Morphology II
Linguistics 101
Gareth Price
Duke University
Derivational vs Inflectional
Morphemes
‘derive’ – make
something from
= make new word
change syntactic
category (sometimes)
Eg. Verb – noun
change meaning
‘inflect’ – inflectere
change shape (of a
completed word)
change grammatical
function but not
syntactic category (and
not ‘meaning’ per se)
number/person / gender
tense / comparative /
superlative
Which are derivational morphemes in this list?
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plinkling
grimoulously
klints
twongier
pendy
thrustling
stangliness
centomer
splimly
centome
stribble
plinkleable
decentome
plinkler
stribbling
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klintish
liggeted
pendierr
pentful
glosselstrop
thrustle
stromp
grimulous
acturously
ponymous
brimney
stang
parples
stribbled
klint
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unplinkleableness
twength
parple
sloke
pendiest
fustered
twong
restribble
sloken
klintly
acturous
stangs
strissed
twongest
liggets
Derivation
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Plinkle
Plinkler
Plinkeable
Unplinkleable
Unplinkleableness
Inflection in Paku: Rules?
• me
"I"
meni "we"
• ye
"you(singular)"
yeni
"you(plural)"
• we
"he"
weni "they”
(masculine)
• wa
"she"
• wani
"they”
(feminine)
• abuma "girl"
abumani "girls"
• adusa "boy"
adusani "boys"
• abu "child"
abuni "children"
Roots, Stems and Affixes
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Root + affix = complex word
Black + en = blacken (root + suffix)
adjective + suffix = verb
blacken + ed = blackened
verb + suffix = past tense verb
black = root and stem for blacken
black = root & blacken = stem for blackened
unblackened = prefix + root + suffix + suffix
but ... unhappiness?
un + happy + ness?
un + knowledge? / un + ability?
Constraints on Derivation
• Untruthfulness  *untruthsfulness
• Untruthfullnesses
•  derivational morphemes appear before inflectional
morphemes in English
• Free Root Morpheme: dog, phone, take, etc.
• Bound Root Morpheme: deceive, unkempt, discover,
under, nonchalant, etc.
•  reason? Usually some kind of historical linguistic
accident ...
Constraints on Derivation
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indecisive or imdecisive?
inordinate or imordinate?
inpossible or impossible?
 reason? Phonological rules of English (and the
principal of efficiency)
• Legalise / lawful-ise
• Finalise / *permanent-ise
•  reason? Derivational morphemes have restricted
distribution for reasons we don’t really understand.
Infixes
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Tagalog:
takbuh ‘run’ – t-um-akbuh ‘ran’
lakad ‘walk’ – l-um-akad ‘walked’
Insertion of an affix within a base:
• ... in this case before the first vowel.
Infixes
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Arabic:
katab ‘write’
kutib ‘have been written’
aktub ‘be writing’
uktab ‘being written’
Insertion of two vowels sounds among the
three consonants which comprise the root
Circumfixes
• Bound morphemes that are attached to a root
or stem morpheme both initially and finally.
• Example:
chokma “(he is) good" 
ikchokm o "he isn’t good"
(Chickasaw Language)
• So ik + adjective + o = negation
Internal Change
• Internal Change
• Changes in an internal non-morphemic segment to illustrate
grammatical contrast.
• sing – sang – sung
• sink – sank – sunk
• foot – feet
• goose – geese
• In English, there is a vowel change (ablaut) to mark past tense.
• Not the same as umlaut: ‘fronting’ of vowel in response to front
vowel in following syllable
• go:s  go:iz  gi:iz  gi:s
• Not infixing, however, as not changing the base *gs or *sng or *ft
• no such morpheme as ‘oo’/‘ee’ or ‘i’/‘a’
Suppletion
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Can be completely different morph (sound):
French: avoir ‘to have’  eu ‘had’
Spanish: ir ‘to go’  fue ‘(he) went’
German: ist ‘is’  sind ‘are’
English: to be/is/are/we/were / to go/went
Note: not allomorph, as not changed due to
phonological environment, but grammatical
category
Suppletion or Internal Change?
• But ...
think / thought
seek / sought
catch / caught
• Probably extreme forms of internal change –
sometimes called partial suppletion
Reduplication
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Indonesian (full)
Orang – man
Orang-orang – all sorts of men
Anak – child
Manga – mango
Etc.
Tagalog (partial):
Bili – buy
Bibili – (will) buy
Compounding
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Putting together whole lexemes (words) to form new
Green + house = greenhouse
Bat + man = batman
German
fern-seher = far seer = ‘television’
Finnish
lammas-nahka-turkki = sheep skin coat
Tagalog
tanod bayan = guard town = ‘policeman’
tubig ulan = ‘water rain’ = ‘rain water#
Hwk: Isolating vs Synthetic
• Isolating
• Synthetic
– polysynthetic
– fusional
– Agglutinative
Find an example for each, and describe why it is that
category. Also list some examples of morphemes in
that languages, and describe the rules, and explain
whether there is inflectional or derivational
morphology in your examples/
Hwk II
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Ex 2 – 5 p.176/7
Ex 21 p.181
Ex 29 p.183
Ex 41 p.189