RULES OF WORD

FORMATION
ANDREA
FE R N A N D A L Ó P E Z G RIM A L D O

INFLECTIONAL
MORPHOLOGY
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY Inflectional morphemes in English
Bound morphemes like -ify and -cation are called follow the derivational morphemes in a
derivational morphemes. When they are added to a word.
base, a new word with a new meaning is derived.
Inflection achieves a
Derivational morphemes variety of purposes. In
have clear semantic English verbs are
content. In this sense they inflected with -s to show
are like content words, third person singular
except that they are not agreement.
words.

THE HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE OF

WORDS
The hierarchical organization of words is even
more clearly shown by struc- turally ambiguous
words, words that have more than one meaning
by virtue of having more than one structure.

If words were only strings of

morphemes without any internal
organization, we could not explain
the ambiguity of words like
unlockable.

RULE PRODUCTIVITY EXCEPTIONS AND

SUPPLETIONS
The morphological rules must also be in the grammar,
revealing the relation between words and provid- ing the
The morphological process
means for forming new words.
that forms plural from singular
nouns does not apply to words
When a new word enters the like child, man, foot, and
language, the regular mouse. These words are
inflectional rules generally exceptions to the English
apply. inflectional rule of plural
formation

LEXICAL GAPS COMPOUNDS

The redundancy of alternative
forms such as
Chomskyan/Chomskyite, all of
which conform to the regular
rules of word formation, may
The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the
meanings of its parts; a blackboard may be green or white.
Everyone who wears a red coat is not a Redcoat (slang for
British soldier during the American Revolutionary War).

explain some of the accidental The meaning of each

gaps (also called lexical gaps) compound includes at least to
in the lexicon. some extent the meanings of
the individual parts.