I.
Introduction
A. Definition
1.
The study of word formation and the internal
structure of words is called morphology.
2.
The most elemental grammatical units in a
language are morphemes.
B. In the mental dictionary, each word must include information on
1. pronunciation: phonological representation
2. meaning: semantic properties
3. syntactic class: category specification
e.g. book
[ bk ]
noun
C. Ferdinand de Saussure:
The sounds and the meaning of a word are inseparable.
There is an arbitrary union between the sounds and
meaning of the linguistic sign.
II. Dictionaries
A. History of published dictionaries
B. Oxford English Dictionary (OED):
the greatest lexicographic work
C. All dictionaries provide
1. spelling
2. pronunciation
3. definition
4. parts of speech
III. Classes of Words
A. Lexical Content Words
1. Definition: Content words make up the major word
classes-nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in English.
2. Open class words
B. Function Words
1. Definition: Function Words include conjunctions,
prepositions, the articles, and pronouns.
2. Closed class words
IV. Word Sets
"Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends
one with each other."
--O. Henry
A. Definition: A morpheme is the smallest linguistic
sign in which there is an arbitrary union of a sound
and a meaning that cannot be further analyzed.
B. Properties
1. Every word in every language is composed of one or
more morphemes.
2. A morpheme may be represented by
a. a single sound, such as “a”
b. a single syllable, such as “child”
c. more than one syllable, such as “berry”
3. A morpheme must have a consistent meaning.
V. Morphemes
Words and Word Structure
Morpheme: The smallest unit of language that carries
information about meaning or function
(e.g., book, dog, -s, -ing).
Free morphemes: boy, girl, pen, tree
Bound morphemes: -s, -ed, -ing
Simple words: and, boy, act, man, hunt
Complex words: boy-s, hunt-er, hunt-er-s, gentle-man-li-ness
Allomorphs: Variants of a morpheme (e.g., [-s], [-z], and [-z] are
allomorphs of the English plural morpheme).
C. Classification
1. Bound morphemes: Morphemes that
cannot occur unattached are bound
morphemes.
a.
Prefixes: morphemes that occur only
before other morphemes,
such as, dis- in “dishonest”,
bi- in “bicycle”
b. Suffixes: morphemes that occur only after
other morphemes,
such as, -er in “worker”,
-ist in “pianist”
c. Infixes: morphemes that are inserted
into other morphemes,
such as, -um- inserted into
“fikas”,which becomes “fumikas”
in the language, Bontoc
d. Circumfixes: morphemes that are
attached to a stem morpheme
both initially and finally.
2.
Free morphemes:
Morphemes that can constitute words by
themselves are called free morphemes,
such as “man”, “sick”.
D. Problems of classification and definition
1. huckles:
Some morphemes are not meaningful in
isolation but acquire meaning by connection
with other morphemes in words, such as
huckle-, boysen-, in “huckleberry” and
“boysenberry”
2. ceives: Some morphemes may occur in many
words, but for which it is very difficult to find
constant meanings for them, such as -ceives in
“receives”, “perceives”, and “conceives”.
E. Representing Word Structure
Root: The morpheme in a word that carries the major component
of the word’s meaning and belongs to a lexical category
(collect in
the word collections).
Affix: A morpheme that does not belong to a lexical category and
is always bound (e.g., -ing, -un).
Base: The form to which an affix is added (e.g., book books,
modernize modernized).
Tree structures:
N
V
teach
A
Af
Af
A
er
un
kind
V
Root for -ed ----------------
V
Root and base for –en----- A
black
Problematic cases:
A
Af
Af
en
ed
N
Af
B
B
Af
in
ept
salv
ation
Figure 1 The internal structure of words built around a bound root
F. Some Common Morphological Phenomena

Affixation: re-play, il-legal, vivid-ly, kind-ness

Cliticization: I’m leaving now.
They’re here now.

Internal change: sing, sang; foot, feet; drive, drove.

Suppletion: go, went; be, was, were.

Stress and tone placement: impo
rt (V), I
mport (N);
prese
nt (V), pre
sent (N).

Reduplication: tabuk ‘quickly’
tabuk tabuk ‘very quickly’ (in Turkish)
takbuh ‘run’
tatakbuh ‘will run’ (in Tagalog)

Compounding: streetlight, bluebird, washcloth, overload
VI. Rules of Word Formation
A. Morphological rules determine how
morphemes combine to form new words.
B. Derivational Morphology:
When derivational morphemes are conjoined
to other morphemes, a new word is formed or derived.
Derivational morphemes include prefixes and suffixes.
1 . Derivation
Derivation: A process that forms a word with a meaning and/or
category distinct from that of its base through the
addition of an affix (e.g., helphelper).
a. English Derivational Affixes
Suffixes: -able (fixable), -er (worker), -ive (assertive),
-ment (treatment), -ful (hopeful), -ize (hospitalize),
-ity (priority), -ness (sadness).
Prefixes: anti- (antipollution), de- (deactivate), in(incomplete)
un- (unhappy), re- (rethink), dis- (dislike)
Complex derivations:
N
V
A
V
Af
Af
Af
act
ive
ate
ion
Figure 2 A word with a multilayered internal structure
a.
N
b.
N
A
Af
N
A
Af
Af
A
Af
un happy ness
un
happy ness
Figure 3 Two possible structures for the word unhappiness
Two classes of derivational affixes:
Class 1: -ity, -y, -ive, -(i)al, -ize, -ious, -ion
Class 2: -ness, -less, -ful, -ly, -er, -ish
2. The derivational word may have a different meaning
than the original word and possibly be in a different
grammatical class.
a. Noun to Adjective: boy＋ish
health + ful
alcohol + ic
b. Verb to Noun:
accus＋ation
sing＋er
confer + ence
c. Adjective to Adverb: exact＋ly
quiet＋ly
swift＋ly
d. Noun to Verb:
moral＋ize
vaccin＋ate
haste＋n
3. Not all derivational morphemes cause
a change in the grammatical class.
a. Prefixes: re＋print
a＋moral
semi + annual
ex + wife
b.Suffixes: music＋ian
pun＋ster
vicar＋age
fadd＋ist
C.
Some morphological rules are quite productive.
1. VERB＋able＝able to be VERB-ed
ex: acceptable, adaptable
2. un＋ADJECTIVE＝not-ADJECTIVE ( antonyms )
ex: unbelievable , unacceptable, unchangeable,
unsimplified
3. VERB＋er＝one who performs an action
ex: lover, hunter
VII. Lexical gaps
A. There are gaps in the lexicon such as googol,
‘words’ which are not in the dictionary but
which can be added.
B.Two facts cause them:
1. A permissible sound sequence has no
meaning attached to it ( like blick, slark).
2. Possible combinations of morphemes have
not been made( like uglyify, unsad, unbrave).
D. The morphological rules can help us guess the
meaning of a word we don’t know, but sometimes
we guess wrong.
ex : gullible--to do with sea birds(×)
Longevity--being very tall(×)
NOTE:
When someone uses such words as coolth
(like warmth), fullen ( like weaken ), usually
it is either an error or an attempt at humor.
3.
meaning:
a.
predictable
ex. girlfriend
b. partially predictable
ex. blackboard
c.
completely unpredictable
ex. cathouse/jack-in-a- box
4. universality of compounding:
This process can be applied to many languages to
enlarge vocabulary.
VIII. Word Coinage
A. Compounds: to string words together
1.
category combination
n+n:n mailman
a+a:a icycold
n+a:a watertight
v+n:n pickpocket
2.
number of words: no definite answer
5. Properties of Compounds
(1) A-N compounds are characterized by a more
prominent stress on their first component (e.g.,
greenhouse ‘an indoor garden’, green house ‘a
house painted green’)
(2) In English, tense and plural markers can
typically not be attached to the first element (e.g.,
*foxes hunter  fox hunters).
6. Types of Compounds

Endocentric compound: A compound whose
rightmost component (in English) identifies the
general class to which the meaning of the entire word
belongs (e.g., dumptruck is a type of truck).

Exocentric compound: A compound whose meaning
does not follow from the meaning of its parts (e.g.,
redneck, since its referent is not a type of neck).
B. Acronyms: initials of several words
ex. TGIF: Thank God This Friday
ASAP: As Soon As Possible
IOU: I Owe You
AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome
C. Blends: words that are “less than” compounds
ex. smog: smoke + fog
motel: motor + hotel
brunch: breakfast + lunch
D. Back-formations: to subtract an fix
ex. peddle: peddler
edit: editor
typewrite: typewriter
Extending word formation rule:
from existing words which appear to be
analyzable
ex. bikini bi (two) monokini mono(one)
act/action
televise/television
E. Abbreviations: short forms by clipping
ex. ad: advertisement
doc: doctor
gym: gymnasium
F. Words from Names:
ex. sandwich: the Earl of Sandwich
gargantuan: Gargantuan, the creature with
a huge appetite
jumbo: an elephant brought to the US
IX. Grammatical Morphemes
A.
In the discussion of derivational
morphology, we see that certain
aspects of morphology have
syntactic implications in that nouns
can be derived from verbs,
verbs from adjectives,
adjectives from nouns, and so on.
B. Some morphemes do not derive a meaning until
combined with others in a sentence. For example, what is
the meaning of it in the sentence “It takes me five hours
to finish my work.” or in “We found it too difficult to lie.”
What is the meaning of to in “He wanted her to go”?
To has a grammatical meaning as an infinitive marker,
and it is also a morpheme required by the syntactic,
sentence-formation rules of the language.
Similarly for have in “I have lived here for ten years”,
which is a grammatical marker for the “present
perfect”; and for the different forms of be in both
“The dog is running.” and “ The screen of the
window was changed.”, which function, respectively,
as a “progressive” marker and a “ passive voice”
marker.
C. Inflectional Morphemes
1. Many languages, including English to some
extent, contain “bound” morphemes that, like to,
are for the most part purely grammatical markers,
representing such concepts as “tense”, “number”,
“gender”, “case”, etc.. Such “bound”
grammatical morphemes are called inflectional
morphemes: they never change the syntactic
category of the words or morphemes to which
they are attached. They are always attached to
complete words.
2. English Inflectional Morphemes:
At the present stage of English history, there are a total of
eight bound inflectional affixes:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
-s
-ed
-ing
-en
-s
-’s
-er
-est
third person singular present: He plays basketball.
past tense: He played basketball.
progressive: He is playing mahjong
past participle: He has played mahjong.
plural: He has two students.
possessive: Georgia’s hair is long.
comparative: Georgina has longer hair than Disa.
Superlative: Georgina has the longest hair.
3. Inflection Versus Derivation
(1) Category change
(2) Order
(3) Productivity
4. English Inflectional Affixes
(1) Plural –s
(2) Possessive –’s
(3) 3rd person sing. Non-past –s
(4) Progressive –ing
(5) Past tense –ed
(6) Past participle –en/-ed
(7) Comparative –er
(8) Superlative –est
6.Further Examples of Inflection

Number

Noun class

Case

Person and number agreement

Tense