1. The word as the basic unit of the language.

The M. is the smallest indivisible meaningful language unit. Unlike the word the. M. can’t function in the sentence along as the word does. A M. is a part of the word. The word in its term combines with other words to form a sentence.

2. The concept of the m. Lexical and grammatical m. The two aspects of the word analysis: on the morphemic and derivational levels.

There’re lexical and grammatical M.:

1)heart-heartless (L. forms a new word), 2)hearty-heartier (G. new gram. form)

L.M.: root, affixation M. (suffixes [after the root], prefixes [before the root])

end – endlessly – unending

The root is the main part of the word, its semantic centre. There are also free and bound M. F.M. coincides with independent words. All roots are F.M. Bound M. don’t coincide with separate words –ly, un- are B.M. Less is a semi-free M. It’s a part of the word but at the same time we can meet less as a separate word. All derivational (словообраз.) M. are bound M.

The M. structure of the word may be studied on 2 levels: 1) morphemic and 2) derivational.

The main unit of the M is a M. We want to know ho many M. are in the word and what type of the M. is. Endless – end (root and it’s free) + less (derivational, semi-free M.).

The main unit of derivational level is a stem (основа). On this level we want to find out how the word was made, its word-building pattern (образец). F.ex., the word endless was made by adding a derivational affix to the stem (root) of the word. Stems and words are classified into the following groups: 1)simple (root) words [boy, girl], 2)derivatives (производные) – consists of a root and one or more several affixes: teacher, 3)compound (сложные) words with consists of two or stems: boy-friend, snow-fall, 4)compound-derivative (сложно-производные) formed by the process of derivation and composition: pen-holder.

Word formation is the process of forming word from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic pattern: to drive + er = driver(V + suff. er = N)

3. Affixation. Classification of affixes. Productivity of affixes.

Af, is forming a word by combining a stem and derivational af.: luck-lucky-unlucky. As a rule prefixes change only the meaning of the word, the part of speech remains the same. As for suffixes, they only make up a new word which belongs to a different part of speech. Derivational aff. are classified according to the following principle: etymological, lexico-grammatical 9parts-of-speech principle), semantic.

According to the 1^st one aff. are divided into native (исконные) and borrowed ones: helpful – native, revolution – comes from French. If a word consists of a native and a borrowed M. called a hybrid: beautiful (Romanic (borrowed) + Germanic (native)

According to the 2^nd principle aff. can be noun, adj., verb, adv.-forming. –ish is a productive, native, adj.-forming suff.

According to 3^rd every aff. has its own lexical meaning. F.ex.: Everyone took part in decoration of the hall. The decoration was beautiful. In the 1^st the meaning is that of process. In the 2^nd the suff. denotes to the result of the process.

Productivity is a historical category. Word-buildingmeans (словообраз.ср.) change with the historical development of the language. Productive aff. are those which are able to form new words at a certain historical period. –tion, -ful are productive while –en (shorten) was productive in O.E. Productivity must not be mixed up with frequency of usage: some aff. can be non-productive now but frequently used. Toothsome=tasty.