Some Examples of Morphological Systems
Hungarian:
Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért
verb prefix; in this case, it means “completed”
holy (the word root)
like English “-ness”, as in “holiness”
variant of “-tlen”, noun suffix expressing the lack of something; like English “-less”, as in
-t(e)len
“useless”
-ít
constitutes a transitive verb from an adjective
-het
expresses possibility; somewhat similar to the English auxiliaries “may” or “can”
-(e)tlen another variant of “-tlen”
-ség
(see above)
-es
constitutes an adjective from a noun; like English “-y” as in “witty”
-ked
attached to an adjective (e.g. “strong”), produces the verb “to pretend to be (strong)”
constitutes a noun from a verb; there are various ways this is done in English, e.g. “-ance”
-és
in “acceptance”
plural possessive suffix, second person plural (e.g. “apple” -> “your apples”, where “your”
-eitek
refers to multiple people)
-ért
approximately translates to “because of”, or in this case simply “for”
megszent
-ség
Translation: “for your [plural] repeated pretending to be undesecratable”
Chinese:
明天
我
明天
míngtīan
我
wǒ
的
朋友
會 爲 我 做 一
朋友 会 为 我 做 一
péngyou huì wèi wǒ zuò yí
個
生日
蛋糕
的
个
生日 蛋糕
de
ge
shēngri dàn'gāo
(subordinating
tomorrow me
friend will1 for me make one (classifier) birthday cake
particle)
Translation: “Tomorrow my friends will make a birthday cake for me.”
Spanish
comí
comiste
comió
comimos
comisteis
comieron
eat + I + preterit
eat + you + preterit
eat + s/he/it/formal you + preterit
eat + we + preterit
eat + plural you (Spain) + preterit
eat + they/plural you (not Spain) + preterit
“I ate”
“You ate”
“s/he/it/you ate”
“We ate”
“You [plural] ate”
“They/you [plural] ate”