INTRODUCTION 1

1 INTRODUCTION1

1.1 WHAT IS MORPHOLOGY?

The term morphology is generally attributed to the German poet, novelist, playwright,
and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who coined it early in the
nineteenth century in a biological context. Its etymology is Greek: morph- means ‗shape,
form‘, and morphology is the study of form or forms. In biology morphology refers to the study
of the form and structure of organisms, and in geology it refers to the study of the configuration
and evolution of land forms. In linguistics morphology refers to the mental system involved in
word formation or to the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and
how they are formed.

1.2 THE EMERGENCE OF MORPHOLOGY

Although students of language have always been aware of the importance of

words, morphology, the study of the internal structure of words did not emerge as a
distinct sub-branch of linguistics until the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, its
importance has always been assumed, as attested by its central role in Panini's
fourth-century BC grammar of Sanskrit, the Astadhyayi, for instance.

Early in the nineteenth century, morphology played a pivotal role in the

reconstruction of Indo-European. In 1816, Franz Bopp published the results of a
study supporting the claim, originally made by Sir William Jones in 1786, that
Sanskrit, Latin, Persian and the Germanic languages were descended from a common
ancestor. Bopp's evidence was based on a comparison of the grammatical endings of
words in these languages.

Between 1819 and 1837, Bopp's contemporary, Jacob Grimm, published his
classic work, Deutsche Grammatik. By making a thorough analytical comparison of
sound systems and word-formation patterns, Grimm showed the evolution of the
grammar of Germanic languages and the relationships of Germanic to other Indo -
European languages.

Later, under the influence of the Darwinian theory of evolution , the philologist
Max Muller contended, in his Oxford lectures of 1899, that the study of the evolution

1
The content of this part is adapted from Aronoff, M., & Fudeman, K. (2011). What is Morphology? (2nd Ed.) Wiley
Blackwell and Katamba, F., & Stoneham, J. (2006) Modern Linguistics: Morphology. Palgrave.
2 INTRODUCTION

of words would illuminate the evolution of language just as in biology, morphology,

the study of the forms of organisms, had thrown light on the evolution of species. His
specific claim was that the study of the 400-500 basic roots of the Indo-European
ancestor of many of the languages of Europe and Asia was the key to understanding
the origin of human language (cf. Muller, 1899, cited in Matthews, 1974).

Such evolutionary pretensions were abandoned very early on in the history of

morphology. Since then morphology has been regarded as an essentially synchronic
discipline, that is to say, a discipline focusing on the study of word -structure at one
stage in the life of a language rather than on the evolution of words. But, in spite of
the unanimous agreement among linguists on this point, morphology has had a
chequered career in twentieth-century linguistics, as we shall see.

1.3 MORPHOLOGY IN AMERICAN STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS

Adherents to American structural linguistics, one of the dominant schools of

linguistics in the first part of the twentieth century, typically viewed linguistics not
so much as a 'theory' of the nature of language but rather as a body of descriptive and
analytical procedures. Ideally, linguistic analysis was expected to proceed by
focusing selectively on one dimension of language structure at a time before tackling
the next one. Each dimension was formally referred to as a linguistic level. The
various levels are shown in [1.1].

[1.1] Semantic level: deals with meaning

Syntactic level: deals with sentence-structure

Morphological level: deals with word-structure

Phonology (or phonemics): deals with sound systems

The levels were assumed to be ordered in a hierarchy, with phonology at the bottom and
semantics at the top. The task of the analyst producing a description of a language was seen as
one of working out, in separate stages, first the pronunciation, then the word-structure, then
the sentence-structure and finally the meaning of utterances. It was considered theoretically
reprehensible to make use of information from a higher level, for example, syntax, when
analysing a lower level such as phonology. This was the doctrine of separation of levels.

In the early days, especially between 1920 and 1945, American structuralists grappled
with the problem of how sounds are used to distinguish meaning in language. They built upon
nineteenth-century work, such as that of Dufriche-Desgenettes (Joseph, 1999) and Baudouin
de Courtenay (1895), and further developed and refined the theory of the phoneme (cf., Sapir,
1925; Swadesh, 1934; Twaddell, 1935; Harris, 1944).

As time went on, the focus gradually shifted to morphology. When structuralism was in
its prime, especially between 1940 and 1960, the study of morphology occupied centre stage.
Many major structuralists investigated issues in the theory of word-structure (cf. Bloomfield,
1933; Harris, 1942, 1946, 1951; Hockett, 1952, 1954, 1958). Nida's coursebook entitled
Morphology, published in 1949, codified structuralist theory and practice. It introduced
generations of linguists to the descriptive analysis of words.
 INTRODUCTION 3

The structuralists' methodological insistence on the separation of levels that we noted

above was a mistake […]. Despite this flaw, there was much that was commendable in the
structuralist approach to morphology. One of the structuralists' main contributions was the
recognition of the fact that words may have intricate internal structures. Whereas traditionally
linguistic analysis had treated the word as the basic unit of grammatical theory and
lexicography, the American structuralists showed that words are analysable in terms of
morpheme. These are the smallest units of meaning and/or grammatical function. Previously,
word-structure had been treated together with sentence-structure under grammar. The
structuralists viewed morphology as a separate sub-branch of linguistics. Its purpose was 'the
study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words' (Nida, 1949: 1).
4 WHAT IS A WORD?

2 WHAT IS A WORD? 2

The assumption that languages contain words is taken for granted by most
people. Even illiterate speakers know that there are words in their language. True,
sometimes there are differences of opinion as to what units are to be treated as words.
For instance, English speakers might not agree whether all right is one word or two
and as a result disputes may arise as to whether alright is the correct way of writing all
right. But, by and large, people can easily recognise a word of their language when
they see or hear one. And normally their judgements as t o what is or is not a word do
coincide. English speakers agree, for example, that the form stlody in the sentence The
stlody cat sat on the mat is not an English word - but all the other forms are.

2.1 THE LEXEME

However, closer examination of the nature of the 'word' reveals a somewhat

more complex picture than painted above. What we mean by 'word' is not always
clear. As we shall see in the next few paragraphs, difficulties in clarifying the nature
of the word are largely due to the fact that the term 'word' is used in a variety of
senses that usually are not clearly distinguished. In taking the existence of words for
granted, we tend to overlook the complexity of what it is we are taking for granted.

Exercise 1

What would you do if you were reading a book and you encountered the
'word' pockled for the first time in this context?

He went to the pub for a pint and then pockled off.

You would probably look up that unfamiliar word in a dictionary, not under
pockled, but under pockle. This is because you know that pockled is not going to be
listed in the dictionary. You also know, though nobody has told you, that the words
pockling and pockles will also exist. Furthermore, you know that pockling, pockle, pockles
and pockled are all in a sense different manifestations of the 'same' abstract vocabulary
item.

2
The content of this part is adapted from Fromkin, V. A. (ed.) (2000) Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory.
Oxford: Blackwell; Katamba, F., & Stoneham, J. (2006) Modern Linguistics: Morphology. Palgrave and Kuiper, K., &
W. S. Allan (1996) An Introduction to English Language: Sound, Word and Sentence. London: MacMillan.
 WHAT IS A WORD? 5

We shall refer to the 'word' in this sense of abstract vocabulary item using the
term lexeme. The forms pockling. pockle, pockles and pockled are different realisations
(or representations or manifestations) of the lexeme POCKLE (lexemes will be written
in capital letters). They all share 3 core meaning although they are spelled and
pronounced differently. Lexemes are the vocabulary items that are listed in the
dictionary (cf. Di Sciullo and Williams, 1987).

Exercise 2

Which ones of the words below belong to the same lexeme?

see catches taller boy catching sees
sleeps woman catch saw tallest sleeping
boys sleep seen tall jumped caught
seeing jump women slept jumps jumping

2.2 WORD-FORM

As we have just seen above, sometimes, when we use the term 'word', it is not
the abstract vocabulary item with a common core of meaning, the lexeme, that we
want to refer to. Rather, we may use the term 'word' to refer to a particular physical
realisation of that lexeme in speech or writing that is, a particular word-form. Thus,
we can refer to see, sees, seeing, saw and seen as five different words. In this sense,
three different occurrences of any one of these word -forms would count as three
words. We can also say that the word-form see has three letters and the word-form
seeing has six. And, if we were counting the number of words in a passage, we would
gladly count see, sees, seeing, saw and seen as five different word-forms (belonging to
the same lexeme).

2.3 CONTTENT WORDS AND FUNCTION WORDS

Languages make an important distinction between two kinds of words —content words
and function words. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are the content words. These words
denote concepts such as objects, actions, attributes, and ideas that we can think about like
children, anarchism, soar, and purple. Content words are sometimes called the open class
words because we can and regularly do add new words to these classes. A new word,
steganography, which is the art of hiding information in electronic text, entered English with
the Internet revolution. Verbs like disrespect and download entered the language quite
recently, as have nouns like byte and email.

Different languages may express the same concept using words of different grammatical
classes. For example, in Akan, the major language of Ghana, there are only a handful of
adjectives. Most concepts that would be expressed with adjectives in English are expressed by
verbs in Akan. Instead of saying "The sun is bright today," an Akan speaker will say "The sun
brightens today."
There are other classes of words that do not have clear lexical meaning or obvious
concepts associated with them, including conjunctions such as and, or, and but; prepositions
such as in and of; the articles the, a/an, and pronouns such as it and he. These kinds of words
are called function words because they have a grammatical function. For example, the articles
6 WHAT IS A WORD?

indicate whether a noun is definite or indefinite — the boy or a boy. The preposition of
indicates possession as in "the book of yours," but this word indicates many other kinds of
relations too.

What do you mean?

How’s your 500- Well, based on
word history past performance,
I know I’ll use “the” about 25 times,
paper coming? I’m ready a
“and” at least 15. “in”, “if”,”it” and
quarter done. “but” should give me another 30-40.
Toss in the usual “is”, “was”, “will be”
verb assortment and I’m sitting
comfortably at 120-plus words before
I even start.

The key to writing You never

a history essay is fail to Thanks. Who'd we
knowing your amaze me. fight in World War I,
essay history. by the way?

"Fox Trot" copyright © 2000 Bill Amend. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate.
All rights reserved.

Function words are sometimes called closed class words. It is difficult to think of new
conjunctions, prepositions, or pronouns that have recently entered the language. The small set
of personal pronouns such as I, me, mine, he, she, and so on are part of this class.

[…]These two classes of words have different functions in language. Content words
have semantic content (meaning). Function words play a grammatical role; they connect the
content words to the larger grammatical context.
 WHAT IS A WORD? 7

2.4 WORDS AND THEIR GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES

[…] In a dictionary the words of a language are classified by grammatical

category. In this section we will look at grammatical cate gories and how words may
be assigned to particular categories. The reason for examining this property of words
first is that the later section in this chapter, where we look at the internal structure of
words, depends on being able to identify a word's grammatical category.

[…] Before looking at the specific grammatical categories of English lex emes we
need to look in a little more detail at the way they change their form. Look, for
example, at the lexeme TRY. Depending on how it is functioning it can take any of the
following forms: try, tries, tried, trying, as in the following sentences: The horse must try,
The horse tries, The horse tried, The horse is trying. We can call each of these forms a
grammatical word form of the lexeme, since it is the grammar of English which
requires the lexeme TRY to have these different forms in different syntactic contexts.
The grammatical endings which create these different grammatical word forms are
termed inflections. The form of the lexeme to which they are attached is termed the

. The processes whereby words come to have internal structure such as a stem
and inflection are morphological processes, the morphology of words having to do
with their internal structure. Since inflections are associated with both the
morphological structure of words and the syntactic functions of words, the categories
for which words inflect are often called morphosyntactic catego ries. Tense, which
accounts for the past-tense inflection -ed in tri-ed, is an example of a morphosyntactic
category. Properties such as present tense or past tense are therefore morphosyntactic
properties.

The categories which we will look at in this section are four major lexical
categories: nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. We will be looking at the
morphosyntactic categories for which they inflect. At the section‘s conclusion we
will briefly look at prepositions, although these do not have any chara cteristic
grammatical endings.

2.4.1 Nouns

Traditionally, a noun is a naming word; typically the name of a pers on place, or

thing. For example, snake, rat, alligator, Fred, chainsaw, lawnmower are all nouns.
For each of the above words we can find a set of objects to which the word is
normally used to refer (although the name of a particular snake, rat, or alligator may
be Fred or Freda for those with whom the animal is on intimate terms).

Exercise 3
Consider the following nouns. Do they pose any problems for our
definition of a noun?
anger, fame, cyclops, Zeus, Hamlet, Lilliput, furniture

It is impossible to point to an object in the physical world to which these words

refer. Anger is a feeling and fame is an abstract quality; cyclops, and Zeus are both
mythical beings; Hamlet is a fictional character, while Lilliput is a fictitious place.
8 WHAT IS A WORD?

Furniture is not a person or a place or a thing either, or even a set of objects. In fact it
isn't any particular thing but class of things. Unlike alligators, where we can say of a
particular alligator, ‗That's an alligator,‘ we cannot say when pointing to a chair,
'That's a furniture.' So although their meaning may be useful in identifying some
nouns, we must look elsewhere for some supporting facts about nouns if we are to
become more familiar with them and be able to tell whether a particular word is a
noun. To do that we will look at the inflections which nouns characteristically take.

Most nouns inflect for the morphosyntactic category of number and, as such,
have a plural form like -s or -es. For example:
snapper  snappers
bee  bees
rosella  rosellas
box  boxes
Some nouns mark their plural in other ways, for exampl e:

foot  feet
mouse  mice
louse  lice
child  children
ox  oxen

Other nouns never mark their plurals overtly:

sheep  sheep
deer  deer

while some nouns never occur without the plural marker, for example scissors and
trousers. These are facts about the form of nouns. If a word has plural form, then it
belongs to the category noun. (Note that the reverse does not follow: namely, that if a
word has no plural form then it is not a noun.)

Notice that although words like sheep and deer do not take an ending to indicate
that they are plural, they do have a plural form. It happens to be identical to their
singular form. On the basis of this we can see the necessity to make a distinction
between a lexeme and a grammatical word. There are two grammatical words with the
word form sheep. One is the singular form of the lexeme SHEEP and the other the
plural form. So SHEEP is a noun because it has a plural form.

We can also identify nouns by looking at the words that typically appear with
them in a sentence or phrase. Most nouns appear with either a(n) or the, or refer to
things that can be counted, for example:
a wombat the wombat three wombats
a barbecue the barbecue one barbecue

[…]
 WHAT IS A WORD? 9

2.4.2 Adjectives

Traditionally adjectives ascribe a property or quality to an object, for example:

the ripe apple the evil alligator

Adjectives may take two different endings, giving three forms, for example:

big bigger biggest

tall taller tallest

The adjective without the ending is called the standard form and repre sents the
positive degree of comparison. The one with the -er ending is the comparative, and is
used when we compare two objects for the same property. For example:

My dad is taller than your dad.

The -est ending is called the superlative (literally: raised above), and is
superlative used when we are comparing three or more objects for the same prop erty.
For example:

Your dad may be taller than my dad but Raewyn's dad is the tallest.

Not all adjectives take the -er and -est endings; some use more and most. For example:

evil more evil most evil

incredible more incredible most incredible

The morphosyntactic category which has the morphosyntactic prop erties of

comparative and superlative is called comparison. The unmarked form of the adjective
shows the positive morphosyntactic property of this category. In other words,
adjectives which show comparison show it in three forms: the simple positive form,
the comparative form, and the superlative form.

Exercise 4

Consider the following list of adjectives, and divide them into three
groups: those which take the -er and — est endings, those which take
more and most, and those which take neither of the above.

high, wide, dead, red, medical, ugly, narrow, absolute, painful, final

Those adjectives that have comparative and superlative fo rms are called
gradable, while those that do not are called non-gradable. What we mean by gradable
is that there are degrees of the particular property rather than just the presence or
absence of it. A medical bill cannot be more or less medical, at least as far as the
English language is concerned.

As to their function, English adjectives may appear either bef ore a noun or after
a form of the verb to be (am, is, are, was, were, being or been), for example:
10 WHAT IS A WORD?

the ripe apple the apple is ripe

the evil alligator the alligator is evil

Not all adjectives may appear in both of these positions. Some may only appear
before nouns, while others may only appear after a form of the verb to be.

Exercise 5

Consider the following list of adjectives. Which may appear only before a noun,
which may appear only after the verb to be, and which may appear in both
positions?

older, elder, hungry, ill, red, ugly, afraid, utter, incredible, loath.

Exercise 6
Below is a portion of a short story with its adjectives in itali cs. What
would the description be like without the adjectives?

His name described him better than I can. He looked like a great,
stupid, smiling bear. His black matted head bobbed forward and his long
arms hung out as though he should have been on all fours and was
only standing upright as a trick. His legs were short and bowed, ending
in strange, square feet. He was dressed in dark blue denim, but his feet
were bare; they didn't seem to be crippled or deformed in any way, but
they were square, just as wide as they were long.
(John Steinbeck, ‗Johnny Bear‘)

If you remove the adjectives which come after forms of to be, the sentences
become ungrammatical. When you remove all the adjectives which come before
nouns, as well, there is virtually no description left.

2.4.3 Verbs

The grammatical class of verbs may be divided into two groups - lexical verbs
and auxiliary verbs. The class of auxiliaries is quite small, and contains the
following: has, had, have, be, is, are, was, were, do, does, did, can, could, shall, should, will,
would, may, might, and must. […] In this section we will concentrate on the class of
lexical verbs.

Traditionally verbs are defined as denoting actions or states, for example eat,
drink, run, speak, forgive, understand, hate. The first four of these verbs denote actions,
that is, in doing these things we perform some physical action, while the final three
denote states, that is, we can 'do' these things without performing any physical action.

English verb lexemes have more grammatical words associated with them than
either nouns or adjectives. Each verb lexeme has five associated grammatical words.
 WHAT IS A WORD? 11

The changes in form associated with each grammatical word, listed below, are often
brought about by adding an inflection to the verb.

V V-s V-ed V-ing V-en

call calls called calling called

Let us look at the morphosyntactic categories that give rise to these different
grammatical words and word forms. The first category is tense All English verbs can
take tense and there are two tenses: past and present. The present tense form of CALL
is call and the past tense form is called. You may ask what happens to the future in
English. The future is not indicated by a word form but can be indicated by other
means, such as the auxiliary verb will as in will call.

The next inflected form, the one ending in -s, indicates a number of
morphosyntactic categories. It is found only if the verb to which it is attached is in
the present tense, the noun in front of it in a simple two-word sentence must be
singular and can be substituted for by he, she, or it, for example:

he, she, it, the postman, Mary/calls in the morning.

Such nouns are in what is termed the third person: not the speaker, who is the
first person, or the person being addressed, the second person, but the person or
thing spoken about, the third person. So here we have an inflection which indicates
the state of not one morphosyntactic category but three: tense, number and person.

The V-ing and V-en forms are called participles. The V-ing form is the
progressive participle and the V—en form is called the perfect participle. […] The
simple form of verbs without any endings is called the infinitive. It is often
introduced by the word to, for example, to call.

Verbs like call are regular, and regular verbs form the majority of verbs in
English. For regular verbs the past tense form and the perfect participle form are
identical. So how can we tell that these identical forms represent different
grammatical words? In part because they have different functions in phrases and
sentences, but also because, in the case of irregular verbs, the forms are different.
There are about 200 irregular verbs:

V-stem V-s V-ed V-ing V-en

meet meets met meeting Met
put puts put putting Put
write writes wrote writing written
bring brings brought bringing brought
[…]

We can now note that not all changes of word form are by way of in flection,
that is the addition of an ending. Some morphosyntactic categories are realised in
particular lexemes by changes to the stem of the lexeme.
12 WHAT IS A WORD?

2.4.4 Adverbs

The class of adverbs may be divided into two groups: degree, and general
adverbs. Degree adverbs are a small group of words like very, more, and most. They
must always appear with either an adjective or a general adverb, for example:

She runs very quickly. *She runs very.

This sculpture is more beautiful. *This sculpture is more.

General adverbs are a large class, and may appear without a degree adverb. For
example:

She runs quickly.

Traditionally, adverbs tell us how (manner), where (place), or when (time) the action
denoted by a verb occurs. For example:

She runs quickly.  How

The cat sat here.  Where
They left yesterday.  When

Adverbs have no inflected forms, although they do take comparison like adjectives,
but by using the more and most forms, for example more quickly, most quickly.

Many of adverbs end with -ly, for example quickly, quietly, properly, instantly,
seemingly, stupidly.

The sharp-eyed reader will notice that the -ly ending which forms adverbs is
attached to adjectives. It is not an inflection since it does not relate to any
morphosyntactic categories such as tense or number. We shall have more to say about
such word-forming endings in the next section.

2.4.5 Prepositions

The last major syntactic category we will look at in this chapter is preposi tion.
Prepositions are words such as in, out, on, by, which often indicate locations in time or
space, or direction.

While nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs are members of open classes
because the classes they belong to are very large, and while it is possible to add new
items to any one of these open classes, prepositions are members of a c losed class.
Other closed classes of words are conjunctions, for example and, but, because, or,
determiners, for example a, an, the, these, those; and the class of auxiliary verbs we
looked at earlier in this chapter. It is not possible to add new member s to the closed
classes. In fact, there is no record of anyone ever adding a new conjunc tion to the
language. Because the function of these words requires us to look more closely at the
grammar of sentences we will leave discussing them until Part II, whe re we look at
sentence structure.
 MORPHEMES 13

3 MORPHEMES 3

3.1 MORPHEMES: THE SMALLEST UNITS OF MEANING

Morphology is the study of word-structure. The claim that words have structure
might come as a surprise because normally speakers think o f words as indivisible
units of meaning. This is probably due to the fact that many words are
morphologically simple. For example, the, fierce, elephant, eat, boot, at, fee, mosquito,
etc., cannot be segmented (i.e., divided up) into smaller units that are themselves
meaningful. It is impossible to say what the -quito part of mosquito or the -erce part of
fierce means.

But very many English words are morphologically complex. They can be broken
down into smaller units that are meaningful. This is true of words like desk-s and boot-
s, for instance, where desk refers to one piece of furniture and boot refers to one item
of footwear, while in both cases the -s serves the grammatical function of indicating
plurality.

The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible units o f semantic
content or grammatical function from which words are made up. By definition, a
morpheme cannot be decomposed into smaller units which are either meaningful by
themselves or mark a grammatical function like singular or plural number in the
noun. If we divided up the word fee [fi:] (which contains just one morpheme) into, say,
[f] and [i:], it would be impossible to say what each of the sounds [f] and [i:] means
by itself, since sounds in themselves do not have meaning.

How do we know when to recognise a single sound or a group of sounds as

representing a morpheme? Whether a particular sound or string of sounds is to be
regarded as a manifestation of a morpheme depends on the word in which it appears.
So, while un- represents a negative morpheme and has a meaning that can roughly be
glossed as 'not' in words such as un-just and un-tidy, it has no claim to morpheme
status when it occurs in uncle or in under, since in these latter words it does not have
any identifiable grammatical or semantic value, because -cle and -der on their own do
not mean anything. (Morphemes will be separated with a hyphen in the examples.)

Lego provides a useful analogy: morphemes can be compared to pieces of Lego

that can be used again and again as building blocks to form di fferent words.
Recurrent parts of words that have the same meaning are isolated and recognised as
manifestations of the same morpheme. Thus, the negative morpheme un- occurs in an

3
The content of this part is adapted from Aronoff, M., & Fudeman, K. (2011). What is Morphology? (2nd Ed.) Wiley
Blackwell; Fromkin, V. A. (ed.) (2000) Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell; and
Katamba, F., & Stoneham, J. (2006) Modern Linguistics: Morphology. Palgrave
14 MORPHEMES

indefinitely large number of words, besides those listed above. We find it i n unsafe,
unclean, unhappy, unfit, uneven, etc.

However, recurrence in a large number of words is not an essential property of

morphemes. Sometimes a morpheme may be restricted to rela tively few words. This is
true of the morpheme -dom, meaning 'condition, state, dignity', which is found in
words like martyrdom, kingdom, chiefdom, etc. (Glosses, here and elsewhere in the
book, are based on definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary OED.)

It has been argued that, in an extreme case, a morpheme may occur i n a single
word. Lightner (1975) has claimed that the morpheme -ric meaning 'diocese' is only
found in the word bishopric. But this claim is disputed by Bauer (1983) who suggests
instead that perhaps -ric is not a distinct morpheme and that bishopric should be listed
in the dictionary as an unanalysable word. We will leave this controversy at that and
instead see how morphemes are identified in less problematic cases.

Exercise 7

List two other words that contain each morpheme represented below.
a. -er as in play-er, call-er
-ness as in kind-ness, good-ness

b. ex- as in ex-wife, ex-minister

pre- as in pre-war, pre-school
mis- as in mis-kick, mis-judge
(i) Write down the meaning of each morpheme you identify. (If you are in doubt,
consult a good etymological dictionary.)
(ii) What is the syntactic category (noun, adjective, verb, etc.) of the form which
this morpheme attaches to and what is the category of the resulting word?

Your answer should confirm that, in each example in exercise 7, the elements
recognised as belonging to a given morpheme contribute an identifiable meaning to
the word of which they are a part. The form -er is attached to verbs to derive nouns
with the general meaning 'someone who does X' (where X indicates whatever action
the verb involves). When -ness is added to an adjective, it produces a noun meaning
'having the state or condition (e.g., of being kind)'. […]. Finally, the morphemes ex-
and pre- derive nouns from nouns while mis- derives verbs from verbs. We can gloss
the morpheme ex- as 'former', pre- as 'before' and mis- as 'badly'.

So far we have described words with just one or two morphemes. In fact, it is possible to
combine several morphemes together to form more complex words. This can be seen in long
words like unfaithfulness and reincarnation, which contain the morphemes un-faith-ful-ness
and re-in-carn-at-ion respectively. […]
 MORPHEMES 15

3.2 MORPHEMES, MORPHS AND ALLOMORPHS

The morpheme is the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the
smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure.

The analysis of words into morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs. A morph is a
physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a recurrent distinctive sound
(phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes)

Exercise 8
Study the data in the following sentences and identify the morphs.

8a. I parked the car. 8b. We parked the car.

8c. I park the car. 8d. He parks the car.
8e. She parked the car. 8f. She parks the car.
8g. We park the car. 8h. He parked the car.

The answer to exercise 8 is given below

Morph Recurs in
 ‗I‘ 8a and 8c
 ‗she‘ 8e and 8f
 ‗he‘ 8d and 8h
 ‗the‘ in all the examples
 ‗car‘ in all the examples
 ‗park‘ in all the examples, sometimes with an –ed suffix,
sometimes with an –s suffix and sometimes on its own
 ‗-ed‘ suffixed to park in 8a, 8b, 8e, 8h
 ‗-s‘ suffixed to park in 8d, 8f

[..] Each different morph represents a separate morpheme, but this is not
always the case. Sometimes different morphs may represent the same morpheme.
For instance, the past tense of regular verbs in English which is spelled -ed is
realised in speech by //, /d/ or /t/. The phonological properties of the last segment
of the verb to which it is attached determine the choice:

[3.1] It is realised as:

a. /d/ if the verb ends in /d/ or /t/
e.g. 'mend' /mend/ 'mended' //
'paint' /pent/  'painted' /pentd/

b. /d/ after a verb ending in any voiced sound except /d/

e.g. 'clean' /kli:n/  'cleaned' /kli:nd/
'weigh'/we/  'weighed' //
c. /t/ after a verb ending in any voiceless consonant other than /t/
e.g. 'park' /pa:k/  'parked' /pa:kt/
'miss'//  'missed' //
16 MORPHEMES

If different morphs represent the same morpheme, they ar e grouped together and
they are called allomorphs of that morpheme So,/d/, /d/ and /t/- are grouped together
as allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English.

The relationship between morphemes, allomorphs and morphs can be

represented using a diagram in the following way:

e.g.
Morpheme
―past tense”

Allomorph Allomorph Allomorph

morph morph morph

/d/ /d/ /t/

We can say that: (1) /d/, /d/ and /t/ are English morphs; and (2) we can group
all these three morphs together as allomorphs of the past tense morpheme.

The central technique used in the identification of morphemes is based on the

notion of distribution, that is, the total set of contexts in which a particular linguistic
form occurs. We classify a set of morphs as allomorphs of the same morpheme if they
are in complementary distribution. Morphs are said to be in complementary
distribution if: (1) they represent the same meaning or serve the same grammatical
function; and (2) they are never found in identical contexts. So, the three morphs /-d/,
/-d/ and /-t/ which represent the English regular past tense morpheme are in
complementary distribution. Each morph is restricted to the contexts specified in
[3.1]. Hence, they are allomorphs of the same morpheme.

3.3 TYPES OF MORPHEMES

3.3.1 Roots and Stems

Morphologically complex words consist of a root and one or more affixes. A root is a lexical
content morpheme that cannot be analyzed into smaller parts. Some examples of English roots
are paint in painter, read in reread, and ceive in conceive. A root may or may not stand alone
as a word (paint does; ceive doesn't).

A stem is a base unit to which another morphological piece is attached. The stem can be
simple, made up of only one part, or complex, itself made up of more than one piece.

Now consider the word reconsideration. We can break it into three morphemes: re-, consider,
and -ation. Consider is called the stem. Here it is best to consider consider a simple stem.
Although it consists historically of more than one part, most present-day speakers would treat
it as an unanalyzable form. We could also call consider the root. A root is like a stem in
 MORPHEMES 17

constituting the core of the word to which other pieces attach, but the term refers only to
morphologically simple units. For example, disagree is the stem of disagreement, because it
is the base to which -ment attaches, but agree is the root. Taking disagree now, agree is both the
stem to which dis- attaches and the root of the entire word.

3.3.2 Free and Bound Morphemes

Our morphological knowledge has two components: knowledge of the individual

morphemes and knowledge of the rules that combine them. One of the things we
know about particular morphemes is whether they can stand alone or whether they
must be attached to a host morpheme.

“L O O KS L IK E WE S P E ND M OS T O F O UR TIM E
INGING. YOU KNOW, LIKE SLEEPING, EATING,
RUNNING, CLIMBING”

"Dennis the Menace" ® copyright © 1987 by North America Syndicate. Used

by permission of Hank Ketchum.

Some morphemes like boy, desire, gentle, and man may constitute words by them-
selves. These are free morphemes. Other morphemes like -ish, -ness, -ly, dis-, trans-,and
un- are never words by themselves but are always parts of words. These affixes are
bound morphemes. We know whether each affix precedes or follows other mor-
phemes. Thus, un-, pre- (premeditate, prejudge), and bi- (bipolar, bisexual) are prefixes.
They occur before ether morphemes. Some morphemes occur only as suffixes,
following other morphemes. English examples of suffix morphemes are -ing (e.g.,
sleeping, eating, running, climbing), -er (e.g., singer, performer, reader, and beautifier), -ist
(e.g., typist, copyist, pianist, novelist, collaborationist, and linguist), and -ly (e.g., manly,
sickly, spectacularly, and friendly), to mention only a few.
18 MORPHEMES

3.3.3 Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes

[…] Morphemes can be divided into two major functional categories, namely
derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes. This reflects a recognition of
two principal word-building processes: inflection and derivation. While all
morphologists accept this distinction in some form, it is nevertheless one of the most
contentious issues in morphological theory. We will briefly introduce you here to the
essentials of this distinction.[…]

3.3.3.1 Derivational Morphemes

Inflectional and derivational morphemes form words in different ways.

Derivational morphemes form new words either:
(i) by changing the meaning of the base (or stem) to which they are attached, for
example, kind vs un-kind (both are adjectives but with opposite meanings); obey vs
dis-obey (both are verbs but with opposite meanings).
Or:

(ii) by changing the word-class that a base (or stem) belongs to, for example, the
addition of -ly to the adjectives kind and simple produces the adverbs kind-ly and
simp-ly. As a rule, it is possible to derive an adverb by adding the suffix -ly to an
adjectival base (or stem).

[…] Sometimes the presence of a derivational affix causes a major grammatical

change, involving moving the stem from one word-class into another, as in the case
of -less which turns a noun into an adjective. In other cases, the change caused by a
derivational suffix may be minor. It may merely shift a stem to a different subclass
within the same broader word-class. That is what happens when the suffix -ling is
attached to duck above.

Further examples are given below. In [3.2a], the diminutive suffix -let is attached
to nouns to form diminutive nouns (meaning a 'small something'). In [3.2b], the
derivational suffix -ship is used to change a concrete noun stem into an abstract noun
(meaning 'state, condition'):

[3.2] a. pig ~ pig-let b. friend ~ friend-ship

book ~ book-let leader ~ leader-ship

The tables in [3.3] and [3.4] list some common derivational prefixes and
suffixes, the classes of the stems to which they can be attached and the words that are
thereby formed. It will be obvious that in order to determine which morpheme a
particular affix morph belongs to, it is often essential to know the s tem to which it
attaches because the same phonological form may repre sent different morphemes
depending on the stem with which it co-occurs.

Note: These abbreviations are used in the tables below: N for noun, N (abs) for
abstract noun, N (conc) for concrete noun, V for verb, Adj for adjective, and Adv for
adverb.
 MORPHEMES 19

[3.3]

Prefix Word-class of Meaning Word-class of Example

input stem output word
in- Adj ―not‖ Adj in-accurate
un- Adj ―not‖ Adj un-kind
un- V ―reversive‖ V un-tie
dis- V ―reversive‖ V dis-continue
dis- N(abs) ―not‖ N (abs) dis-order
dis- Adj ―not‖ Adj dis-honest
dis- V ―not‖ V dis-approve
re- V ―again‖ V re-write
ex- N ―former‖ N ex-mayor
en- N ―put in‖ V en-cage

[3.4]

Suffix Word-class Meaning Word-class of Example

of input stem output word
-hood N ―status‖ N (abs) child-hood
-ship N ―state or condition‖ N (abs) king-ship
-ness Adj ―quality, state or condition‖ N (abs) kind-ness
-ity Adj ―state or condition‖ N (abs) sincer-ity
-ment V Result or product of doing the N govern-ment
action indicated by the verb‖
-less N ―without‖ Adj power-less
-ful N ―having‖ Adj power-ful
-ic N ―pertaining to‖ Adj democrat-ic
-al N ―pertaining to, of the kind‖ Adj medicin-al
-al V ―pertaining to or act of‖ N (abs) refus-al
-er V ―agent who does whatever N read-er
the verb indicate‖
-ly Adj ―manner‖ Adv kind-ly
20 MORPHEMES

To sum up the discussion so far, we have observed that derivational affixes are
used to create new lexemes by either: (i) modifying significantly the meaning of the
stem to which they are attached, without necessarily changing its grammatical
category (see kind and unkind above); or (ii) they bring about a shift in the grammatical
class of a stem as well as a possible change in meaning (as in the case of hard (Adj)
and hardship (N (abs)); or (iii) they may cause a shift in the grammatical subclass of a
word without moving it into a new word-class (as in the case of friend (N (conc)) and
friend-ship (N (abs)).

Exercise 9
Study the data below that contain the derivational prefix en-
a. Stem New word b. Stem New word
cage en-cage noble en-noble
large en-large rich en-rich
robe en-robe rage en-rage
danger en-danger able en-able
(i) State the word-classes (e.g., noun, adjective, verb, etc.) of the stem to
which en- is prefixed.
(ii) What is the word-class of the new word resulting from the prefixation of
en- in each case?
(iii)What is the meaning (or meanings) of en- in these words?
Consult a good dictionary, if you are not sure.

You will have established that the new word resulting from the prefixation of en-
in exercise 9 is a verb. But there is a difference in the input stem. Sometimes en- is
attached to adjectives as seen in [3.5a], and sometimes to nouns, as in [3.5b]:

[3.5] a. Adj stem New Verb b. Noun stem New Verb

able en-able robe en-robe

large en-large danger en-danger

noble en-noble rage en-rage

rich en-rich cage en-cage

Interestingly, this formal difference correlates with a semantic distinction. So,

we conclude that there are two different prefixes here which happen to be
homophonous. The en- in [3.5a] has a causative meaning (similar to make'). To enable
is to 'make able', to enlarge is to 'make large', etc., while in [3.5b] en- can be
paraphrased as 'put in or into'. To -encage is to 'put in a cage' and to endanger is to 'put
in danger' etc. (Notice the very special nature of en- in these cases - unlike most
prefixes in English, which never affect the class of the form to which they attach, en-
may change the class from adjective (e.g., large) or noun (e.g., cage) to verb.)
 MORPHEMES 21

3.3.3.2 Inflectional morphemes

Let us now turn to inflectional morphemes. Unlike derivational morphemes,

inflectional morphemes do not change referential or cognitive leaning. We have
already seen that a derivational affix like un- can change kind into un-kind. In this
case, the derived word has a meaning which is opposite to that of the input. The
addition of an inflectional affix will not do such a thing. Furthermore, while a
derivational affix may move a stem into a new word-class (e.g., kind (adjective) but
kind-ly (adverb)), an inflectional morpheme does not alter the word -class of the stem
to which it is attached. Inflectional morphemes are only able to modify the form of a
word so that it can fit into a particular syntactic slot. Thus, book and books are both
nouns referring to the same kind of entity. The -s ending merely carries information
about the number of those entities. The grammar dictates that a form marked as plural
(normally by suffixing -s) must be used when more than one entity is referred to. We
must say ten books; *ten book is ruled out, although the numeral ten makes it clear that
more than one item is being referred to. […]

See the table in [3.6] for a sample of frequently used inflectional suffixes.

[3.6]
Suffix Stem Function Example
-s N plural book-s
-s V 3rd person, singular, present tense sleep-s
-ed V past tense walk-ed
-ing V progressive (incomplete action) walk-ing
-er Adj comparative degree lall-er
-est Adj superlative degree tall-est

Exercise 10
Below, an additional inflectional suffix is presented. What is this suffix called and what is
its function in each example?
a. Janet's book
b. The Winter's Tale
c. in two days' time

Exercise 11

Study the following data and answer the questions below.

I ducked He was sheepish
two ducks three ducklings
He is humourless You are ducking the issue
He ducks

(i) Identify the suffixes in the underlined words. To what word-class do the
words to which the suffixes are added belong, and what word -class results?
(ii) For each suffix determine whether it is inflectional or derivational. Briefly
justify your decision.
22 MORPHEMES

3.3.3.3 Differences between inflection and derivation

Within a lexeme-based theory of morphology, the difference between derivation and

inflection boils down to this: derivation gives you new lexemes, and inflection gives you the
forms of a lexeme that are determined by syntactic environment. But what exactly does this
mean, and is there really a need for such a distinction? This section explores the answers to
these questions.
[…]
One generalization is that inflectional morphology does not change the core lexical
meaning or the lexical category of the word to which it applies. A noun with a plural suffix
attached to it is still a noun; slurp means ‗eat or drink noisily‘ whether it is past or present; and
so on. Derivational morphology may or may not affect the lexical category of a word it applies
to, and it typically changes its meaning. Glory is a noun, and glorious is an adjective. While their
meanings are related, they cannot be said to mean the same thing in the way that slurp and slurps
do.
A second generalization is that inflection, but not derivation, is determined by syntax. We
discussed this at section 2.4. Which form of a lexeme surfaces in a given position depends on
its relationship with the words around it. Perhaps when you were younger, you tried mad libs
like the following:
Four score and seven (Noun) ago our (Noun) brought forth, upon this (Noun)
, a new nation, conceived in (noun) …
The person eliciting the words for the blanks in the Gettysburg address above
automatically knows to put the first noun provided by his or her partner in the plural
because ―four score and seven‖ implies more than one (a score is a group of twenty, so ―four
score and seven‖ is eighty-seven). There is no need for the mad lib instructions to specify
―plural noun.‖ Similarly, if a person eliciting words for a mad lib says, ―Verb,‖ the reply will
probably come in the citation form of the lexeme: read, slurp, love, or kiss. But he or she will
know whether it is necessary to add an -s, -ed, or -ing when inserting it into the blank, because
it will be determined by context. The instructions do not need to specify ―third person singular‖
or ―present participle.‖
A third generalization we can make is that inflectional morphology tends to be more
productive than derivational morphology. Inflectional morphology can apply to words of a
given category with relative freedom. Virtually any noun in English can be made plural with
the addition of [z] or one of its two phonologically conditioned allomorphs. The only exceptions
are nouns with irregular plurals, such as children or phenomena, and those that logically do not
allow a plural form: mass nouns like rice and abstract nouns like intelligence generally fall into
this category. On the other hand, not every adjective can take the derivational affix -ly that
forms adverbs. We can say quickly, but not ?friendlily.
Another generalization that has been made is that derivational affixes tend to occur closer
to the root or stem than inflectional affixes. For example, [3.7] shows that the English third
person singular present inflectional suffix -s occurs outside of derivational suffixes like the
deadjectival -ize, and the plural ending -s follows derivational affixes, including the deverbal -
al:
[3.7] a. popular-ize-s b. upheav-al-s
commercial-ize-s arriv-al-s
 MORPHEMES 23

This generalization is largely true, but there are many exceptions in the world‘s languages,
so it is not a reliable diagnostic for distinguishing between inflection and derivation.

Exercise 12
Should the relationship between the words in the left and right columns each
example be characterized as inflection or derivation?

c. scribe scribes
yt
e
e. jostle jostling
f.
logic logical
shake
i. ice
. j. child children

Finally, note that some linguists consider derived lexemes, but not inflected forms, to be
present in the lexicon. This generalization is not absolute, since psycholinguistic studies have
shown that speakers store at least some inflected words in their lexicons. Likewise, many
derived forms are created on the fly, without ever being recorded in the lexicon.
24 WORD FORMATION

4 WORD FORMATION 4

In this section we will look at complex lexemes which have other lexemes as component
parts. There are two main ways in which English lexemes may have other lexemes as
constituents. Two lexemes may be put together to make a compound lexeme. For example the
lexeme BOKKSHELF consists, very obvious, of the lexeme BOOK followed by the lexeme
SHELF. A lexeme can also have as constituents a single lexeme plus an ending. The
grammatical endings we looked at in the previous section are inflectional affixes. The ones
which are constituents of complex lexemes are derivational affixes since they derive one
lexeme from another. Look, for instance, at the word GENTLENESS. This lexeme, again
obviously, consists of the lexeme GENTLE followed by the afiix –ness. In the following two
sections we will look first at compounding and then at derivation

4.1 COMPOUNDS

Two or more words may be joined to form new, compound words. The kinds of
combinations that occur in English are nearly limitless, as the following table of
compounds shows. Each entry in the table represents dozens of similar combinations.

Adjective Noun Verb

Adjective bittersweet poorhouse whitewash
Noun headstrong Homework spoonfeed
Verb - Pickpocket sleepwalk

Frigidaire is a compound formed by combining the adjective frigid with the noun air.
Some compounds that have been introduced very recently into English are carjack, mall rat,
road rage, palm pilot, and slow-speed chase. (Compounds are variously spelled with dashes,
spaces, or nothing between the individual words.)
When the two words are in the same grammatical category, the compound will
be in this category: noun + noun—girlfriend, fighter-bomber, paper clip, elevator-
operator, landlord, mailman; adjective + adjective—icy-cold, red-hot, and worldly-wise. In
English, the rightmost word in a compound is the head of the compound. The head is
the part of a word or phrase that determines its broad meaning and grammatical
category. Thus, when the two words fall into different categories, the class of the
second or final word will be the grammatical category of the compound: noun +
adjective = adjective — headstrong, watertight, lifelong; verb + noun = noun—
pickpocket, pinchpenny, daredevil, sawbones. On the other hand, compounds formed with
a preposition are in the category of the nonprepositional part of the compound;
overtake, hanger-on, undertake, sundown, afterbirth, and downfall, uplift.

4The content of this part is adapted from Fromkin, V. A. (ed.) (2000) Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory.
Oxford: Blackwell and Katamba, F., & Stoneham, J. (2006) Modern Linguistics: Morphology. Palgrave.
 WORD FORMATION 25

Though two-word compounds are the most common in English, it would be

difficult to state an upper limit: Consider three-time loser, four-dimensional space-time,
sergeant- at-arms, mother-of-pearl, man about town, master of ceremonies, and daughter-in-
law. Dr. Seuss uses the rules of compounding when he explains "when tweetle beetles
battle with paddles in a puddle, they call it a tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle."*

Spelling does not tell us what sequence of words constitutes a compound;

whether a compound is spelled with a space between the two words, with a hyphen, or
with no separation at all depends on the idiosyncrasies of the particular compound, as
shown, for example, in blackbird, gold-tail, and smoke screen.

Like derived words, compounds have internal structure. This is clear from th e
ambiguity of a compound like top + hat + rack, which can mean "a rack for top hats"
corresponding to the structure in tree diagram (1), or "the highest hat rack,"
corresponding to the structure in (2).

[…]

4.2 DERIVATIONAL AFFIXATION

What we are now going to explore are some of the ways in which complex words
are formed by creating stems that contain several derivational morphemes. Let us take
the root -diet- meaning 'speak, say' which is found in diction, dictate, dictatorial,
contradict, benediction, etc. Starting with -diet-, we can form complex words such as
contradictory and contradictoriness by attaching several affixes to the root, that is, we
can have multiple affixation. This process can take place in a number of rounds, with
the output created by one round of affixation serving as the input to a later round:

[4.1]
Root -dict V Output
stem: -dict V (round one: prefixation: contradict V
add contra- preposition )
stem: contradict V (round two: first contradict-oryAdj
suffixation: add -ory Adj
stem: contradictory (round three: second contradictoriness N
suffixation: add -ness N
26 WORD FORMATION

Words may have multiple affixes either with different suffixes appearing in a
sequence as in [4.1] or with the same prefix recurring as below in [4.2]:
[4.2]
a. the latest re-re-re-make of Beau Geste.
b. the great-great-great-great grandson of the last Tsar of Russia.
What [4.2] shows is that, with a limited number of morphemes, morphological
prefixation rules can apply recursively in English. However, performance difficulties
in working out what exactly great- great-great-great grandson or re-re-re-make means do
severely restrict the chances of such words being used. But the point is that the
grammar cannot exclude them as ill-formed. Recursive rules are one of the devices
that make morphology open-ended. They make possible the creation of new words
with the same morphemes being used over and over.
Re-attaching the same morpheme again and again is permitted, but unusual.
What is common is multiple affixation of different affixes. It is such affixation that
we will concentrate on. We have already seen an example of it in contra-dict-ori-ness in
[4.1].

Exercise 13
Take the free base nation and add to it as many prefixes and suffixes as you can. Attempt
to go through at least four rounds of affixation.

[…]

4.3 CONVERSION
We have seen that complex words may be formed either by compounding or by
affixation, or by a combination of the two. We are going to see now that there is an
alternative word-formation strategy which is commonly used in English. Words may
be formed without modifying the form of the input word that serves as the stem.
Thus, head can be a noun or verb. This is called conversion.

Exercise 14

How do you know whether head is a noun or verb in the following?

a. The head of the village school has arrived.

The heads of the village schools have arrived.

b. She will head the village school. She headed that school.

It is partly the morphological structure, and partly the syntactic position that the
word occupies that tells you whether it is a noun or a verb. From a syntactic point of
view, we know that in exercise 13a the head is a noun phrase. The key word in a noun
phrase must be a noun. As head occurs following the and is the key word in this
construction, head, must be a noun. But from a morphological point of view, we
cannot tell whether head is a noun or verb when it occurs with no affixes. However,
in the case of heads, the presence of the -s morph that here realises the plural in nouns
gives us a useful clue.
 WORD FORMATION 27

By contrast, in exercise 13b head must be a verb. It comes after the auxiliary
verb will in a slot that is typically filled by verbs. In the second example, head has
attached to it the -ed morph representing the past tense morpheme that is only found
in verbs. Furthermore, from a syntactic point of view, we know that she is the subject
and that school is the object. The sentence must also have a verb. The verb occurs
between the subject and the object. (The order of sentence constituents in English is
Subject Verb Object.) So, headed must be the verb, since it occurs between the
subject and the object

4.4 BACK-FORMATIONS

Ignorance sometimes can be creative. A new word may enter the language
because of an incorrect morphological analysis. For example, peddle was derived from
peddler on the mistaken assumption that the er was the agentive suffix. Such words are
called back-formations. The verbs hawk, stoke, swindle, and edit all came into the
language as back-formations — of hawker, stoker, swindler, and editor. Pea was derived
from a singular word, pease, by speakers who thought pease was a plural. Language
purists sometimes rail against' back-formations and cite enthuse and liaise (from
enthusiasm and liaison) as examples of language corruption. However, language is not
corrupt (although the speakers who use it may be), and many words have entered the
language this way.

Francis, you are uncouth. You First of all, Momma, I’m totally
always seem nonplussed and you are couth, very plussed and ept at
inept at everything. Beside your everything. About my English…
English is terrible.

“Momma” by permission of Mell Lazaus and Creator Syndicate

Some word coinage, similar to the kind of wrong morphemic analysis that
produces back-formations, is deliberate. The word bikini is from the Bikini atoll of the
Marshall Islands. Because the first syllable bi- in other words, like bipolar, means
"two," some clever person called a topless bathing suit a monokini. Historically, a
number of new words have entered the English lexicon in this way. Based on analogy
with such pairs as act/action, exempt/exemption, revise/revision, new words resurrect,
preempt, and televise were formed from the existing words resurrection, preemption, and
television.
28 WORD FORMATION

4.5 ABBREVIATIONS

Abbreviations of longer words or phrases also may become lexicalized, that is,
words in their own right. Fax for facsimile, telly, the British word for television, prof for
professor, piano for pianoforte, and gym for gymnasium are only a few examples of such
"clipped" forms that are now used as whole words. Other examples are ad, bike, math,
gas, phone, bus, and van (from advertisement, bicycle, mathematics, gasoline, telephone,
omnibus, and caravan). More recently, dis and rad (from disrespect and radical) have
entered the language, and dis has come to be used as a verb meaning "to show disre-
spect." This process is sometimes called clipping.

4.6 ACRONYMS

Acronyms are words derived from the initials of several words. Such words are
pronounced as the spelling indicates: NASA from National Aeronautics and Space
Agency, UNESCO from United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization, and UNICEF from United Nations Intemational Children's Emergency
Fund. Radar from "radio detecting and ranging," laser from "light amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation," scuba from "self-contained underwater breathing
apparatus," and RAM from "random access memory," show the creative efforts of
word coiners, as does snafu, which was coined by soldiers in World War II and is
rendered in polite circles as "situation normal, all fouled up." Recently (1980s) coined
additions are AIDS, from the initials of acquired immune deficiency syndrome and its
partner HIV from human immunodeficiency virus. Acronyms may be built on
acronyms. ROM is a computer acronym for "read-only memory"; PROM is
"programmable read-only memory"; and EPROM "erasable programmable read-only
memory." * When the string of letters is not easily pronounced as a word, the
acronym is produced by sounding out each letter, as in NFL for National Football
League and UCLA for University of California, Los Angeles.

Drawing by D. Fradon. Copyright © 1974 The New Yorker Collection. All rights reserved.
 WORD FORMATION 29

Acronyms are being added to the vocabulary daily with the proliferation of com-
puters and widespread use of the Internet, including MORF (male or female?), FAQ
(frequently asked questions), WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and POP (post
office protocol), among many more. Other common acronyms are FYI (for your infor-
mation), BTW (by the way), and TGIF (thank God it's Friday).

4.7 BLENDS

Two words may be combined to produce blends. Blends are similar to compounds
but parts of the words that are combined are deleted, so they are "less than"
compounds. Smog, from smoke + fog; motel, from motor + hotel; infomercial from info +
commercial; and urinalysis, from urine + analysis are examples of blends that have
attained full lexical status in English. The word cranapple may be a blend of cranberry
+ apple. […]

4.8 WORD COINAGE

We have seen that new words may be added to the vocabulary of a language by deriva-
tional processes. New words also enter a language in a variety of other ways. Some are created
outright to fit some purpose. The advertising industry has added many words to English, such
as Kodak, nylon, Orion, and Dacron. Specific brand names such as Xerox, Kleenex, Jell-O,
Frigidaire, Brillo, and Vaseline are now sometimes used as the generic name for different
brands of these types of products. Notice that some of these words were created from existing
words: Kleenex from the word clean and Jell-0 from gel, for example.
30 DERIVATION AND STRUCTURE

5 DERIVATION AND STRUCTURE 5

We can schematize derivation as follows:

[5.1] Input → Output
Lexeme X Lexeme Y
If we can have lexeme X as an input and lexeme Y as an output, then it should also be
possible to take lexeme Y as an input to a second function:
[5.2] Input → Output
Lexeme Y Lexeme Z
This is precisely what we do when we form words like unfriendly:
[5.3] Function 1: add -ly friend → friendly
Function 2: add un- friendly → unfriendly
We can even go on to form unfriendliness from unfriendly via a function that adds -ness.
In each case, the output of one derivation serves as the input to the next.
To determine the order of functions leading to a form, it helps to consider other words that
contain the same parts. Consider the example of unfriendly. Un- attaches to nouns only in
exceptional cases (for example, uncola, a word once used in an ad campaign for a particular
soda). However, it regularly attaches to adjectives. We use this fact in determining that the
function ‗Add -ly‘, which forms adjectives, must come before the function ‗Add un-‘.
Let‘s go back to the compound we came across earlier: high voltage electricity grid
systems supervisor. This compound clearly has an internal structure. [High voltage] is a
compound, as are [electricity grid] and [systems supervisor].[[High voltage] [electricity grid]]
is also a com- pound, and in turn, [[[high voltage] [electricity grid]] [systems super- visor]].
We have taken English words, made compounds of them, and then used those compound
words to yield further compound words. The output of the first compounding function serves
as the input to the second and third compounding functions.
The same occurs with any kind of affix, and this gives derivational morphology a great
deal of power. We can think of derivation as always being binary in a sense. We take a form
and apply a function to it. We then take the output of that function and perform another
function on it. We can keep on going, getting bigger and bigger things, simply by adding one
thing at a time.

5
The content of this part is adapted from Aronoff, M., & Fudeman, K. (2011). What is Morphology? (2nd Ed.) Wiley
Blackwell.
 DERIVATION AND STRUCTURE 31

The fact that speakers of many languages can add phonological material to either end of a
word sometimes leads to complex structures. Take the two English words in [5.4]:
[5.4] a. reinterpretation b. poststructuralist
These words have the following structures:
[5.5] a. [ [re- [interpret]V]V -ation]N

b. [post- [ [ [structur]N -al]A -ist]A]A

[5.5a] tells us that reinterpretation is the act of reinterpreting, from reinterpret, not re- the
act of interpreting. We start out with a verb, interpret, form a new verb via the prefix re-, and
finally form a noun by adding the suffix -ation. In the case of poststructuralist, we start out
with the noun structure, make an adjective via the adjectival suffix -al, create a new adjective
by adding the suffix -ist, and a further one by adding the prefix post-. Poststructuralist
(structuralist, too) can in turn be made into a noun by zero-derivation.
The bracketing structures in [5.5] are convenient, in part because they are so compact. But
the structure of morphologically complex words is made most clear when we use tree
diagrams, like the following:
[5.6]

This diagram clearly shows that re- and the verb interpret form a unit, a verb, which
attaches to the noun-forming suffix -ation. In order to draw a tree diagram, it is first necessary
to break a word down into its components and to fully understand how they fit together.

Exercise 15

tree of the following words.

a. lawnmower b. biodefenses c. in

The following argument demonstrates that even identical strings may have distinct
structures. Consider the structure of the two words pseudonaturalistic and supernaturalistic:
32 DERIVATION AND STRUCTURE

[5.7]

In both cases we start out with the adjective natural, which we purposely have not
broken down into nature and -al, although we could have. In [5.7a] we first make a new
adjective, naturalistic, which we then modify with the prefix pseudo-, yielding a word with
the meaning ‗falsely naturalistic‘. In [5.7b], however, we take the adjective natural and add
the prefix super- to it, giving supernatural ‗pertaining to an existence outside the natural
world‘. It is to this form that we add the suffix -istic. English morphology is such that we
could form a different supernaturalistic, this time with the same structure as
pseudonaturalistic in [5.7a]. This supernaturalistic would mean ‗really naturalistic‘.
Combining prefixation and suffixation leads to other potentially ambiguous forms in
English. Three famous examples are given in [5.8]:
[5.8] a. undressed b. unpacked c. unzipped

The ambiguity of the forms in [5.8] is due to the fact that the prefix un- has at least two
distinct roles in English, depending on what it attaches to. When prefixed to a verb, un- is a so-
called reversative with the basic meaning ‗undo the action of the verb‘. If you unpack a suitcase,
you return the suitcase to the state it was in before the packing action took place. If you untie a
package, you return it to the state it was in prior to being tied. When attached to adjectives,
including participial adjectives like wounded or stressed, un- means ‗not‘. If a soldier leaves the
battlefield unwounded, it is not the case that he was first wounded and then unwounded, because it
is impossible to unwound a person (we say instead that we cure them). The soldier in question is
‗not wounded‘. This second un- is the one we see in forms like unafraid, uncertain, and un-
American.
Our analysis of an example like unzipped [5.8c] depends on our interpretation of its
prefix un-. One possibility is that its structure is as follows:
[5.9] [ [un-zip(p)] ed]
Here the prefixation of the reversative un- yields the meaning ‗cause to be zipped no
longer ‘. The suffix -ed is then added to create the past tense or the past participle. The
second possibility is that unzipped has the structure in (30):
[5.10] [un- [zipped] ]
This form has the meaning ‗not zipped‘, or, in the case of a computer file, ‗having
never been stored on a zip disk‘. The crucial semantic distinction between [5.9] and [5.10]
is that only [5.9] requires that a zipping action have taken place at some past point.
 DERIVATION AND STRUCTURE 33

Structurally, [5.9] and [5.10] differ in the ordering of the affixation processes. Morphological
structure depends not only on the elements you use, but on the order in which the elements
have been applied.

Let‘s look at some other words. Is unwashed ambiguous? It is not; we cannot unwash
something. Unwashed can only mean ‗not washed‘. Similarly, undisturbed can only mean ‗not
disturbed‘. The only word we know of that works the other way is unraveled. Although English
speak- ers do not use it very often, there is a verb ravel. But it means the same thing as
unravel: ‗separate or undo the threads or fibers of something‘. As a result, if something is
unraveled, it cannot mean ‗not raveled‘. It can only mean that it has come undone.
34 FURTHER EXERCISES

6 FURTHER EXERCISES 6

Exercise 1

What is the grammatical category of the italicised words?

Two old Daimlers were parked in a line by the traffic lights.

One of them seemed to have lost its headlights.

Exercise 2

In each of the following words, separate the affixes from their respective stems. For
each, decide whether it is a stem or an affix, bound or free, and if it is an affix,
whether it is derivational or inflectional:

derivational, headstrong, unlikely, locater beacons.

Then draw tree diagrams of the structure of each word.

Exercise 3

Study the following passage and then answer the questions given below. Take your
examples from the passage.

The crowd, in general more pleased with the bull even than with the peanut
vendor, started to cheer. Newcomers gracefully jumped up on to fences, to appear
standing there, marvellously balanced, on the top railings. Muscu lar hawkers lifted
aloft, in one sinewy stretch of the forearm, heavy trays brimmed with multi -
coloured fruits.

(Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano)

(a) Identify two compound words; name the grammatical category of the
compound, and the grammatical categories of the elements that compose it.
(Example: blackbird is a noun, made up of adjective + noun.)

(b) Identify the class-changing derivational suffixes, name the gram matical
category of the stem to which the suffix is attached and the grammatical
category of the derived word.

(c) Divide the following words into their component morphemes:

newcomers, marvellously

(d) What kind of word-formation process links the noun hawker and the verb hawk.

6
Extracted from Kuiper, K., & W. S. Allan (1996) An Introduction to English Language: Sound, Word and Sentence.
London: MacMillan.
 FURTHER EXERCISES 35

(e) Account for the pronunciation of the plural suffix in the words railings, fruits,
fences, and trays.
(f) Identify another inflectional suffix (i.e. not the plural suffix) and explain its
function or functions.

Exercise 4

Study the following passage and then answer the questions given below. Take your
examples from the passage.

The dog swam ahead, fatuously important; the foals, nodding solemnly, swayed
along behind up to their necks: sunlight sparkled on the calm water, which further
downstream where the river narrowed broke into furious little waves, swirling and
eddying close inshore against black rocks, giving an effect of wildness, almost of
rapids; low over their heads an ecstatic lightning of strange birds manoeuvred,
looping-the-loop and immelmanning at unbelievable speed, aerobatic as new -born
dragon flies. The opposite shore was thickly wooded.
(Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano)
(a) Identify three compound words. For each one, name the gram matical category
of the compound, and the grammatical category of the elements that compose
it. (Example: watertight is an adjective, made up of noun + adjective.)

(b) Divide the following words into their component mor phemes, labelling each
morpheme F (free), I (inflectional), or D (derivational):
unbelievable dragonflies

(c) What is the function of the suffix -ly in the words fatuously, solemnly, and
thickly?

(d) Identify two other words containing (different) derivational suf fixes, name the
grammatical category of the stem to which the suffix is attached, and the
grammatical category of the derived word.

(e) Describe the function of the suffix -s in foals and waves, and that of the suffix -
ed in swayed and sparkled.

(f) Comment on the past tense forms swam and broke.

Exercise 5

Look carefully at the choice of vocabulary. What differences in the styles of the two
following passages can you discern and what do these differ ences suggest about the
different narrators of the two stories?

Mrs Clegg was quite a decent sort, but she had a glass eye that was cracked right
down the middle, and it was funny the way she sort of looked out at you through
the crack. Her old man was out of a job and that was why she was running the
joint, though seeing she only had three rooms to let she said she wasn't making a
fortune.
36 FURTHER EXERCISES

When she'd fixed my bed up she took me down to the kitchen to give me the
teapot, and her old man was reading the paper, and their little girl was saying
pretty boy to a budgie that was answering her back. Though sometimes it would
ring a little bell instead. Mr Clegg told me he'd been a cook on a boat but now he
couldn't get a keel. It was hard, he said, because he liked being at sea, though I
thought by the look of him it must have been only a coastal or even a scow he'd
worked on. He was pretty red too, though he said he hadn't been until he'd had
experience of being on relief.

(Frank Sargeson, 'That Summer')

It is perhaps an indication of the unusual features of my nature that lor some days
following the party, far from finding myself melted into a state of rapturous
languor, I should find instead my mental capacities taxed by harder thinking than I
had experienced during all that year. If I continued my association with Betty and
the Gower-Johnsons, I foresaw that it would be elaborated to such a degree that
my entire future might well be involved; and apart from minor advantages, such as
benefiting from Betty's financial generosity, I saw my problem, if it was reduced
to its bare, ineluctable elements, was nothing more or less than the same old
problem which had first presented itself to me when I had finished with being a
primary school boy: that is to say, the day-to-day activities of the environment I
inhabited appeared not to be connected with what 1 conceived to be my major
interests.
(Frank Sargeson, Memoirs of a Peon)