ATS2681 Morphology Revision Sheet (Handout 1 — Week 3)

Lexemes versus words

Consider the forms: eat, eats, eating, eaten, ate. At one level they are different words with a different pronunciation,
spelling, meaning and grammar. But at another more abstract level, they represent one vocabulary item — just
different forms of it. For this more abstract unit, linguists prefer to use the term lexeme. We have therefore
five different physical representations of the one lexeme EAT. Keep the term word for these physical forms,
the actual assemblages of sounds or letters that occur in speech and writing.
Morphemes versus words
The morpheme is best described as the smallest unit of meaning in the structure of the language. By this we
mean that we can’t divide the unit any more without altering the meaning. There are different types:
• Lexical (content) versus grammatical (functional)
Take the sentence — a cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education (Mark Twain).
This distinction relates to the type of meaning involved. Lexical morphemes have meanings outside the
language; i.e. they relate to aspects of human experience in the world (e.g. cauliflower, nothing, cabbage, college and
education are all referable). Grammatical morphemes don’t relate to items in our experience, but deal with the
relationships between these items; i.e. they tell us something about them (e.g. a, but, with, is).
• Bound versus free
The morpheme cabbage can exist in isolation. We describe such morphemes as free. Other morphemes are
bound and cannot exist on their own; e.g. plural -s.

Clitics: Along the continuum from free to bound morphology, somewhere between an independent word and
an affix, lies a class of morphemes known as clitics (the root here is the Greek verb κλίνειν ‘to lean’). In speech,
clitics ‘lean on’ a neighbouring word rather than being pronounced as independent words. English clitics
generally represent words that can also function fully independently; example: can + not = can’t (cliticized form).
So clitics are bound morphemes in the sense that they attach to other words, but they are not affixes, in that
they correspond to elements that can be expressed as independent words

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• Roots, stems and affixes
The majority of English morphemes are roots — single lexical morphemes that are usually free (e.g. cook, taste).
Roots are the cores of words to which bound morphemes may be added. Most bound morphemes occurring
with roots are affixes. These are classified according to where they appear with regard to the root. Suffixes
follow the root; e.g. -ed, in cooked. Prefixes precede the root; e.g. un- in uncooked. Infixes occur inside the root;
e.g. fanbloodytastic, sophistimacated. Affixes can directly attach themselves to bare roots, as above, or attach to
constructions already containing one or more affixes. Such constructions are called stems.

• Compounds and bound roots

Compounds are words of two or more roots; e.g. blackball “boiled lolly” consists of two morphemes black and
ball. Each part is a lexical root. Although the majority of roots are free-standing morphemes, there are some
roots which never occur independently; e.g. perceive, receive, conceive. These words don’t show a constant
meaning in their root, but there is a core sense there, which is then modified by the affix.

• Derivational versus inflectional morphemes

Finally, we can distinguish morphemes according to their function. This classification identifies two main
groups; namely, inflectional and derivational morphemes. Firstly consider the inflections:

Stem Suffix Function Example

cook -s 3 person sg present He cooks every day.
cook -ed past tense She cooked yesterday.
cook -ing progressive He is cooking right now.
eat -en past participle She has eaten all the food.
oven -s plural The ovens are new.
oven -s possessive The oven’s light is broken.
fast (Adj/Adverb) -er comparative She eats faster than me.
fast (Adj/Adverb) -est superlative She is the fastest eater of all.

Inflectional morphemes (inflections) are grammatical morphemes. (1) They modify, but don’t change the
meaning of an item or its part of speech; (2) They are changes made in the form of words to express their
semantic and syntactic relationships to other words in a sentence (e.g. -s on He cooks shows present tense and a
third person singular subject). (3) They show a regular distribution, occurring with all or most members of large
classes. (4) They occur at the margins of words (e.g. -s appears after all other suffixes in confect-ion-er-s).

Derivational morphemes are more concerned with word-formation (so are more lexical and less grammatical
than inflections). (1) They change meaning; often they change word class (e.g. the verb drink (which brings to
mind the action of drinking), can be made into a noun by adding -er). (2) They indicate semantic relationships
within words (e.g. -ful in plateful has no particular connection with any other morpheme beyond the word plateful).
(3) They don’t occur across whole classes. (4) They occur close to the root before inflections.

LEXICAL ITEM + INFLECTIONAL SUFFIX

glutton (noun) gluttons (noun + plural)
taste (verb) tasted (verb + past)
pure (adjective) purer/purest (adj + comparative/superlative)
LEXICAL ITEM + DERIVATIONAL AFFIX + INFLECTIONAL SUFFIX
glutton (noun) gluttonize (verb) gluttonizes (verb + present)
taste (verb) tasty (adjective) tastier/tastiest (adj + comp/sup)
pure (adjective) impurity (noun + negative) impurities

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 MORPHEMES

FREE BOUND

some lexical some grammatical prefixes suffixes

nouns prepositions derivational derivational inflectional

verbs conjunctions
adjectives articles pre- -al -ed
adverbs pronouns anti- -ity -s

MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES (as they relate to derivation and inflection)

• Affixation
Involves the addition of affixes to stems or roots. English has over 60 prefixes & 80 suffixes.

• Backformation
Affixation relies on pattern extension to form new vocabulary items. So does backformation, except it removes
an affix; e.g. to bludge < bludger.

• Stem modification
Many languages use alternations in stem vowels, consonants, tone and stress to indicate particular grammatical
meanings, and to derive new lexical items. In English this was once an important process but no longer; e.g.
drink—drank—drunk; ride—rode—ridden.

• Compounding
Compounding involves two roots joined together to make up a new word; e.g. icecream.

• Reduplication
Reduplication is a repetition process where all or part of the stem is repeated; e.g. argy-bargy. Reduplication plays
no grammatical role in English.

• Suppletion
Suppletion is a process involving the replacement of a whole form by another completely different form; e.g.
go has a suppletive past tense form went (< wend “make one’s way”).

Productive morphemes
The label “productive” covers any morphological process that is frequently or actively used. But processes
aren’t simply productive or unproductive; it’s a matter of degree. Even the most productive of processes are
never 100% effective; e.g. the successful -er suffix is maximally productive but there are exceptions — “someone
who types” is a typist. And productivity is affected over time (affixes can be productive for a limited period and
with time they atrophy; e.g. the now deceased negative prefix wan- as in wanluck ‘bad luck’ and wanbelief ‘disbelief’.