INTRODUCTION

Morphology – The Study of Word Structure

The term morph is generally attributed to the German poet, novelist, playwright
and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goeth (1749-1832), who coined it early in the
nineteenth century in a biological context. Its etymology is Greek: morph- means
“shape, form” and morphology is the study of form or forms. In biology, morphology
refers to the study of the form and structure of organisms, and in geology, it refers to
the study of the configuration and evolution and land forms. In linguistics, morphology
refers to the mental system involved in word formation or to the branch of linguistics
that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed.
Consider the words below, which are all related in both sound and meaning.
They all include the same phonological form with a meaning identical to that of the
first word, phone.
phone phonic
phonetic phoneme
phonetician phonemic
phonetics allophone
phonology telephone
phonologist telephonic
phonological euphonious
Phone is a minimal form that cannot be divided into more elemental structures. ph
does not mean anything, and pho /fou/ has no relation in meaning to the word foe, and
-one /oun/ is not related to the sound unit /oun/ meaning ‘own’ or to the spelled word
one and pronounced /wʌn/; but all the words on the list contain the word phone as part
of their structure. The phonological rules of English ‘tell us’ that in phonetic,
phonetics, phonology, phonologist, phonemic the pronunciation is /fən/ instead of
/foun/, but the same element phone /foun/ is present, with its identical meaning,
‘pertaining to sound’, in all these words.
Notice further that in the following pairs of words the meanings of all the words
in column B consist of the meanings of the words in column A plus the meaning ‘not’:
A B
desirable undesirable
likely unlikely
inspired uninspired
happy unhappy
developed undeveloped
sophisticated unsophisticated
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 The Macquarie dictionary lists about 1800 adjectives beginning with un-, the
meaning of which the speakers of English would know if they know the word without
the un-.
If the most elemental units of meaning, the basic linguistic signs, are assumed to
be the words of a language, it would be a coincidence that un- has the same meaning in
all the column B words above, or that phone has the same meaning in all the words in
the preceding list. Obviously, it is no coincidence. The words undesirable, unlikely,
uninspired, unhappy, and the others in column B consist of at least two meaningful
units: un + desirable, un + likely, and so on.
It is also a fact about words that their internal structure is subject to rules.
Uneaten, unadmired, and ungrammatical are words in English, but eatenun,
admiredun, grammaticalun (to mean ‘not eaten’, ‘not admire’, ‘not grammatical’) are
not, because we from a negative meaning of a word not by suffixing un (adding it to
the end of the word), but by prefixing it (adding it to the beginning).
The study of the internal structure of words and of the rules by which words are
formed is called morphology.

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CHAPTER 1 MORPHEMES
1. Definitions of Morphemes:
• ‘A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language.’
[Richard, Platt & Weber, 1987: 183]
• ‘A morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria:
1. It is a word or part of a word that has meaning.
2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of its
meaning or without meaningless remainders.
3. It recurs in different environments with a relatively stable meaning.’
[Stageberg, 1965:85]
2. Characteristics of Morphemes
Any morpheme is meaningful, recurrent and inseparable.
2.1 Meaningful:
Not only words but morphemes also have meaning. However, the meaning of
morphemes is not quite the same as that of words; meaning of morphemes can be
lexical or grammatical. A morpheme may have both lexical and grammatical meaning,
but some morphemes may have only one grammatical meaning
The grammatical meaning is defined as an expression in speech of the relationship
between words based on contrastive features of arrangements in which they occur,
whereas, the lexical meaning denotes a physical object, the meaning of a word
considered in isolation from the sentence containing it, and regardless of its
grammatical context, e.g. of love in or as represented by loves, loved, loving, etc..
e.g.: I teach English. – “teach” has its lexical meaning denoting an action, and its
grammatical meaning denoting the simple present tense (or simple form).
I want to go. – “to” has no lexical meaning but its grammatical meaning is an
infinitive marker.
Similarly, the suffix –es in goes carries the function of grammar which indicates the
verb in the third singular present tense without any lexical meaning.
2.2 Recurrent:
It is very important to take very seriously the idea that the grammatical function of a
morpheme, which may include its meaning, but must be constant. Consider the words
‘lovely and quickly’. They both end with the suffix ‘-ly’. But is it the same in both
words? No – when we add ‘-ly’ to the adjective ‘quick’, we create an adverb. What on
the surface appears to be a single morpheme turns out to be two – one attaches to
adjectives and creates adverbs; the other attaches to nouns and creates adjectives.
Therefore, a morpheme must recur in various words with approximately the same
meaning.

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e.g.: - ‘re-’ means “again; back” as in “rebuild; redo; regain,..”
- ‘mis-’ means “bad; wrong; not’ in “misunderstand; misdirect; misinform,…”
- ‘-s’ means “plural” in “boys; books; dogs; balls; houses, ...”
2.3 Inseparable:
Consider the word ‘display’ which has only one morpheme, even though it seems to
have two: ‘dis-’ and ‘play’. ‘dis-’ has the form of an affix with the negative meaning,
and ‘play’ is a verb denoting an action. If we divide the word into ‘dis-’ and ‘play’, the
meaning of the word will be changed. Therefore, a morpheme cannot be broken into
smaller elements without changing its meaning.
3. Classification of Morphemes
Morphemes can be grouped into certain classes, each with a characteristic distribution.
There are two basic classes of morphemes: free morphemes and bound morphemes.
3.1 Free Morphemes vs. Bound Morphemes
3.1.1 Free Morphemes
• "A free morpheme can be used on its own". [Richard, Platt & Weber, 1987: 31]
• Free morphemes "may stand alone as words in their own right as well as enter
into the structure of other words" [Jackson, 1980: 53]
Ex.: Love is a free morpheme since it can be used as a word on its own, and it is
considered as a free base in lovable, unlovable...
3.1.2 Bound Morphemes
• A bound morpheme "is never used alone but must be used with another
morpheme". [ Richards, Platt & Weber, 1987: 31]
• Bound morphemes "may occur only if they combine with another morpheme".
[Jackson, 1980: 53]
Ex.: The morpheme -er, as in ‘learner’, is bound since cannot stand on its own, but
must be attached to other elements such as ‘teach, sing, work, etc...’
3.2 Bases (or roots) vs. Affixes
3.2.1 A base (a root) is "that morpheme in a word that has the principal meaning"
[Stageberg, 1965: 87]. There are two kinds of bases: a free base and a bound base.
A free base is a base "which may be a word on its own right once the other
morphemes have been stripped away" [Jackson, 1980: 53]
e.g.: deal in dealings, nation in national…
A bound base is a base which can never occur on its own but can only be joined to
other bound morphemes.
e.g.: The bound base of audience, audible, audition, auditory, auditorium… is
audi– ( hear ); that of oration, oratory, orator …. is ora- (speak).

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3.2.2 An affix: is a morpheme “that occurs before or behind a base"
[Stageberg, 1965: 87].
3.2.2.1 Classified according to their positions, affixes are classified into two main
subclasses.
Prefixes ‘ occur before a base’ [Stageberg, 1965: 87] as in unkind, reconsider, import,
understate, etc.
Suffixes ‘ occur after a base’ [Stageberg, 1965: 87] as in shrinkage, noisy, quickly,
learner, ect.
It is obvious that most prefixes do not change the grammatical meaning of the words
or morphemes that combine with, whereas most suffixes do.
3.2.2.2 Classified according to their function in words, affixes have two main
subclasses:
⚫ Inflectional affixes: "which are always suffixes in English, perform a grammatical
function, they are representatives of grammatical categories". [Jackson, 1980: 53].
They are also called GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES.
They carry the grammatical meaning only and are, therefore, purely grammatical
markers, representing such concepts as “tense”, “number”, “comparisons” and “case”.
When 'house' becomes 'houses,' it is still a noun even though you have added the plural
morpheme 's.' . . .
Inflectional morphemes never change the syntactic category of the word(s) or
morpheme(s) to which they are attached. They are always attached to complete words.
Inflectional morphemes are used to create different forms of the same word. Consider
the forms of the verbs in the following sentences:
a. I learn English.
b. He learns English.
c. John learned1 English.
d. John has learned2 English.
e. John is learning English.
In sentence (b) the ‘-s’ at the end of the verb is an “agreement” marker; it signifies that
the subject of the verb is “third-person”, “singular”, and that the verb is in “present
tense”. It doesn’t add any “lexical meaning”. The ‘-ed’ and ‘-ing’ endings are
morphemes required by the syntactic rules of the language to signal “tense” or
“aspect”.
The only eight inflectional suffixes in English are:
1. The plural morpheme {- s1} : books, boxes...
2. The possessive morpheme {- s2}: girl's, students’.
3. The third person singular present tense morpheme {- s3}: learns, walks, mixes…
4. The verb present participle morpheme: {-ing1}: learning, walking, mixing....
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5. The verb past simple morpheme {-ed1}: learned, walked, mixed, ...
6. The verb past participle morpheme {-ed2}: learned, walked, mixed,...
7. The adjective or adverb comparative morphemes {-er1}: smaller, safer, thinner…
8. The adjective or adverb superlative morpheme {-est}: smallest, safest, thinnest...
⚫ Derivational affixes: may be prefixes or suffixes in English. They create new
words out of existing words or morphemes by their addition. [Jackson, 1980: 53].
These affixes (morphemes) carry both lexical and grammatical meaning. They can be
called lexico-grammatical morphemes, i.e.: pre-, un-, re-, -ness, -full, -ly…
Derivational morphemes are used to create new words. The new words may be in a
different grammatical class from the underived word. Thus, when a verb is conjoined
with the suffix –able, the result is an adjective, as in “desirable, adorable”.
There are two kinds of derivational affixes according to their functions in word
formation:
• Class-changing derivational affixes change the word class of the word to which
they are attached.
e.g.: work ( v) + er -- > worker (n).
• Class-maintaining derivational affixes do not change the word class of the word to
which they are attached.
e.g.: re + build ( v) -- > rebuild (v).

Summary Morphemes

free(base) bound
affix base

prefix suffix

Figure 1. Diagram of types of morphemes

4. How to distinguish Morphemes from Phonemes, Syllables, Words?

4.1 Morphemes vs. Phonemes
A morpheme differs from a phoneme in that the former has meaning whereas the later
does not.
A morpheme may consist of only a single phoneme like /z/ in boys, but in this word,
the phoneme /z/ is by no means identical. This phoneme /z/ is used an indefinite
number of times where it has nothing to do with this plural morpheme ‘-s’. For
instance, zoo /zu:/ and rose /rouz/ both contain /z/ but the /z/ here has nothing to do
with the morpheme that is realized as /z/ in boys.
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The number of morphemes that consist of a single phoneme as above is limited,
whereas morphemes consisting more than one phoneme are numerous. Therefore,
morphemes are generally short sequence of phonemes.
4.2 Morphemes vs. Syllables
In English, a morpheme is not identical with a syllable. Syllable is a unit in speech
which is often longer than one sound and smaller than a whole word. The syllable is a
phonological unit, whereas the morpheme is the basic unit in morphology.
To form a morpheme, some phonemes are usually combined together without any
regard to their status as syllables. In some cases, a morpheme may be identical to one
syllable, part of a syllable, or a sequence of syllables. Take morpheme strange as an
example which consists of only one syllable, morpheme stranger two syllables, etc…
Strange: one syllable one morpheme
Stranger: two syllables two morphemes
Lion: two syllables one morpheme
Exercise: three syllables one morpheme
Kilometer: four syllables one morpheme
Laboratory five syllables one morpheme
4.3 Morphemes vs. Words
Words are made of morphemes, and a word may consist of one or more morphemes,
for example:
One morpheme : boy, desire,
Two morphemes : boy-ish, teach-er, en-able,
There morphemes : boy-ish-ness, comfort-ab-ly,
Four morphemes : gentle-man-li-ness
Five morphemes : un-gentle-man-li-ness
More than five morphemes : anti-dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism
5. Morphs and Allomorphs
5.1 Morphs
We have described morphemes as minimal units of grammatical analysis – the units of
‘lowest’ rank out of which words are composed of. For example, farmers is composed
of three morphemes farm, -er, and -s, each of which has a particular distribution and
also a particular phonological (and orthographical) form or shape. We must introduce
another notion: Morph.
It is clear that most words can be segmented into parts. When a word can be
segmented into parts, these segments are referred to as Morphs. Thus the word bigger
is analyzable into two morphs, which can be written orthographically as big, er and in
a phonological transcription as /big/ and /ə/. Each morph represents a particular
morpheme.
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Morphemes are the abstract entities, whereas morphs, the physical entities. The
analysis of words into morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs. A morph is a
physical form representing some morpheme in a language.
As we have seen, morphemes may be represented directly by phonological (or
orthographical) segments with a particular ‘shape’ (that is by morphs), but they may
also be represented in the substance of the language in other ways. In order to refer to
morphemes, it is customary to use one of the morphs which represents the morpheme
in question and to put it between brackets. Thus, {big} is a morpheme which is
represented in phonological substances by /big/ and in orthographic substance by
{big}; and went (phonologically /went/), which cannot be segmented into morphs,
represents the combination of two morphemes {go} and {ed}.
The relationship between sound and meaning in language is arbitrary, i.e. there is no
good reason why a particular sound or string of words has a particular meaning. For
example, in the following sentences, the sound /z/ has different meaning in different
sentences:
(a) It feels good.
(b) John’s books are not here.
(c) Cars are not cheap at all.
These morphs {s} are quite different morphemes.
5.2 Allomorphs ( allo = other; morph = form)
5.2.1 Definition
• Allomorphs are the various phonemic shapes that present the same morphemes.
• An allomorph is "any of the different forms of a morpheme"
[Richards, Platt & Weber, 1987]
In English, the inflectional noun plural morpheme is often shown in writing by adding
-(e)s to the end of a singular noun. Compare these nouns – cats, dogs, and boxes with
cat, dog, and watch – the answer is: “by adding ‘-s’”. This morpheme is pronounced /-
s/ ( in cats), /-z/ (in dogs), and /-iz/ (in watches). It is believed that /-s/, /-z/, /-iz/ are
three allomorphs of the inflectional noun plural morpheme because:
- They are in complementary distribution.
/-s/ occurs only after the voiceless consonants;
/-iz/ occurs only after sibilant consonants;
/-z/ occurs after voiced sounds, including all vowels and voiced consonants.
- They have the same meaning, either lexical or grammatical
/-s/, /-z/, /-iz/ all refer to "plurality" and all mean "more than one".

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5.2.2 Selection of allomorphs
As we mention above, the three allomorphs of the inflectional noun plural morpheme
‘-s’ are /-z/, /-s/, /-iz/. It is phonology that may influence the choice of allomorphs of a
morpheme. Therefore, we can say that /-s/, /-z/, and /-iz/ are three phonologically
conditioned allomorphs of the inflectional noun plural morpheme ‘- s’.
In other cases, the selection may be determined by other factors. For example, there
are various ways of marking plurality in English. There is - en in oxen, -ren in
children, and a few other ways as well. The choice of these various ways does not
depend on the phonetic environment, but on the word involved. It is believed that /-ən/
is a morphologically conditioned allomorph of the inflectional noun plural
morpheme.
5.2.3 Types of allomorphs
• Additive allomorphs
To signify some differences in meaning, something is added to a word. For example,
the past tense form of most English verbs is formed by adding the suffix -ed which can
be pronounced as either /-t/, or /-d/ or /-id/.
wash / wɔ∫/ --> washed /wɔ∫t/
pull /pul/ --> pulled /puld/
need / ni:d/ --> needed /ni:did/
Thus, /-t/, /-d/, /-id/ are three additive allomorphs of the inflectional verb past simple
morpheme ‘-ed’.
• Replacive allomorphs
To signify some differences in meaning, a sound is used to replace another sound in a
word. For example, to signal the simple past, /i/ is replaced by /æ/ in ‘drink’ and
‘drank’ respectively. Therefore, /i --> æ/ is a replacive allomorph of the inflectional
verb past simple morpheme.
• Suppletive allomorphs
To signify some differences in meaning, there is a complete change in the shape of a
word. go + the suppletive allomorph of {-D1} = went
be + the suppletive allomorph of {-S3} = is
bad + the suppletive allomorph of {-er1} = worse
• Zero allomorphs
Although there are some differences in meaning, there is no change in the shape of a
word. For example, the past tense forms of the following words are unchanged
put + zero allomorph = put
hit + zero allomorph = hit
hurt + zero allomorph = hurt
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EXERCISES
1. After each word write a number showing how many morphemes it contains.
a. stiffen k. automobile
b. autobiography l. biology
c. honest m. unable
d. antedate n. submarine
e. hygiene o. rainy
f. illegal p. modernize
g. readability q. underhand
h. enlargement r. cheaper
i. transportation s. mahogany
j. internet t. industrialization
2. Underline the bound morphemes. It is possible word to consist entirely of
bound morphemes.
a. speaker f. delivery
b. kingdom g. intervene
c. phonemic h. revise
d. idolize i. dreamed
e. selective
3. Underline the roots in these words.
a. womanly i. befriend
b. endear j. Bostonian
c. failure k. unlikely
d. famous l. prewar
e. infamous m. subway
f. lighten n. falsely
g. enlighten o. unenlivement
h. friendship
4. The following sentences contain both derivational and inflectional affixes.
Underline all of the derivational affixes and circle the inflectional affixes.
a. The farmer’s cows escaped.
b. Those socks are inexpensive.
c. This house needs repainting.
d. She quickly closed the book.
e. The director is going to have a meeting.

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5. Give as many words with the same bound base as you can, using the given
prefixes and bound bases.
Prefixes Bound bases
ad - (ac-, at-): to, toward 1. -tain hold
com - (con-): with, together, jointly, in 2.-ceive
de-: from, down, away -cept take
dis-(dif-): Apart -ceit
ex-: from, out, out of 3. -fer carry, bear
in - (im-): in, into, within, toward, on 4. -clude shut, close
pre-: before, in advance 5.-port carry
inter-: Between
pro-: forward, before, forth, for
re-: back, again
sub-(sup-): Under
across, beyond, through

6. Identify all the possible the suffixes each of the given words. Complete the table
given below
1 Organists
2 Personalities
3 Flirtatiously 3 suffixes -ation, - ous, - ly
4 Atomizers
5 Contradictorily
6 Trusteeship
7 Greasier
7. Identify the meaning of the prefix in each of the given words, and then give as
many words with the same prefix as you can. Complete the table given below.
1 antidote anti = 'against' anti-aircraft, antibody,
antipersonnel, antihero.
2 circumvent circum - = circum - navigate, circumference,
'around' circumlocution, circumspect
3 co-pilot co -, col -, co-curriculum, co-operate, co- ordinate
collapse collide, collision, collect
compact com -, con - comply
4 contradict

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5 devitalized de - = deactivate, decentralize,
'do the opposite' dehumanize, deform,
denationalize.
6 delouse de - = 'remove' dehorn, defrost, deice, deflower, deforest.
7 devalue de - = 'reduce': degrade, debase, decline, decrease.
8 disunion
9 disagreeable
10 insecure
imperfect
illegible
11 intervene
12 intramural
13 obstruct ob-, op- = obstruction, obstructive, obstrude,
'against' or obstrusion, obstrusive(ly), obstinate
oppose obstrusiveness, obstacle, object (ion),
'opposite' opposition, opposed, opponent, oppress,
oppressed, oppression, oppressive (ly).
14 pre - war
15 post-war
16 proceed
17 retroactive
18 semi-
professional
19 subway
20 superabundant

8. Each group contains a base and a few suffixes. Make each into a word.
Complete the table given below.
1 -ed, live, -en livened
2 -ing, -ate, termin-
3 -er, -s, mor, -al, -ize
4 province, -s, -ism, -al
5 -ly, -some, grue
6 -ity, work, -able
7 Un-, work, -able
8 in, -most, -er

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9 marry, -age, -ity, -able
10 -dom, -ster, gang
9. Add an inflectional suffix to each of these words, which already end in a
derivational suffix. Complete the table given below.
1 Kindness + es = kindnesses (n., pl.) meaning 'kind acts'.
2 beautify +
3 quarterly +
4 popularize +
5 depth +
6 Pressure +
7 Extinguish +
8 Orientate +
9 Friendly +
10 Noisy +
10. The left-hand column contains ten words. The right -hand column contains
thirteen derivational suffixes used to make nouns and having the general meaning
of 'state, condition, quality, or act of'. By combining these suffixes with the words
listed, make as many nouns as you can. Fill in the given blanks.
Words Derived Words Noun-forming
derivational suffixes
1. happy 1. –hood
2. friend 2.- acy
3. girl 3. ism
4. compose composure, composition 4. – ness
5. shrink 5. – age
6. discover 6. – ity
7. supreme 13. - ship
8. true truth, truism 7. - ation/ ition
9. pagan 8. ance / - ence
10. active 9. – th
10. - ure
11. - ment
12. - y

11. Determine whether the words in each of the following groups are related to
one another by processes of inflection or derivation.
a. go, goes, going, gone.
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 b. discover, discovery, discoverer, discoverable, discoverability.
c. lovely, lovelier, loveliest.
d. inventor, inventor’s, inventors, inventors’.
e. democracy, democrat, democratic, democratize.

12. Explain why ‘a’ and ‘an’ are two allomorphs of the same morpheme.

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 FURTHER READINGS ON INFLECTION AND DERIVATION

Because Derivation and Inflection are both marked by Affixation distinction between
the two can be a subtle one. Three criteria are common used to help distinguish
between derivational and inflectional affixes.
1. Category change.
Derivational affixes change the category and/or the type of meaning of the form to
which they apply and are therefore said to create a new word.
e.g. modernize, government, seasonal, kingdom.
Derivational affix (D A) -ize makes a verb out of an adjective, changing the type of
meaning. It expresses from a property (modern) to an action (modernize). Derivational
Affixes -ment and -al have the same changes V→N and N→A, whereas D A -dom
doesn't change the category, but it changes the meaning from person (king) to place
(kingdom).
In contrast, Inflectional Affixes do not change either the grammatical category or the
type of meaning.
e. g. books, works
book (singular) - books (plural) are nouns and they have the same type of content/
meaning. work (present tense) - worked (simple past tense) are verbs and they have
the same type of content / meaning.
2. Positioning within the word.
A Derivational Affix (D A) must be closer to the root than an Inflectional Affix (IA).
e. g. neighbourhoods
An Inflectional Affix (I A) ends the words. The positioning of Inflectional Affixes
reflects the fact that inflection takes place after all word formation processes,
including derivation.
3. Productivity.
A third criterion for distinguishing between Derivational Affixes and Inflectional
Affixes has to do with productivity, the relative freedom with which they can combine
with stems of the appropriate category.
D A apply to restricted classes of words.
e.g. hospitalize, terrorize, crystalize
In contrast, I A can combine with a large number of stems of the appropriate
category. I A typically have very few exceptions. I A are more productive.
e. g. the suffix -s can combine with any noun that allows a plural form.
In the case of verbs, matters are somewhat more complicated, since many English
verbs have irregular and idiosyncratic past tense forms (saw, left, went.). However,

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the distribution of I A -ed is freer than that of a D A -ment, which combine with
certain verbs to give nouns.
e. g. Verb → Past Verb → Noun
confine confined confine confinement
align aligned align alignment
arrest arrested arrest * arrestment
cure cured cure * curement

List of English Derivational Affixes

Affixes Changes Semantic effects Examples
Prefixes
a(b)- Adj Adj Without or under amoral, abnormal
V Adj In the state or process of awake, asleep
N Adj On, in abed, aboard, ashore,
N  N Lacking of athermobiosis
ante- V  N Before antedate
N  N In front of ante-room
ant(i)- N  N Against anti-war
V  N Reduce anti-knock
Adj Adj Opposed anti-social
AdvAdv In the direction opposite to anti-clockwise
be- V  N All around, all over besmear, bedeck
N  V Make or treat as befriend, belittle
bi- N  N Two bicycle, bisection,
bicameralism
co- N, V, Adj Together, jointly cooperative, co-belligerence
taking something away, the
de- N  V decentralize, dehydrate,
opposite
deci- N  N one tenth deciliter
apart, separation, reverse, dissent, discovery,
dis- V  V
opposite disambiguation
Adj  V to make ~ (transitive verb) enrage, enlarge
en-
N  V to put in endanger, encage
ex- N  N Former ex-wife, ex-president
Adj Adj extra-thin, extra-special
extra- outside, beyond, additional
extraordinary, extraterrestrial,
fore- V  V before, in advance forestay, foreshadow
in/on
V  V imprint (V/N)
in- V  N intake
put into a certain state or
N  V inflame, imperil
condition
infallibility, illiteracy,
in-1 Adj Adj not
immoral, irrelevant
inter- N  N between, mutual internet
16
 Adj Adj international
V  V intercommunicate
kilo- N  N thousand kilogram, kilowatt
macro- N  N Large macrobiology, macroscopic
mal- N  N Bad malpractice, malnutrition
mega(l) megabyte, megaphone,
N  N million, very large
- megalopolis
microgram, microorganism,
micro- N  N one millionth, very small
micronation, microscope
mid-term elections, Mid-
Mid- N  N in the middle of
Autumn Festival
milli- N  N thousandth milligram, milliliter
mini- N  N Small miniskirt, miniseries
N  N miscarriage, misanthropy,
Mis- bad, wrong
V  V misogyny, mistake
monolith, monorail,
mon(o)- N  N one, single
monotony, monocle
multiculturalism,
multi- N  N Many
multilingualism
Non- N  N not nonsense, non-denial denial
out- more, to a greater degree outdo, outrun
over- N  N more than normal, too overpopulation, over-
(noun) much consumption, overlord
over- to do too much, to (verb)
V  V overlook, overspend, oversee
(verb) over
postpartum depression,
post- N  N After
postmodernism
V  V preview
pre- Before
N  N prehistory
re- V  V again, repeatedly redo, rebuild
V  V retroact, retrograde
retro- N  N Back or backwards retrorocket
Adj Adj retrolingual
semi-automatic, semi-
semi- Adj Adj half, partial
detached
subset, subsonic, subway,
sub- N  N below, less than, under,2
subtitles
superhuman, Superego,
super- N  N extremely, more than,2
supersonic
telecommunications,
tel(e)- N  N distance, distant
television, telephoto lens,
tri- N  N three triangle, tricolor, triptych
extremely, beyond certain
ultra- N  N ultramontanism, ultraviolet
limit
un1- Adj Adj not, opposite, take unconstitutional, undelete

17
 V  V something away
underestimate, underage,
under- V  V below, incompletely
undercook
Uni- N  N one, single uniform
up- N  V Higher update, upgrade, upheld
Suffixes
-age V  N The result or action of package
-ance/ V  N The action or state of assistance, dependence
ence
-ancy V  N The quality or state of expectancy
-ant V  N The person who does/ a Accountant/
chemical that causes some
certain affects
-al V  N The result or action of refusal
-ation V  N The result or action of realization
-dom N  N The condition or state of freedom, kingdom
-er/or V  N The person that does worker
-ee V  N The person affected by an employee
action of
-ess V  N Indicate the female actress
-eer N  N The person concerned with engineer
-ese N  N The language/The person Chinese
from to the country
-ful N  N Amount that fills houseful
-graphy N  N A type of art or science, or geography,
a method of producing radiography
-hood N  N The state or quality of childhood, falsehood
-ian N  N The person/thing from the Canadian
country
-iana N  N A collection of things Victoriana
connected with a person,
place, period
-ics N  N The science, art or activity physics/dramatics
of
-ide N  N chloride
-ing V  N The result or action of realizing
-ion V  N The result or action of action
-ist N  N The person whose belief or scientist,
behavior based on the N idealist
-ite V  Adj Having property Definite
N  Adj Having a tendency to or the favorite
quality of
-ive V  Adj Person or thing having a Active
N  Adj tendency to or the quality Explosive (atomic -)
of

18
-ity V  N The quality or state of activity
-let N  N Small booklet
-logy N  N A subject or study of psychology, morphology
-logue N  N Talk or discussion of travelogue
-ment V  N The result or action of movement
-phile N  N The person who likes Anglophile, Francophile
something or some place
very much.
-phobe N  N The person who dislikes Anglophobe
something or some place
very much.
-phobia N  N In the nouns indicating fear Agoraphobia, homophobia
or dread
-scape N  N A view or scene of landscape, moonscape
-ster N  N A person connected with or Youngster, gangster
having the quality of
-th V  N Action or process of growth
-ure V  N The result or action of pressure
-y V  N The result or action of Delivery
N  Adj Having property/ being in sunny
the state of
-acy Adj  N accuracy
-ate Adj  N Group of people with doctorate, electorate
status or function
-ish N  N Language or people of the Danish, Turkish, Irish
specified nationality
-ism N  N The result, action or quality
Buddhism, criticism
Adj  N of modernism
-ness Adj  N The quality or state of happiness
-th Adj  N Having the properties of depth, width
-ify N  V Make or become classify
Adj  V purify
-en N/AdjV Make or become lengthen, shorten
-ize/ise N  V Become or make like, Organize, hospitalize
Adj  V place in modernize
Act or treat with the
qualities of
-ate N  V Give the specified thing or hyphenate
Adj  V quality activate

-ate N  Adj Full of or showing a passionate, affectionate,

specified quality
-able/ V  Adj able to be V’ed fixable, changeable
ible N  Adj reasonable,
-al N  Adj Pertaining to national

19
-ary N  Adj Concerned with planetary, reactionary
-en N  Adj Having the properties of Golden,
-esque N  Adj Having similar style to that Beethovenesque,
of a painter or a composer Chaplinesque
-ful N  Adj Having the qualities of beautiful, plentiful
-ic N  Adj Concerned with phonemic, phonetic
-ial N  Adj Pertaining to presidential, editorial
-ian N  Adj Pertaining to Canadian, Italian
-ish N  Adj Having the nature of, childish, bookish
Adj Adj Approximately reddish, twentyish
-less N  Adj Without homeless, jobless
-like N  Adj Similar to childlike
-ly N  Adj Having the properties of manly
-oid N  Adj Having properties or shape humanoid, cuboids, spheroid,
of someone or something fungoid
in some ways
-ous N  Adj Having the properties of poisonous
-some N  Adj Producing or likely to, fearsome, quarrelsome
Group of the specified threesome
number
-ed N  Adj Having characteristics of, talented, diseased
Affected with
-ly AdjAdv In the specified manner quickly, happily
- N Adv In the direction of Southward(s)
ward(s)
-wise N Adv In the manner or direction Clockwise
of

20
CHAPTER 2 MORPHOPHONEMIC CHANGES
1. Definition
Morphophonemics, a branch of morphology, deal with the variant of the phonemic
structures of allomorphs which accompany their grouping into words.
To put it more simply, when morphemes are combined to give words, changes in their
forms and pronunciation are expected.
2. Types of Morphophonemic Changes
2.1 Loss of Phonemes
When two morphemes are combined to create a word, some letters as well as sounds
are omitted, which we consider as loss of phonemes. This phenomenon is popular in
formation of words in English, and some can create a rule such as:
+ The phoneme /n/ of the negative prefix ‘in-’ is lost before the morphemes
beginning with /m/, /r/, /l/ and usually /n/.
Example: immoral /i’mɔrəl/, illegal /i’li:gəl/, irreligious /,iri’lidʒəs/, innocuous

/i’nɔkjuəs/ (exception : inert, incorrect; invisible, ingratitude, insecure, intemperate)

+ The phoneme /t/ is lost when a noun derived from an adjective.
Example: secret (adj) secrecy (n)
democrat (adj) democracy (n)
Others: to solve (v) solution (n)
soft (adj) to soften (v)
2.2 Addition of Phonemes
In contrast, when two morphemes are combined to create a word, a new sound is
added to the pronunciation. This kind of changed is called addition of phoneme, for
example:
The phoneme /n/ is added when combining ‘solemn’ /’sɔləm/ and ‘ize’ /aiz/ to form
[‘sɔləmnaiz].

The phoneme /g/ is also added when ‘long’ /lɔη/ combines with ‘er’/ ə/ or ‘est’ / ist/ to

build ‘longer’ /lɔηgə/, and longest /lɔηgist/.

Similarly, the phoneme /s/ is added, for example, ‘hunt – huntsman’, craft – craftsman.
Very often the phoneme /r/ is added when the word ends in “-er” combining with
another morpheme beginning with a vowel such as
discover /dis'kʌvə/ + “-y” ➔ discovery /dis'kʌvəri/

recover /ri:'kʌvə/ + “-y” ➔ recovery /ri:'kʌvə ri/

21
2.3 Simple Consonant Change or sound interchange
When building words, some sounds are changed to form a new word. The change does
not only take place when two morphemes are combined but even when words are
changed in function.
In many cases we have consonant interchange, such as:
bath /bɑ:θ/ ➔ to bathe /bei:ð/
life /laif/ ➔ to live /liv/
breath /breθ/ ➔ to breathe /bri: ð/
This is also true to the following cases of pluralizing: the consonant /θ/ of ‘path’ is
changed to /ð/ when ‘path’ is pluralized
path /pɑ:θ/ + -s /z/ ➔ paths /pɑ:ðz/
and the consonant /f/ of ‘wife’ is changed to /v/ when ‘wife’ is pluralized
wife /waif/ + -s /z/ ➔ wives /waivz/
All above examples are similar since the voiceless sounds changed into voiced sounds,
which can be considered as the process of voicing.
However, pluralization is not always voicing but voicelessing, such as:
book /b k/ + -s /z/ ➔ books /b ks/
plate /pleit/ + -s /z/ ➔ plates /pleits/
Obviously, the voiced consonant /z/ of the plural morpheme is changed into voiceless
consonant /s/.
2.4 Assimilation
Assimilation is the process of replacing a sound by another sound under the influence
of a third sound which is near to it in the word. Assimilation is the common
explanation of consonant change in English.
The change of the voiceless consonant /θ/ to the voiced consonant /ð/ under the
influence of the noun plural voiced phoneme /z/ in the word ‘paths’,
path /pɑ:θ/ + -s /z/ ➔ paths /pɑ:ðz/
or the voiceless consonant /f/ to the voiced consonant /v/ under the influence of the
noun plural plural voiced phoneme /z/ in the word ‘wives’
wife /waif/ + -s /z/ ➔ wives /waivz/
The case of the allomorph /t/ of the past tense morpheme /d/ can also be considered as
that of assimilation according to the process of voicelessing.
laugh /lɑ:f/ + -ed /d/ ➔ laughed /lɑ:ft/
Another change due to assimilation is that the phoneme /n/ of the negative prefix ‘in-’
converted into /m/ before a morpheme beginning with /b, p,/
Prefix ‘in-’ has the allomorph {im-} – /im/ before /p, b/: impossible, imbalance.
Prefix ‘en-’ has the allomorph {em-} – /im/: empower, embitter.
22
2.5 Dissimilation
Dissimilation is the opposite of assimilation. It takes place when the combination of
two morphemes brings together two identical phonemes resulting in the change of one
of them to a phoneme less like its neighbor.
Example: the prefix ‘in-’ has the allomorph /-ig/ in ignoble (adj), ignore (v),
ignominy (n), ignominious (adj)
2.6 Synthesis
This is the fusion of two consonants brought together by morpheme combination into a
single new phoneme
Example: moist + -ure ➔ moisture
/mɔist/ /juə/ ➔ /’mɔist∫ə/
/ t/ + / j/ ➔ /t∫/
The phoneme /t/ and /j/ are combined to form the phoneme /t∫/. This kind of
change is sometimes called palatalization because /∫/, /ʒ/, /dʒ/, /t∫/, are palato- alveolar
consonants.
Example: press + -ure ➔ pressure
/pres/ + /juə/ ➔ /’pre∫ə/
/s/ + /j/ ➔ /∫/
act + -ion ➔ action
/’ækt/ + /jən/ ➔ /’æk∫n/
/ t/ + /j/ ➔ /∫/
2.7 Change of Syllabic Vowel or Diphthong
This is the substitution of another syllabic vowel or diphthong for the one which
appears in the normal allomorph.
Example: clear /kliə/ ➔ clarity /’klæriti/
/iə/ ➔ /æ/
please /pli:z/ ➔ pleasant /’pleznt/
/iə/ ➔ /e/
This kind of change is commonly typical to irregularity of plural forms and past forms
Example: man /mæn / ➔ men /men/
/æ / ➔ /e /
take /teik/ ➔ took /tuk/
/ei/ ➔ /u/
come /kʌm/ ➔ came /keim/

/ʌ/ ➔ / ei/

23
2.8 Stress Shift
In many cases the addition of an affix to a word is accompanied by a shift in stress (it
doesn’t accompany a vowel change) which is called stress shift. In other way, stress
shift is the change in stress of a word without changing the vowel when adding an
affix to it.
Example: s’yntax ➔ synt’actic
/’sintæks/ ➔ /sin’tæktiks/
l’inguist ➔ ling’uistic
/’liηgwist/ ➔ /liη’gwistik/
‘impulse ➔ imp’ulsive
/’impʌls/ ➔ /im’pʌlsiv/
‘import ➔ imp’ortant
/’impɔ:t/ ➔ /im’pɔ:tənt/
d’emocrat ➔ dem’ocratic
/’deməkræt/ ➔ /,demə’krætik/
2.9 Gradation
The process of derivation including stress shift involves vowel change. This kind of
change is called gradation. To simplify it, gradation can be defined as the change in
stress of a word including the change in vowel when adding an affix to the word.
Example: s’ymbol ➔ symb’olic
/’simbəl/ ➔ /sim’bɔlik/
telepath ➔ telepathy
/’telipæθ/ ➔ /tə’lepəθi/
coincide ➔ coincidence
/,kouin'said] ➔ /,kou'insidəns]
In many other cases, this kind of change also occurs to words whose functions are
changed without adding any elements.
Example: present (noun) ➔ present (verb)
/’preznt/ ➔ /pri’zent/
contest (verb) ➔ contest (noun)
/kən’test/ ➔ /’kɔntest/
contrast (noun) ➔ contrast (verb)
/’kɔntræst/ ➔ /kən’trɑ:st/

24
2.10 Suppletion
Suppletion is a type of irregularity in which there is a complete change in the shape of
a word in its various inflected forms. For example, English good – better – best does
not follow the normal pattern as in tall – taller – tallest but uses different forms for
the comparative and the superlative of the adjective good. Thus, this type of
morphophonemic change is the occurrence of an allomorph completely different in
each phonemic structure from the normal form. What is essential here is semantic
similarity and complementary distribution. Different allomorphs are suppletive forms.
Example: The verb: {be} = {am} = {is} = {are} = {was} = {were}
{go} = {went}
The adjective: {good} = {better} = (best}
{bad} = {worse} = {worst}
The adverb: {well} = {better} = (best}
{badly} = {worse} = {worst}
EXERCISES
1. Describe the loss of phonemes in the following words.
1. fast – fasten 6. enemy – enmity
2. terror – terrify 7. legal – illegal
3. democrat – democracy 8. noble – ennoble
4. solve – solution 9. mature – immature
5. create - creature 10. remember – remembrance
2. Describe the addition of phonemes in the following words.
1. solemn – solemnize 6. actor – actress
2. fair – fairer 7. young – youngest
3. sign – signal 8. sale – salesman
4. craft – craftsman 9. state – statesman
5. bear – bearable
3. Explain the consonant changes in the following words.
1. house – houses 5. mouth – mouths
2. decide – decision 6. defend – defensible
3. permit – permissible 7. deride – derisive
4. wife – wives 8. path – paths
4. Explain the vowel or diphthong change in the following words.
1. hear – heard 6. please – pleasant
2. woman – women 7. precise – precision
3. see – saw 8. clear – clarify
4. ride – rode 9. long – length
5. come – came 10. deep – depth
25
5. Identify the synthesis phenomenon in the following pairs of words.
1. proceed– procedure 6. supervise– supervision
2. press – pressure 7. promote – promotion
3. depart – departure 8. donate – donation
4. act – action 9. compose – composure
5. seize – seizure
6. Describe the stress shift in the following words.
1. create – creature 6. cognition – cognitive
2. universe – universal 7. cooperate – cooperation
3. music – musician 8. temporal – temporality
4. interview – interviewee 9. regulate – regulation
5. export – exportation 10.habitat – habitation
7. Describe the gradation in the following words.
1. telepathy – telepathic 6. origin – original
2. telephone – telephonic 7. able – ability
3. refer – reference 8. curious – curiosity
4. coincide – coincidence 9. real – reality
5. produce – product 10. repeat – repetition
8. Describe any morphophonemic change in the following words.
1. book – books 6. soft – soften
2. house – housing 7. meditate – meditation
3. record (v) – record (noun) 8. negotiate – negotiation
4. nation – national 9. economy – economical
5. enter – entry 10. determine – determination

26
CHAPTER 3 IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENTS IN MORPHOLOGY
Like phrases and sentences, words are also composed of different layers of structure.
In chapter 1, we have mentioned that there are two kinds of morphemes of which
words are composed. Now we shall consider how these morphemes are combined in
words.
1. Definition
“Immediate Constituents are any of the two meaningful parts forming a larger
linguistic unit” [ Arnod, 1986:83].
e.g. control: V
controllable: Adj
uncontrollable: Adj
uncontrollably: Adv
Take this word as an example - Control (v) – this verb has only one morpheme, so
there is no morpheme combination in it. However, controllable (Adj) is different
as it consists of two morphemes with the division between them. Words with more
than two morphemes as incontrollable are, especially different since they are built
with a hierarchy or twosomes. Each twosome is the layer of the structure by which a
word is composed. We can make successive division into two parts, each of which is
called immediate constituent. This division is called IC division.
Immediate Constituent Division is the way to describe the layers of a word, a phrase
or a clause to identify how many parts each consists of.
2. How to divide the constituents of a word
The first division is between an inflectional morpheme (suffix) and the rest of the
word:
teacher/s malformation/s
learn/ing stop/ped
At each division, one of the IC’s should be a free form:
unhappy/ness not un/happiness
in/dependent not independ/ent
The division must ensure the meaning of the word as the whole
teach/er not tea/cher

27
The IC division of formation of words can be illustrated either through layer structures
or tree structures.
2.1 Layer structures
The number of layers which indicates the IC Division of a word depends on the
number of morphemes which the word contains. If the word contains a grammatical
morpheme, it goes without saying that the grammatical morpheme should be firstly
separated from the word, then the following steps should be carried out according to
the rules by which the word is formed. The disadvantage of this kind of IC Devision is
that each element of the word is not functionally recognized; in other words, we may
not identify the exact IC.

gentle man
meet ing 3
2 li
s 2
1 ness
1

3 form ation

mal
pre conceive 2
2 s
ed
1 1

2 depend ent
en large
2 in
ment
1 1

Layer structures of IC Division

2.2 Tree structures

Matters get more complex when we consider that a lexeme might be subject to a
number of morphological processes within the language. Take the word “worker” as
an example, there is a combination of the two parts: the root ‘work’ and the suffix ‘-er’
in which the root is the base for the suffix ‘-er’, but ‘work’ in the language functions as
both a verb and a noun, so which is the root of the word ‘worker’, the noun or the
verb? To determine this we have to track the morphological history of the word.
Originally, the verb is converted from the noun by the process of conversion and has
the meaning of doing something that involves physical or mental effort, especially as
28
part of a job; so we can say that the noun ‘worker’ is derived from the verb with the
meaning a person who works, or who does a special kind of work. Therefore, the
formation of the word as follow:
work (noun)  work (verb) + -er  worker (noun)
We can use a tree diagram like the following to represent the internal structure of a
word. This diagram also shows what lexical category an affix has attached to, and
what category it has created by attaching.

V Af

work er

Figure 3. Tree structures of IC Division

EXERCISES
1. Give a diagram to each of the following words to indicate their layer
structures. Identify all the possible morphemes in the words.
a. discussed f. unchangeably
b. nonflexible g. imbalances
c. irresponsibility h. independently
d. unacceptably i. unreasonably
e. indefinitely j. inefficiently
2. Give a tree diagram to each of the above words to indicate their internal
structures and the processes of word formation:
a. unforgettable f. uncomfortably
b. unexpectedly g. inaccessible
c. unbelievably h. impossibility
d. irregularity i. illogically
e. disability j. non-productive

29
CHAPTER 4 WORDS
1. Definition
‘The word may be described as the basic unit of language. Uniting meaning and form,
it is composed of one or more morphemes; each consists of one or more spoken
sounds or their written representatives.’ [Arnold, 1986: 27].
As mentioned before, words are made of morphemes, and a word may consist of one
or more morphemes, for example:
One morpheme : boy, desire,…
There morphemes : boy-ish-ness, comfort-ab-ly, …
Four morphemes : gentle-man-li-ness
Five morphemes : un-gentle-man-li-ness
More than five morphemes : anti-dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism
2. Characteristics
Provisionally, we may say that words are characterized by some degree of internal
stability and external independence. Insertions can only be made between words, not
within words:
This (new) washing- machine (here) is (very) efficient.
Not : ... wash(-clothes-)ing-(handy-)machine...
The independence of words is shown phonologically by the fact that they may be
preceded and followed by pauses; orthographically by their separation by means of
spaces or punctuation marks; syntactically by the fact that they may be used alone as a
single utterance; and semantically by the possibility of assigning to them one or more
dictionary meanings.
[Douglas Biber, 1999: 51]
And according to Lyons [1969: 203], ‘one of the characteristics of the word is that it
tends to be internally stable (in term of the order of the component morphemes), but
positionally mobile (permutable with other words in the same sentence)’. Consider the
following sentence into morphemes to illustrate his statement:
the – boy – s – walk – ed – slow – ly – up – the – hill
The sentence may be regarded as a sequence of ten morphemes, which occur in a
particular order relative to one another. There are several possible changes in this order
which yield an acceptance English sentence:
slow – ly – the – boy – s – walk – ed – up – the – hill
up – the – hill – slow – ly – walk – ed the – boy – s
But under all the permutations certain groups of morphemes behaves as ‘blocks’ –
they occur always together, and in the same order relative to one another. There is no
possibility of the sequence s – the – boy -, ly – slow or ed – walk because boys, slowly,

30
walked are the three two-morpheme words in which the suffixes –s, -ly and –ed must
follow the base. To illustrate this point, let consider the following sentences:
The boy walked up the hill slowly.
The boy slowly walked up the hill.
The boy walked slowly up the hill.
Slowly, the boy walked up the hill.
Unlike small linguistic unit such as phonemes and morphemes, words have some
freedom to move within a sentence without destroying their meaning. Therefore, a
word can be regarded as a minimum linguistic unit which is freely movable with a
meaning.
3. Classification
3.1 The classification of words according to their structure
English words may be classified on the basis of the kinds (free vs. bound morphemes)
and the combinations of morphemes (free + free, or free + bound, bound + bound) of
which they are composed.
Simple words consist of a single free base (= a free morpheme): stay, flea, long, spirit,
eucalyptus, Connecticut, etc.
Complex words contain at least one bound morpheme as an immediate constituent.
They fall into two subclasses.
Complex words-FB (free-base) have one free morpheme as an IC:
lion | -ess 'female rain | -y having' or 'marked by’
deep | -en 'make’ un- 'not' |certain
re- 'again' |birth dis- 'do the opposite of |appear
Complex words-BB (bound base) have a bound morpheme for each IC:
tele- ‘far'| -vise 'see'
pre- 'beforehand, in advance'| -clude 'shut, close
ex-‘ out of, out from'| -tract 'take, get’
termin- 'end| -ate ‘giving (to sth) a specified quality’
rupt- 'break'| -ure 'action of., process of.’
somnifer- 'sleep'| -ous 'having the quality or characteristic of’
Compound words (also called COMPOUNDS) have at least two free bases (free
morphemes) with or without bound morphemes.
E.g.: high | born north | east desk | lamp (-s) ill | treat (-ed)

3.2 Closed systems and Open classes

According to the internal structure of words, English words can be divided into two
broad types of categories: closed systems and open classes.
A closed system contains a limited number of members, and new members cannot
easily be added. The principal closed systems in English are the groups of function
words, such as auxiliaries, conjunctions, pronouns, determiners, and prepositions.

31
Newly coined and borrowed words cannot be easily added to these systems. That’s
why they are closed.
However, the membership of open classes is indefinite and unlimited. In morphology
we are mainly concerned with the behaviour of words which belong to open classes,
namely nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. These nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
adverbs form open classes and easily admit new members. For example, we can
easily form new nouns from verbs or adjectives with numerous of suffixes ‘-er, -ee, -
ing, -ment, -ion, -ation, -ness, -ity, -ly, etc.’; or new verbs from nouns and adjectives
with the following affixes ‘-ize, -ate, - ify, -en, en-‘; and new adjectives from verbs
and nouns with ‘-ive, -able, -ed, -ing, -less, -al, -ful, -ly, etc.’
Examples: Trainer, trainee, actor, employer, employee, interpreter, etc.
3.3 Lexical words, function words, and inserts.
Words can also be grouped into three classes according to their main functions and
their grammatical behavior: lexical words, function words, and inserts.
Words that have meaning by themselves: boy, food, door are called Lexical words.
Lexical words are the main carriers of meaning in a text. In speech, they are
characteristically the words that remain in the information-dense language of
telegrams, lecture notes, headlines, etc.:
Arriving tomorrow (telegram)
Family killed in fire (newspaper headline)
Lexical words are numerous and are members of open classes. They often have a
complex internal structure, and they can be the heads of phrases. There are four main
classes of lexical words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
While lexical words are the main building blocks of texts, function words provide the
mortar which binds the text together. Function words often have a wide range of
meanings and serve two major roles: indicating relationships between lexical words or
larger units, or indicating the way in which a lexical word or a larger unit is to be
interpreted.
Function words are members of closed systems. They are characteristically short and
lack internal structure. In speech they are generally unstressed. They are frequent and
tend to occur in any text, whereas the occurrence of individual nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs varies greatly in frequency and is bound to the topic of the
text. However, there is also a great deal of variation in the frequency of function words
depending on the type of text. We can see the important differences between function
words and lexical words in the following table.

32
 Differences between Lexical words and Function words
Features Lexical words Function words
frequency low high
head of phrases yes no
length long short
lexical meaning yes no
morphology variable invariable
openness open closed
number large small
stress strong weak
Inserts are a relatively newly recognized category of word. They do not form an
integral part of a syntactic structure, but are inserted rather freely in the text. They are
often marked off by intonation, pauses, or by punctuation marks in writing. They
characteristically carry emotional and interaction meanings and are especially frequent
in spoken texts. Some examples are:
Hm hm, very good.
Yeah, I will. Bye.
Cheers man.
Inserts are generally simple in form, though they often have a deviant phonological
structure (e.g. hm, uhhuh, ugh, yeah).
Inserts are more marginal than lexical words and function words. It can indeed be
debated whether some of the forms in our conversation passage should be recognized
as words at all. However, there is no doubt that they play an important role in
communication. If we are to describe spoken language adequately, we need to pay
more attention to them than has traditionally been done.
Traditionally, interjections are the only type of insert that has been described in most
grammars. Inspection of the examples in our conversation texts shows that there is a
variety of forms and that the traditional term ‘interjection’ (a phrase, a word, or set of
sounds used as a sudden remark expressing feeling) is inappropriate, except perhaps in
the etymological sense of ‘something thrown in between’. Hence, the new term ‘insert’
appears.
As with function words, inserts are generally invariable. They may consist of a single
morpheme (yes, no, please, yeah, well, etc.) or of an invariable lexicalized sequence
(you know, I mean, excuse me, you know, etc.)

33
EXERCISES
1. Make the first IC cut in the words below which permit such cutting. Then
classify each word as:
S simple;
C-BB complex with two bound forms as IC’s;
C-FB complex with one free form as an IC.
Complete the table given below:
1 knave S n [C] a dishonest man
adj deceitful, dishonest; –ish (adj-forming suffix) =
2 knav(e) | –ish C-FB
‘of the nature of’, ‘resembling’
n [C] diagram consisting of a) line or lines (often
3 graph curved) showing the variation of two quantities;
v [Tn] write, record or draw using graphs
v [Tn] send a message in printed form;
4 telegraph
tele– = ‘far’
v [I, Ipr, Ip, Tn, Tn.pr, Tn.p] ∼(with/into sth);
5 merge ∼ (together); (∼A with B/ ∼A and B) (cause two
things to) come together and combine
v [I, Ipr] ∼ (from sth) come out or up (from water,
etc)
6 emerge
e– = out(ward) + merge (from Latin ‘merger’
meaning ‘dip’, ‘sink’, ‘plunge’ or ‘immerge’)
n [C] feeble-minded man, person with subnormal
7 moron
intelligence
v [Tn] say in advance that (sth) will happen;
8 predict
pre– = ‘beforehand’ or ‘in advance’; –dict = ‘say’
n [C] person who pays great attention to correctness,
9 purist especially in the use of language or in the arts;
–ist (noun-forming suffix) = ‘a person who…’
adj of or concerning a comic; amusing and odd;
10 comical
–al (adj-forming suffix) = ‘of’ or ‘concerning’
11 carn– | –al C-BB adj of the flesh or the body; carn– = flesh
adj of or concerning a sophist;
12 sophistic
–ic (adj-forming suffix) = ‘of’ or ‘concerning’
n [U] refusing or being refused; n [C] act of
13 refusal refusing;
–al (noun-forming suffix)=‘process or state of‘
n [C] one who carries luggage for payment at a
14 porter
station, an airport, etc.; port– = ‘carry’
v [Cnt] make (sb) able to do sth by giving him the
15 enable
necessary authority or means; en– = ‘make’
16 mete v [Tn] measure
n [C] device that measures the volume of gas, water,
17 meter
time, electric current, distance, etc
18 chronometer n [C] device that keeps very accurate time, used
34
 especially for navigating at sea;
chron(o)– = ‘of or relating to time’
n [U] system of government by the whole people of
a country, especially through representatives whom
they elect
dem(o)– = ‘of population’, ‘of people’:
demagogue n [C] political leader who tries to win
people’s support by using emotional and often
unreasonable arguments;
demography n [U] study of statistics of birth ,
19 democracy
deaths, disease, etc in order to show the state of a
community
–cracy = ‘government or rule of’: technolcracy n
[U] control or management of a country’s industrial
resources by technical experts;
bureaucracy n [U] system government through
departments managed by State officials, not by
elected representatives

2. Classify the following items with these symbols:

S Simple
C-BB Complex with two bound forms as IC’s
C-FB Complex with one free form as an IC
Comp Compound
GS Grammatical structure
With three classes C-BB, C-FB, and WCp, make the first IC cut.
Complete the table given below:
sharpshooter
1 Comp sharp | shooter
(one who is killed at a shooting with a gun)
2 GS a sharp shooter (one who shoots sharply)
3 S act
4 react
5 Comp storekeeper (the keeper of a store) store | keeper
6 C-FB Highlander (one who lives in the Highland) Highland | –er
7 apparatus
8 contain
9 recur
10 C-BB current cur(r)– | –ent
11 unearth
12 referee
13 solve

35
 14 C-FB dissolve dis– | solve
15 solvent
16 Comp bull’s eye (the center of a target)
17 GS the bull’s eye (the eye of the bull)
18 passbook
19 disapproval
20 inaccessible

3. Indicate whether each italicized expression in the following sentences is a word

compound (C) or a grammatical structure (GS).
1. Jim’s new car is a hardtop.
2. This jar has a rather hard top.
3. It was a jack-in-the-box.
4. There was a plant in the box.
5. A ‘hot dog is not a hot ‘dog.
6. He has a dog in the manger attitude.
7. She has a strong ‘hold on him.
8. She has a stronghold in the women’s Club.
9. George found his father-in-law.
10. George found his father in trouble.
11. They bought it on the black market.
12. The electricity went off, and we were caught in a black, completely lightless,
market.
13. His spending money was a source of annoyance to his father

36
CHAPTER 5 WORD-FORMATION
Besides studying word structure and word class, morphology deals with WORD
FORMATION, i.e., morphological devices by which the words of a paradigm are
differentiated from another and new words have entered the English language.
The subject of word formation is, of course, not simple words but the ones that are
analyzable structurally and semantically. Thus, word-formation looks at such words as
learner, mouthy, baby-sister, but not learn(s), mouth(s), or sit(s), etc.
The following are the various principal ways of word formation in English:
1. Derivation
In linguistics, derivation is the process of creating new words from other words by
adding a derivational affix. ( See Chapter 1 for more explanations).
The derivational affix {-er}, for instance, combines with a verb to create a noun with
the meaning ‘one who does ’.
Verb Derived Noun
help help-er
walk walk-er
teach teach-er
drive drive-er
jump jump-er
2. Compounding
The other way to form a new word is by combining two or more already existing
words in a compound. Blackbird, doghouse, seaworthy, and blue-green are examples
of compounds.
Compounding is highly productive in English and it is also widespread throughout the
languages of the world. In English, compounds can be found in all the major lexical
categories: nouns (doorstop), adjectives (winedark), and verbs (stagemanage)
Semantically, compounds can be classified into non-idiomatic compounds and
idiomatic compounds. Non-idiomatic compounds are those whose meanings are easily
deduced from the meanings of the components: goal-keeper, schoolboy, manmade,
mother-in-law,... Idiomatic compounds are those whose meanings cannot be deduced
from the meanings of the components since there is no relationship between the
meanings of the components: greenhouse, lady-killer, lip-service, teach-in,...
Structurally, two features of compounds stand out. One is the fact that the constituent
members of a compound are not equal. The second structural peculiarity of
compounds, which is true of all languages of the world, is that a compound never has
more than two constituents. This is not to say that a compound may never contain
more than two words. Three-word (dog food box), four-word (stone age cave dweller),
37
and longer compounds (trade union delegate assembly leader) are easy to find. But in
each case, the entire compound always consists of two components, each of which
may itself be a compound. The basic compound operation is therefore always binary,
although repetition of the basic operation may result in more complex individual
forms.
N N

N N N N

N N N N N N

dog food box stone age cave dweller

N N

N N

N N N N

trade union delegate assembly leader

Tree structures of compounds

A compound consists of a head, i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic
meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For
example, the English compound doghouse, where house is the head and dog is the
modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog. Endocentric compounds tend to
be of the same part of speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of doghouse.
Exocentric compounds do not have a head, and their meaning often cannot be
transparently guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound
white-collar is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In an exocentric compound,
the word class is determined lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents. For
example, a must-have or forget-me-not are not verbs but nouns.
Compounding and derivation may also feed each other. The members of a compound
are often themselves derivationally complex, and sometimes, though not often, a
compound may serve as the base of a derivational affix. An example of each of these
situations is given in the following tree structures:

38
 N N

N N N Af

V Af N N

load ing dock block head ism

English orthography is not consistent in representing compounds since they are

sometimes written as single words (e.g., greenhouse, classroom, girlfriend, haircut),
sometimes with an intervening hyphen, (e.g., baby-sitter, mother-in-law,) especially
true to adjective compounds before a noun (e.g., a well-known actress, a good-looking
boy), and sometimes as separate words (e.g., table tennis, credit card). Unfortunately,
there is no rule for this, so you may need to check in a dictionary. Frequently used
compounds often become one word over time.
Compounds versus Non-compounds
Compound word Non-compound expressions
greenhouse an indoor garden green house a house painted green
blackboard a chalkboard used in black board a board that is black
classrooms
wet suit a diver’s costume wet suit a suit that is wet

However, it is usually possible to recognize noun compounds by their stress pattern

since the first component is pronounced more prominently than the second, though
sometimes the stress may falls on both parts, (e.g., mother tongue, first aid, personal
computer). In non-compounds, conversely, the second element is stressed.
Stress of Compounds versus Non-compounds
Compounds Non-compounds
bláckboard black boárd
(board for writing on) (board that is black)
sílk worm silk wórm
(caterpillar that spins silk) (worm made of silk)
háirnet hair nét
(net for covering hair) (net made of hair)

39
English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the
semantic relationship of their components.
Compound nouns
Most English compound nouns are noun phrases (= nominal phrases) that include a
noun modified by adjectives or attributive nouns. Due to the English tendency towards
conversion, the two classes are not always easily distinguished. Most English
compound nouns that consist of more than two words can be constructed recursively
by combining two words at a time. The compound science fiction writer, for example,
can be constructed by combining science and fiction, and then combining the resulting
compound with writer. Some compounds, such as salt and pepper or mother-of-pearl,
can not be constructed in this way, however.
• There are many ways to form compound nouns:
- N+N : classroom
- Adj. + N : greenhouse
- N+V : haircut
- V+N : pickpocket
- V-ing + N : living-room
- N + V-ing : human-eating
- V + Prep. : drawback
- Prep. + N : outlaw, in-laws
- Prep. + V : income, on-drive
- Others : mother-in-law, forget-me-not
Compound adjectives
English compound adjectives are constructed in a very similar way to the compound
noun. Blackboard jungle, leftover ingredients, gunmetal sheen, and green monkey
disease are only a few examples. A compound adjective is a modifier of a noun. It
consists of two or more morphemes of which the left-hand component limits or
changes the modification of the right-hand one, as in "the dark-green dress": dark
limits the green that modifies dress.
There are some well-established permanent compound adjectives that have become
solid over a longer period, especially in American usage: earsplitting, eyecatching, and
downtown.
However, in British usage, these, apart from downtown, are more likely written with a
hyphen: ear-splitting, eye-catching.
40
Other solid compound adjectives are for example:
• Numbers that are spelled out and have the suffix -fold added: "fifteenfold", sixfold".
• Points of the compass: northwest, northwester, northwesterly, northwestwards, but
not North-West Frontier.
• These are the ways to form compound adjectives:
- Adj. + Adj. : red-hot, light-blue,
- N + Adj. : snow-white, sea-sick,
- Adj. + V-ing : good-looking, easy-going,
- Adj. + V-ed : open-ended, black-capped,
- Adv.+ V-ed : well-cooked, fully-fledged,
- Adj. + N + ed : kind-hearted, left-handed,
- N + N + ed : lion-hearted, pigeon-hearted
- N + V-ed : manmade, homemade, handmade,
- Prep. + N : in-service, outdoor, indoor
- Prep. + Adj/V-ed: off-black, inborn
- Others : out-of-order/work/date, up-to-date,
Compound verbs
A compound verb is usually composed of a preposition and a verb, although other
combinations also exist.
- V+V : freeze-dry
- N+V : manhandle, hand-wash
- Adj. + V : whitewash
- Prep. + V :undergo, in-migrate, offload
- Adv. + V : downside, update
Compound verbs composed of a noun and verb are comparatively rare, and the noun is
generally not the direct object of the verb. In English, compounds such as *bread-bake
or *car-drive do not exist. Yet we find literal action words, such as breastfeed, tape-
record and washing instructions on clothing as for example hand wash
Compound adverbs
- Adv + N : upstairs, uphill, upwind, offstage,
- Prep. + N + s : indoors, outdoors,
- Prep. + Adj. : overall, uppermost,
- Others : long long ago, once upon a time, up to now, from now on,
41
3. Conversion
Conversion (zero derivation ) is the formation of a new word in a different part of
speech without adding any element.
e.g.: lecture → to lecture;
hand → to hand;
to drop out → a drop out
to go → a go;
up → to up.
The differences between the words in each pair are morphological, syntactic and
semantic:
- Morphological: the verb “to hand”, for example, has a new paradigm (the
system of forms): hand – handed – handing.
- Syntactic: the function of “to hand” is new. It is predicate: “he handed me a
watch.”
- Semantic: the verb “to hand” has a completely new meaning: to give, to pass
something to… but “hand” is part of the body.
Conversion may be said to be most productive in forming verbs: arm → to arm;
elbow → to elbow; foot → to foot; skin → to skin; bottle → to bottle; honeymoon →
to honeymoon.
The reason for such a wide-spread development of conversion in English is that there
are not enough affixes, especially verbs-forming affixes.
Traditional conversion means the type of conversion commonly and traditionally
used by the public. The words built by traditional conversion are recorded in
dictionaries. The examples mentioned above are all cases of traditional conversion.
Occasional conversion refers to the individual use of conversion in special situations,
occasions, to express one’s idea vividly, humorously, etc. The words built by
occasional conversion are individually coinage and of course not present in
dictionaries: for instance, when a person keeps saying: “Hello – dear everybody.” We
can also make it a noun: “I am tired of his “hello – dear.”
Partial conversion is the building of some nouns from verbs or adjectives. These
nouns usually go with verbs like “have, take, make” to form verbal phrases. They are
not used quite independently:
e.g.: Have a look / talk / smoke etc.
Give a ring / kick / blow etc.
42
Some other nouns are used only in idiomatic phrases:
e.g.: To be in the know; in the long run; of Australian make.
Partial conversion also mention to the building of some nouns from adjectives. These
adjectives usually go with ‘the’ and are not inflected for the plural and in general can
not be used in the possessive case. They do not undergo morphological changes.
4. Clipping
Clipping is a process whereby a new word is created by extracting a piece from a
polysyllabic word or phrase.
In all cases, a clipped form has the same meaning as the longer form from which it is
obtained. In contemporary English, we are inordinately fond of clipped forms. We
have gym from gymnasium, porn from pornography, flu from influenza, etc...As these
examples show, any convenient part of a longer word may be clipped. Even
discontinuous pieces can be clipped, such as sci-fi for science fiction, sitcom for
situation comedy, biopic for biographical picture, and British maths for mathematics
(American: math). This process, which seems especially popular among students, has
yielded forms such as prof for professor, ad for advertisement. A number of such
clipped forms have been accepted in general usage: doc, auto, lab, bike, burger, flu,
and fridge. The most common clipped forms occur in names such as Liz, Ron, Kathy,
and Lyn.
Clipping can be classified according to the ways by which words are shortened:
- Initial clipping: omnibus, aeroplane, periwig, ElizaBeth,
- Final clipping: laboratory, examination, advertisement, Ronaldo, Phillips,
- Initio-final clipping: refrigerator, influenza, detective, ELizabeth,
- Medial clipping: mathematics, spectacles, Valentine-day,
- Elliptico-conversional clipping (phrasal clipping): this is a special case in which
there is a combination of ellipsis, conversion and clipping: popular music, public
house, permanent wave, preliminary examination
A clipped form is not abbreviation. It is genuine lexical item, just like any other lexical
items, and it is unusual in no way apart fro its origin.
A clipped form accepts the grammatical inflections which are typical of its word class.
For example, nouns obtained by clipping can be pluralized: gyms, fridges, phones,
buses.
A clipped form can enter into compounds like any other lexical item: gym shoes, porn
star, fridge magnet, phone book. In other cases, the longer form would be abnormal or
impossible in the same position: gymnasium shoes or pornography star.
43
Clipped forms are entered in dictionaries like other lexical items, and they are legal in
Scrabble.
Sometimes a clipped form displaces its original longer form. For example, the clipped
forms piano and bus have completely supplanted their sources, pianoforte and
omnibus.
Note the following pair of examples. As observed above, English has an abbreviation
Prof for Professor, as in the written form Prof. Chomsky. We also have a lexical item
prof, obtained from professor by clipping, as in The Physics Department plans to hire
two new profs. The abbreviation Prof. and the lexical item prof are not the same item
at all, and they should not be confused.
Clipped forms usually occur first in slang, argot, and then make their way into
standard English. Therefore, they tend to be used particularly in informal style.
Here is the list of clipped words:
Clipped Long Form Clipped Long Form
Word Word
pants pantaloons auto automobile
movie moving picture burger hamburger
prom promenade zoo zoological garden
chemist alchemist ad advertisement
gym gymnasium bike bicycle
limo limousine cab cabriolet
math mathematics clerk cleric
coed coeducational student varsity university
dorm dormitory lab laboratory
fan fanatic lunch luncheon
fridge refrigerator memo memorandum
exam examination mum chrysanthemum
flu influenza typo typographical error
gator alligator phone telephone
porn pornography vet Veteran/veterinarian
prof professor tec detective
bra brassiere vegan vegetarian

44
5. Acronymy
In contemporary English, we have become very fond of coining new words in the
following way: we begin with a phrase consisting of several words; we extract the
initial letters of the most important words in that phrase; and we put the resulting
sequence of letters together to form our new word – which almost always has the same
meaning as the original phrase. Here are a few examples:
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
UNO United Nations Organization
WHO World Health Organization
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
We may distinguish two kinds of outcome here, and there exist national differences in
terminology. Sometimes the resulting form can only be pronounced by spelling it out
letter by letter, such as BBC, FBI and UNO. In the British tradition, a formation of this
kind is an initialism. In other cases the resulting form can be pronounced like an
ordinary word as with WHO, UNICEF and NATO. In the British tradition, a formation
of this kind is an acronym.
However, in the American tradition, the label “acronyms” is applied to all such
formations without distinction, and the term “initialism” is not used.
There is a further trans-Atlantic difference. In all varieties of English, initialism like
BBC and FBI are written entirely in capital letters. The Americans also write most
acronyms entirely in capitals, and so they write NATO and AIDS. But the British
commonly write these things with only an initial capital, and the usual British forms
are Nato and Aids.
But not all acronyms are written with capitals. Some acronyms have become perfectly
ordinary lexical items, and they behave accordingly. For example, the phrases self
contained underwater breathing apparatus and light amplification by the stimulated
emission of radiation have given rise to the acronyms scuba and laser. Both of these
are ordinary English lexical items, entirely unremarkable apart from their origins.
The formation of laser illustrates the canonical pattern of information, in which small
grammatical words are ignored in constructing the acronym. However, many
acronyms are deliberately constructed in a non-canonical manner, in order to obtain a
result which can be easily pronounced. A good example is radar, from radio detection
and ranging.

45
An initialism or an acronym is a lexical item. An acronym does not differ from any
other lexical item, except perhaps in its unusual written form. An initialism has both
unusual written form and an unusual pronunciation, but otherwise it is an ordinary
lexical item.
Initialisms are sometimes confused with abbreviations, but they are not abbreviations.
First, an initialism always has its own pronunciation, distinct from the pronunciation of
the longer form which it presents. Abbreviations do not usually have their own
pronunciations. Second, an initialism, being a lexical item, can appear in a structural
position in a sentence in which a lexical item is appropriate. For example, we can say
or write the BBC’s decision, in which the initialism BBC bears the possessive suffix -
‘s, but no abbreviation can behave like this. We may occasionally encounter a written
form such as the sgt’s weapon, but this is not ordinary English orthography: it is an
example of shorthand.
In short, acronymy is the process of creating a word by shortening a string of words,
using the initial sounds or letters. The words formed by this way are called acronyms.
New acronyms are freely built, especially the name of an organization or a scientific
expression. Some examples of acronyms include AIDS for acquired immune deficiency
syndrome, NASA for National Aeronautics and Space administration, radar for radio
detecting and ranging, and snafu for situation normal all fouled up. Where the
combined initial letters follow the pronunciation patterns of English, the string can be
pronounced as a word, such as NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). However,
if it happens to be unpronounceable, then each letter is sounded out separately (RFI for
run batted in, UNH for University of New Hampshire, NFL for National Football
League). In other cases, even if the combined initials can be pronounced, it may be
customary to sound out each letter, as in NIV for New International Version (of the
Bible) or UCLA for the University of California at Los Angeles.
Some acronyms are slang or are at least relatively Informal (PhysEd, for physical
education, for example), but many, such as sonar, the Delmarva peninsula, and OPEC,
are now Standard English. The CAT in CAT scan stands for computerized axial
tomography and is a convenient abbreviation of a long, low-frequency technological
term. These days we seldom establish a new organization without creating for it a
phrasal name that yields an easily recognizable and perhaps additionally instructive
acronym: for example, MADD for Mothers against Drunk Driving or NOW for the
National Organization for Women. One problem: those who use an acronym may
forget what its letters stand for. Probably few of us recall the exact phrase that gave us
radar ( radio detecting and ranging.); laser ( light amplification by stimulated
emission of radiation.

46
 LIST OF ACRONYMYMS
I. COMMON WORLD ORGANIZATIONS
UNITED NATIONS SYSTEMS
UN/UNO United Nations/ United Nations Organization
GA General Assembly
SC Security Council
ECOSOC Economic and Social Council
TC Trusteeship Council
IC International Court of Justice
OTHER ORGANIZATIONS OF UNITED NATIONS
UNEP United Nations Environment Program
UNDP United Nations Development Program
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner Refugees
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNFPA United Nations Fund for Population Activities
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
UNIDO United Nations Industrial Development
UNITAR United Nations Institute for Training and Research
WFC World Food Council
WFP World Food Program
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
UPU Universal Postal Union
ITU International Telecommunication Union
WB World Bank
IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
ILO International Labor Organization
IDA International Development Association
IFC International Finance Corporation
IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development
IMF International Monetary Fund
UNESCO United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization

47
FAO Food and Agricultural Organization
ICAO International Civil Aviation Organization
WMO World Meteorological Organization
IMCO Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
WHO World Health Organization
REGIONAL SOCIAL ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
ESCAP Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific
ECWA Economic Commission for Western Asia
ECE Economic Commission for Europe
OAS Organization of American States
ORGANIZATIONS AND PROGRAMS FOR ASIA & THE PACIFIC
ADB Asian Development Bank
RCTT Regional Centre for Transfer of Technology
APDC Asian and Pacific Development Centre
CIRDAP Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific
TC Typhoon Committee
CCOP Committee for Coordination for Mineral Resources in Asian Offshore
Areas
AIT Asian Institute of Technology
AIBD Asian Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS OF DEMOCRATICS
WFTU World Federation of Trade Union
WPC World Peace Council
WIDF Women's International Democratic Youth
WFDY World Federation of Democratic Youth
IUS International Union of Students
IADL International Association of Democratic Lawyers
OIJ Organizational of International Journalists
AAPSO Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization
AAWA Afro-Asian Writer's Association

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OTHER INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND COUNTRIES
AL Arab League
ASEAN Association of South-East Asian Nations
ANZUS Australia New Zealand US Pact
CENTO Central Treaty Organization
AFLCIO American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization
W.C.C World Council of Churches
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
EEC European Economic Community
EU European Union
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
OAU Organization of African Unity
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
SWAPO South West Africa People's Organization
PLO Palestinian Liberation Organization
II. OTHER ACRONYMS
AA Automobile Association
AAA American Automobile Association
ABC American Broadcasting Company
AD Anno Domini
ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line
am Ante meridiem
ATM Automated teller machine
BA Bachelor of Arts
BBC British Broadcasting Cooperation
BC Before Christ
BSc Bachelor of Science
CAE Certificate in Advanced English
CD Compact disc
CD-I Compact disc interactive
CD-R Compact disc recordable

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CD-ROM Compact disc read-only-memory
CD-RW Compact disc rewritable
CELTA Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CID Criminal Investigation Department
CNN Cable News Network
CPE Certificate of Proficiency in English
DELTA Diploma in English Language
DIY Do-it-yourself
DJ Disc jockey
D.O.B Date of Birth
DVD Digital video disc
EAP English for Academic Purpose
ELT English Language Teaching
ESL English as a second Language
ESOL English for Speakers of other languages
ESP English for specific purposes
ETA Estimated time of arrival
ETD Estimated time of departure
FA Football Association
FC Football Club
FCE First Certificate in English
FIFA Federation International de Football Association
GCSE General Certificate of Secondary Education
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GMT Greenwich Mean Time
GNP Gross National Product
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
ICT Information & communication technology
IELTS International English Language Testing System
IQ Intelligent quotient

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IT Information Technology
MA Master of Arts
MBA Master of Business Administration
MC Master of Ceremonies
MP Member of Parliament
MSc Master of Science
PC Personal Computer
PET Preliminary English Test
PhD Doctor of Philosophy
PIN Personal Identification Number
PM Prime Minister
pm post meridiem
REM Rapid eye movement
SARS Severe acute respiratory syndrome
TEFL Teaching English as a Foreign language
TESL Teaching English as a second language
TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of other languages
TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign language
TOEIC Test of English for International Communication
UEFA Union of European Football Association
UV Ultraviolet
VAT Value added tax
VCR Video Cassette Recorder
VHF Very high frequency
VHS Video Home System
VIP Very Important Person
VP Vice-President
VSO Voluntary Service Overseas
WC Water closet
WTO World Trade Organization
WWW World wide web

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6. Blending
Blending is the fusion of words into one. These words are called blends that are
created from parts of two already existing lexical items. Well-known examples of
blends include motel from motorist hotel, brunch for breakfast and lunch, selectric
from select and electric, telethon from telephone and marathon, dancercise from
dance and exercise, and chortle, coined by Lewis Carroll as a blend of chuckle and
snort. Usually, the first part of one word and the last part of the second one are
combined to form a blend. Sometimes, though, only the first word is clipped, as in
perma-press for ‘permanent-press’.
"Smirting happens when two people, smoking outside, fall to flirting, and discover that
they have more in common than simply nicotine. In Ireland, where the term originated
after the ban in 2004, there is even evidence of non-smokers joining the smoky throng
outside because the atmosphere there is more flirtatious.
Recently many magazines and television programs such as US Weekly, People
Magazine, Entertainment Tonight, and Access Hollywood use portmanteaux of the
names of celebrity couples. The original was "Bennifer" (originally for Ben Affleck
and Jennifer Lopez, later revived as "Bennifer 2" or "Bennifer Jr." for Affleck and
Jennifer Garner, who are now married); other widely used names include Tomkat (for
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes), Brangelina (for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), and
Vaughniston (for Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston). In politics, "Billary" was used
during the early years of President Bill Clinton's administration regarding the active
role played by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Many TV shows' fans tend to do this with the names of their favorite couples like
"Luby" for Abby Lockhart and Luka Kovac from ER, "Clois" for Lois Lane and Clark
Kent from Smallville, "Spuffy" for Buffy and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or
in The Office "Ram" for Pam and Roy, "R. Kelly" for Ryan and Kelly, "Jam" for Jim
and Pam and "Dwangela" for Dwight and Angela. This also happens in other fandoms,
such as the Harry Potter fandom with "Harmony" for Harry and Hermione or "Heron"
for Hermione and Ron. Wikipedia is a blend made from wiki and encyclopedia, and
Wiktionary, one of Wikipedia's sister projects, is a blend of wiki and dictionary.
Elsewhere, Nabisco is a blend of the initial syllables of National Biscuit Company.
Most blends are formed by one of the following methods:
1. The beginning of one word is added to the end of the other. For example, brunch is
a blend of breakfast and lunch. This is the most common method of blending.
2. The beginnings of two words are combined. For example, cyborg is a blend of
cybernetic and organism.

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 3. One complete word is combined with part of another word. For example, Wikipedia
is a blend of wiki and encyclopedia.
4. Two words are blended around a common sequence of sounds. For example, the
word Californication, from a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is a blend of
California and fornication.
5. Multiple sounds from two component words are blended, while mostly preserving
the sounds' order. Poet Lewis Carroll was well known for these kinds of blends. An
example of this is the word slithy, a blend of lithe and slimy. This method is
difficult to achieve and is considered a sign of Carroll's verbal wit.
When two words are combined in their entirety, the result is considered a compound
word rather than a blend. For example, bagpipe is a compound, not a blend, of bag and
pipe.
Here is the list of some blends.
• agitprop (agitation + propaganda)
• alcopop (alcohol + pop)
• bash (bat + mash)
• biopic (biography + picture)
• Breathalyzer (breath + analyzer)
• camcorder (camera + recorder)
• chexting (cheating + texting)
• clash (clap + crash)
• cosmeceutical (cosmetic + pharmaceutical)
• docudrama (documentary + drama)
• electrocute (electricity + execute)
• emoticon (emote + icon)
• faction (fact + fiction)
• fanzine (fan + magazine)
• flare (flame + glare)
• flirtationship (flirting + relationship)
• glimmer (gleam + shimmer)
• Globish (global + English)
• guitarthritis (guitar + arthritis)
• infotainment (information + entertainment)
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• palimony (pal + alimony)
• pornacopia (pornography + cornucopia)
• pulsar (pulse + quasar)
• sexcapade (sex + escapade)
• sexploitation (sex + exploitation)
• sitcom (situation + comedy)
• slanguage (slang + language)
• smash (smack + mash)
• sportscast (sports + broadcast)
• stagflation (stagnation + inflation)
• staycation (stay home + vacation)
• telegenic (television + photogenic)
• textpectation (text message + expectation)
• workaholic (work + alcoholic)
7. Back-formation
Back-formation is a process whereby a word whose form is similar to that of a derived
form undergoes a process of deaffixation. Resurrect was original form in this way
from resurrection. Other back-formations in English include enthuse from enthusiasm,
donate form donation, and orient or orientate from orientation. A major source of
back-formations in English has been words that end with –en or –er and have
meanings involving the notion of an agent such as editor, peddler, swindler, and
stoker. Because hundreds of words ending in these affixes are the result of affixation,
it was assumed that these words too had been formed by adding –er or –or to a verb.
By the process of back-formation, this led to the conclusion that edit, peddle, swindle,
and stoke exist as simple verbs.
Back-formation continues to produce new words in modern English. Two relatively
recent products of this process are the verbs liaise from liaison and self-destruct from
self-destruction. The even more striking back-formation attrit, from attrition, was
often used by military officials during the recent Gulf War to refer to the decimation of
Iraqi troops (as in The enemy is 50 percent attritted). It is not difficult to imagine a
new instance of back-formation in English yielding forms such as cush (from cushy),
cessant (from incessant), sipid (from insipid), hairdress (from hairdresser), burgle
(from burglar), and so on. Indeed the verb tuit, a back-formation from intuition, was
recently heard on the radio!

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Most compound verbs with the formation of a noun and a verb are formed by
backformation:
house-keeper → to housekeep
gate-keeper → to gatekeep
goal-keeper → to goalkeep
typewriter → to typewrite
babysitter → to babysit

8.Sound imitation (onomatopoeic words)

Sound imitation is the way to form words by imitating sounds produced by actions,
things and so on.
There are some semantic groups of words formed by means of sound imitation:
• Sounds produced by human beings, such as: to whisper, to giggle, to mumble, to
sneeze, to whistle etc.
• Sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, such as: to hiss, to buzz, to bark, to
moo, to twitter etc.
• Sounds produced by nature and objects, such as: to splash, to rustle, to clatter, to
bubble, to ding-dong, to tinkle etc.
All languages have words that have been created to sound like the thing to which they
refer. Examples of such onomatopoeic words in English include buzz, hiss.
In rhetoric, linguistics and poetry, onomatopoeia is a figure of speech that employs a
word, or occasionally, a grouping of words, that imitates, echoes, or suggests the
object it is describing, such as "bang" or "click", or animal noises such as "moo",
"quack" or "meow".
Sometimes onomatopoeic words have a very tenuous relationship with the object they
describe. The sound a dog makes is bow-wow (or woof-woof) in English, gaf-gaf in
Russian, ouah ouah in French, and wang-wang in Chinese.
Some animals are named after the sounds they make, especially birds such as the
cuckoo and chickadee. This practice is especially common in certain languages such
as Māori and therefore in names for birds borrowed from these languages.

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Everyday sounds
List of Onomatopoeias
Some other very common English-language examples include:
• Bam • Boom • Cuckoo • Ding-Dong
• Bang • Burp • Hiccup • Mumble
• Beep • Boosh • Hiss • Murmur
• Boing • Buzz • Hush • Ping pong
• Bonk • Clang • Ka-boom • Pop
• Zap
Human sounds
Giggle, chuckle, hiccup, cough, mumble, murmur, scratch, scream
Machine sounds
Aside from the above, machines are usually described with:
• Automobile - "honk" or "beep-beep" for the horn, "vroom" for the engine,
"screech" for the tires
• Train - "clickety-clack" crossing rail splices (when tracks were individual
sections, not welded), "choo-choo" for the steam pistons, "woo-woo" for the
whistle.
• Cash register - "ka-ching"/"ca-ching"/"cha-ching"/"che-ching"
• Jet - "whoosh"
• Electric Guitar Power Chord - "kerrang"
Animal sounds
For animal sounds, these words are typically used in English:
• Bird - "chirp", "tweet"
o Chicken - "cluck", "cackle", "bawk", "bwak", "buck", "puckuck"
o Crow - "caw"
o Dove - "coo", "roo-coo"
o Duck - "quack"
o Owl - "whoo", "hoo" or "hoot"
o Rooster - "cock-a-doodle-doo", "tiktilaok" (PH)
o Turkey - "gobble"
• Insects - "buzz"
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 o Bee - "buzz", "bzzz"
• Mammals
o Lion - "roar", "rawr"
o Cow - "moo"
o Dog - "woof", "ruff", "arf", "grrr", "bow-wow" (see bark)
o Dolphin - "click"
o Donkey - "hee-haw"
o Horse - "neigh", "whinny", "snort"
o Human - "prattle", "blab", "blah blah", "murmur", "brouhaha", "bar bar",
"yadda yadda", "ra ra ra", "squee", "sarumph"
o Mouse/Rat - "squeak"
o Pig - "oink", "wee-wee-wee", "squeal", "soo-wee"
o Sheep - "baa"
o Wolf - "howl", "aroo"
• Reptiles
o Snake - "hiss", "sss"

• Amphibians
o Frog - "ribbit", "croak" (Note: many species of frog make different calls.)
o Toad - "tibbur"/"tibbir"
Some of these words are used both as nouns and as verbs.
9. Words from names
The creativity of word formation is sometimes possible from proper names of
individuals or places. Scientific terms such as newton, ohm, ampe(re), watt, curie,
talet, Pythagorean proposition, and fahrenheit provide examples of words derived
from the names of individuals associated with the things to which they refer. Brand
names sometimes become so widely used that they are accepted as generic terms
(kleenex for ‘facial tissue’ or xerox for ‘photocopy’).
Some typical examples of new words from proper names are:
sandwich: name of the Earl of Sandwich, an English man who liked playing
cards, asking for some roast meat between two pieces of bread to eat while playing
cards.
hamburger: food originated from a city in German
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EXERCISES
1. These verbs are back-formations. Write the words from which they are
formed. Complete the table given below:
1 bootleg ← bootlegger
2 typewrite
3 coronate
4 resurrect ← resurrection
5 baby-sit
6 advance-register ← advance-registration
7 laze
8 jell
9 escalate
10 reminisce ← reminiscence
11 orate ← oration
12 donate
13 televise

2. In the light of compound nouns and noun phrases, explain the ambiguity of the
following sentences:
(1) The firemen burst into the smoking room.
(2) He has two French teachers.
3. The words in column 2 have been created from the corresponding word in
column 1. Indicate the word formation process responsible for the creation of
each one in column 2.
Column 1 Column2
a) Automation automate
b) Humid humidifier
c) Love, seat loveseat
d) Envelope envelop
e) Typographical error typo
f) Aerobics, marathon aerobathon
g) Act deactivate
h) Curve, ball curve ball

58
 i) Perambulator pram
j) (a) comb comb (your hair)
k) beef, buffalo beefalo
l) random access memory RAM
m) megabyte meg
n) teleprinter, exchange telex
o) influenza flu
4. Name the word formation process of each of the following words:
1. doorknob: ____________________ 6. radar: ____________________
2. telly: _______________________ 7. chunnel: __________________
3. biopic: ______________________ 8. forklift: ___________________
4. porter: ______________________ 9. ESL: _____________________
5. silence v (Tn): ________________ 10. televise: __________________

59
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Aronoff, M. & Fudeman, K. (2005). What is Morphology? 2nd edn. Willey
Blackwell.
2. Arnold, I.V (1986). The English Word. Moscow.
3. Bloomfield, L. (1935). Language. London.
4. Fromkin, V. and Rodman, R. (1993). An Introduction to Language. 5th edn.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich college Publishers.
5. Greenbaum, S. (1996). The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press.
6. Jackson, H. (1980). Analyzing English. Pergamon Institute of English .
7. Lyons, J. (1969). Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge University
Press.
8. Matthews, P.H. (1991), Morphology, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
9. Quirk, R.et al (1973). A University Grammar of English. Longman Group Ltd.
10. Richards, J.; Platt, J. and Weber, H. (1987). Longman Dictionary of Applied
Linguistics Longman.
11. Sapir, E. (1925). Language – An Introduction to the Study of Speech. London.
12. Stageberg, N.C (1965). An Introductory English Grammar. Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, Inc.
13. Hoàng Tất Trường (1993). Basic English Lexicology.
14. Lê Văn Sự (2003). Cẩm nang Ngữ âm-Từ vựng-Cú pháp Tiếng Anh. NXB Văn hóa
thông tin.

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 QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

MORPHOLOGY

Quy Nhon, 2021

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 Contents
Introduction to Morphology ......................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1 Morphemes................................................................................................................. 3
Chapter 2 Morphophonemic changes .................................................................................. 21
Chapter 3 Immediate Constituents in Morphology .................................................... 27
Chapter 4 Words ......................................................................................................................... 30
Chapter 5 Word Formation .................................................................................................. 37

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