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Hassan II University, FLHS

Department of English Studies

Introduction to Linguistics (S4)

LING 4
Professor Dr. M. Afkir

Morphology: Part 2

Morphological Processes

A morphological process is a process that is used to change a root or a stem, and it

serves different functions such as to change meaning or to express a grammatical function.

Example 1:

The word „quick‟ is a free morpheme in English. If we want to change its meaning to
express the meaning of an adverb of manner, we need a morphological process. We need to
add the affix „-ly‟ after the free morpheme „quick‟ to have „quickly‟. This morphological
process is called affixation.

Example 2:

The word „play‟ is a free morpheme in English. If we want to express a grammatical

function such as the past, we need a morphological process. We need to add the affix „-ed‟
in order to say:

He played football yesterday.

This morphological process, as in the other example, is affixation.

There are different types of morphological processes. Moreover, each language uses
its own morphological processes. For instance, a morphological process may be present in one
language and absent in another.

1. Affixation

Affixation is a morphological process by which a root or a stem is modified by

adding an affix to it. “Most of the world‟s languages use some kind of affixing to indicate
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grammatical information about a word or its relation to other words” (Fasold and Connor-
Linton, 2006:67).

Affixes, which are bound morphemes, can be prefixes, suffixes, infixes, or

circumfixes according to the position they occupy in relation to the root or the stem.
Prefixes are bound morphemes that occur before a root or a stem as the following words
from English show.

English

1. dis+inherit
2. anti+social
3. un+safe
4. in+secure
5. pre+exist

Suffixes are bound morphemes that occur after a root or a stem as the following
words from English show.

English

1. happi+ly
2. establish+ment
3. devious+ness
4. kill+er
5. play+s
Infixes are bound morphemes that are inserted inside a root. That is, they split up a single
morpheme. A classic case of an infixing language is Tagalog (one of the major languages
in the Philippines), which uses infixing quite extensively.

Tagalog

1. sulat „write‟ 1a. s+um+ulat „to write‟

2. bili „buy‟ 2a. b+um+ili „to buy‟
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3. kuha „take‟ 3a. k+um+uha „to take‟

In this data, the infix +um+ is used to form the infinitive form of verbs. It is inserted after
the first consonant in each root. In item 1, for example, it is inserted after the consonant „s‟.

Circumfixes are bound morphemes that are made up of two separate parts that
surround a root. The past tense in German is expressed by adding a circumfix.

German

1. ge+lern+t „learnt‟
2. ge+spiel+t „played‟
3. ge+sag+t „said‟

The circumfix „ge+, +t‟ consists of two parts „ge+‟ and „+t‟.

2. Compounding

The morphological process of compounding is different from the process of

affixation. Radford et al. (2009:148) said, “English shares with many languages the ability
to create new words by combining old words.” Words created by the process of
compounding differ from those created by affixation. In affixation, such words are
analyzed as consisting of a root or a stem plus affixes. In compounding, the elements
combined are two free morphemes as in the following data from English.

English

1. babysit baby+sit
2. postman post+man
3. pickpocket pick+pocket
4. blackmail black+mail

The units combined always exist independently as words; they are complete both
phonologically and semantically. The resulting unit is a word, and the meaning of this word
is not always predictable from a summation of the meanings of its parts.
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Compounding is not a morphological process all languages use. Some languages

such as French have little compounding, while others such as German, English and Dutch
make extensive use of compounding.

3. Reduplication

Reduplication is a morphological process by which a new word is formed by

doubling (repeating) an entire free morpheme (total reduplication) or doubling part of
it (partial reduplication). In partial reduplication, some part of a root is repeated, either to
the left, to the right, or occasionally in the middle. Indonesian uses total reduplication to
form the plurals of nouns.

Indonesian

Singular Plural
1. rumah „house‟ 1a. rumah+rumah „houses‟
2. ibu „mother‟ 2a. ibu+ibu „mothers‟
3. lalat „fly‟ 3a. lalat+lalat „flies‟

Tagalog uses partial reduplication to indicate the future tense. The first syllable of a root is
reduplicated.

Tagalog

Infinitive Future
1. bili „buy‟ 1a. bi+bili „will buy‟
2. kain „eat‟ 2a. ka+kain „will eat‟
3. pasok „enter‟ 3a. pa+pasok „will enter‟

In (1), the first syllable „bi‟ of the root „bili‟ is repeated to form the future in this language.

4. Internal modification

Internal modification is a morphological process by which there is a modification (an

alternation) within the root. These words from English illustrate this process.
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English

Singular Plural
1. man men
2. woman women
3. goose geese
4. foot feet

The usual pattern of plural formation in English is to add an inflectional morpheme to a

root (books, rivers, seas, churches). However, some English plurals are formed by making
an internal modification.

5. Suppletion

Suppletion is a morphological process by which a root totally changes. In English,

suppletion is illustrated by the type of alternation between „go‟ and its past tense form
„went‟. There is absolutely no phonological connection between the two forms, and the
suppletive form is not predictable by regular rules. Other standard examples from English
are:

1. good better
2. good well
3. bad worse

In (1), the root „good‟ totally changes when we form the comparative. Another example is
from Moroccan Arabic (Darija).

Moroccan Arabic

1. mṛa „woman‟ ʕjalat „women‟

The plural of the singular „mṛa‟ „woman‟ is a completely different form that has no
phonological similarity with the singular.

6. Open and closed classes of words

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An open class, as opposed to a closed class of words, is one to which new words
can be added. In English, nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are open classes whereas
conjunctions, articles, prepositions and pronouns are closed classes.