English Morphology

The controversy: Instructor:

Inflectional or Derivational Morpheme Prof. Dr. Siusana Kweldju

Unlike the inflectional affixes, which number only eight in English, the set of
derivational affixes is open-ended. A derivational morpheme is an affix that is
added to a word to create a new word or a new form of a word. Compare with
inflectional morpheme. Derivational morphemes can change the grammatical
category or part of speech of a word. For example, adding -ful to beauty
changes the word from a noun to an adjective, i.e. beautiful, while adding -er to
view changes the word from a verb to a noun, i.e. viewer. The form that results
from the addition of a derivational morpheme is called a derived word or a
derivative.

Some inflectional endings, like -ed, -en, -er, -ing and -ly acquire characteristics
of derivational morphemes. For example, the morpheme -er can function both
as an inflectional morpheme and as a derivational morpheme. As an inflectional
morpheme, -er is attached to adjectives to show the comparative as in hotter,
describing something as having a higher temperature. As a derivational
morpheme, -er is highly productive in forming new nouns. In this use, the
morpheme expresses mainly agenthood. It is attached to verbal roots to form
nouns as in designer, driver, carrier describing someone or something that
performs the action indicated by the verb. It is attached to adjectival roots
teenage to form nouns as in teenager, describing someone as having the quality
denoted by the adjective. It is also attached to nominal roots to form nouns as in
freighter, describing a large ship or aircraft designed for carrying freight.

Inflectional –ing and Derivation -ing

Is the {-ing} of a gerund a verbal inflectional suffix or a nominal derivational

one? For instance, in the sentences:

(a) Singing is so much fun.

(b) He loves singing old songs.

Singing is a gerund and is considered as an inflectional morpheme, because it

has the productive syntactical role of the subject in (a), and the object of the
verb loves (b). Sing+ {-ing} is thought not to change the grammatical category.
It is still a verb, and it does not create a new meaning. However, some people
may call them verbal nouns. Although they have the internal structure of a verb
phrase, they appear only in noun phrase positions but has the internal structure
of a verb phrase.

Consider the words reading, blessing, learning, gardening, wedding, and

scaffolding for examples. They all have entries in the dictionary and they are all
labeled as nouns:

(3) Reading is so much fun.

(4) Learning is so much fun.
(5) Gardening is so much fun.
(6) Scaffolding is a variety of instructional techniques to move students
progressively toward stronger understanding.
(7) Please come to our wedding.
(8) The Lord's blessing is our greatest wealth.

The ending -ing for gerunds has become derivational morphemes and and has
turned verbs to become nouns. The ending-ing for present participals has also
turned verbs into adjectives, such as “very intriguing” and “a thought-provoking
lecture”.

The English substantives in –ing are subclassified into eight groups according
to their sense, which can be summarized as follows:
a) nouns of continuous action or existence, such as crying, flying, sleeping,
which must be distinguished from the corresponding nouns, such as a cry, a
fly, a sleep, in that the latter denote acts of momentary or short duration, i.e.
have a definite beginning and end, and grammatically take a and plural,
whereas the nouns in –ing imply indefinite duration and take no plural. Cf.
‘many repeated cries’ and ‘loud and continued crying’,
b) nouns denoting single actions, e.g. a christening, a wedding, an outing,
which may take plural,
c) deverbal and denominal nouns denoting a process, practice, habit, or art, e.g.
reading, gardening, soldiering,
d) nouns denoting material accompaniment or product of the action or process,
e.g. blacking, dubbing, sewing,
e) nouns designating a material thing in which the action or its result is
concreted or embodied, e.g. ‘a writing was affixed to the wall’,
f) denominal nouns used as the collective designation of the substance or
material employed in an action or process, e.g. clothing, flooring, roofing,
g) denominal nouns in –ing from substantives without a corresponding verb,
denoting a collection or indefinite mass of the thing or of its material, e.g.
piping, scaffolding, tubing, and
h) nouns in which the concrete sense appears exclusively in the plural, e.g.
earnings, tidings, trappings.