such as
NATO for North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
ASEAN for Association of Southeast Asian Nation, and
FIFA for Federation Internationale de Football Association.
CNN for Cable News Network,
ATM for Automatic Teller Machine and
DVD for Digital Versatile Disc.
LASER (“light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”),
RADAR (“radio detecting and ranging”),
SCUBA (“self-contained underwater breathing
apparatus”) and
ZIP (“zone improvement plan”) code.
 Back formation
Donate from “donation”
Emote from “emotion”
Enthuse from “enthusiasm”
Liaise from “liaison”
Babysit from “babysitter”
Opt from “option”
Lab from “laboratory”
Gym from “gymnasium”, etc.
 Coinage
Coinage is one of the least common processes of word
formation in English is coinage. Simply, it means the
invention of totally new terms. The most typical sources
are invented trade names
for commercial products that become general terms
(usually without capital letters) for any
version of that product. The (older) examples are as
follows: aspirin, nylon, vaseline and zipper; more recent
examples are granola, kleenex, teflon and xerox.
 Reduplication
Reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or
stem of a word or part of it is repeated exactly or with a minor
change. It is used to show plurality, distribution, repetition,
customary activity, increase of size, added intensity,
continuance etc.
This is a process of repeating a syllable or the word as a whole
(sometimes with a vowel change) and putting it together to
form a new word.
For example: byebye (exact reduplication), mishmash,
super-duper (rhyming reduplication) or chitchat, pitter-patter,
zigzag, tick-tock, ,flipflop , hotchpotch,
 Borrowing
Borrowing is the process where we take over words from other
languages or simply we
borrow words from other languages. Examples
Croissant- French
Dope- Dutch
Lilac- Persian
Piano- Italian
Pretzel- German
Sofa- Arabic
Tattoo- Tahitian,
Tycoon- Japanese
Yogurt- Turkish
Zebra- Bantu, etc.
According to O’Grady and Archibald (2016) inflection is also
regarded as a process of word formation.
Inflectional processes are the morphological processes that add
grammatical information to existing words. It means inflection add
grammatical information of a word such as past, present, progressive,
future, singular, or plural. Inflection is one of the morphological
processes that add affixes to a word without changing the word class
and meaning. For example, the free morpheme bottle combines with
the bound
morpheme –s, it becomes bottles. The bound morpheme –s in the
word bottles does not change the word category, but it shows a plural
marker.
Immediate Consistent and
Morphological Tree

Week 11
 Immediate Constituents
In syntactic and morphological analysis, a constituent is a
word or a group of words that functions as a single unit
within a hierarchical structure. The word “like” consists of
one constituent. The word “treatment” on the other hand,
consists of two parts. These two parts “treat” and “-ment”
can be represented with a division between them as
follows: treat | ment.
A word of three or more morphemes is not made up of a
string of individual parts: it is built with a hierarchy of
twosomes (par). The word “gentlemanly” for example, has
three morphemes. The morphemes “man” and “ly” can be
combined to form “manly” and that “gentle” and “manly”
are combined to give the word “gentlemanly”.
The meaning of “gentlemanly” does not seem to be
composed of the meanings of its two parts “gentle” and
“manly”. So we reject this possibility. The second
possibility is as follows: “gentle” and “man” are put
together to give “gentleman”. The word “gentle”, as we
know, means “distinguished” or “belonging to a high
social station”. Thus we can say that “gentleman” is a
composite of those of its two constituents. Then we can
add “-ly”, meaning “like” and the result will be
“gentlemanly”, with the meaning of like a gentleman
The notion of immediate constituents is based on the idea
of analyzing or dividing words into two parts of which it
seems to have been composed. Thus, gentleman | ly.
Following the same way, we can cut every part into two
more until we have reduced the word to its ultimate
constituents and consequently, show the layers of structure
by which a word has been composed.
Thus, (Gentle | man | ly) is a word which consists of two
immediate constituents “gentleman” and “-ly”, and
furthermore, “gentleman” represents a layer of structure
which consists of two immediate constituents “gentle” and
“man”. Finally “gentlemanly” is a word that has three
morphemes and two layers of structure. Each layer of
structure represents a part of that word which has two
immediate constituents.
The following are three recommendations on IC division:

1. If a word ends in an inflectional suffix, the first cut is

between this suffix and the rest of the word:
treatment | s .
2. One of the IC’s should, if possible, a free morpheme:
engage | ing .
3. The meanings of the IC’s should be related to the meaning of
the word. It would be wrong to cut “starchy” like this: star |
chy