3. Morphological structure of complex words

If two or more morphemes combine to form a word, a morphological structure is created.

The structure reflects the way morphemes are related to each other (the order in which they have been combined) . It can be represented by bracketing or by tree diagrams.

Examples:

untouchable destabilize

[ un [ [ touch ] able ] ] [ de [ [ stabil ] ize ] ] d ]

touch – root,base (V) stabil - root,base (Adj)

[touch + able] - base (Adj) stabil+ize - base (V)

[ de [stabil + ize]] - base,stem (V)

root – a free morpheme (or free morpheme combination in compounds), the “core” of the word

base – that part of a word to which an affix is added ( derivational or inflectional)

stem - that part of a word to which inflectional affix is added

inter+nation+al+ism+s

[ [ [ inter + [ nation + al ] ] + ism ] + s ]

N

1. nation – root, base (N)

2. [nation+al.] - base (Adj)

3. [inter+ [nation+al]] - base (Adj)

4. [[inter+ [nation+al]] + ism] - stem, base

The structure given above is the correct structure. The structure is correct only if

each internal structure contained within a pair of brackets is a word in English.

Consider the alternative, incorrect analyses:

[[[[inter+nation]+al]+ism]+s] -- * internation is not an English word

[ [de+stabil]+ize] -- *destabil is not an English word

[[un + touch ] able] -- *untouch is not an English word

The way complex words are analyzed may change in time. The word hamburger when it was introduced into English was understood as :

hamburg (root) + er (derivational affix) ( from the German city of Hamburg)

It was later reanalyzed as:

ham + burger (compound root)

This gave rise to new words such as cheese+burger, fish+burger etc

4. Inflection in English

English is an analytical language (signals grammatical meanings primarily by function words or word order) and has only few inflectional endings (non zero morphs of inflectional morphemes):

nouns	Plural	books
nouns	Possessive	John’s
nouns (personal , interrogative and relative pronouns)	Accusative Case	him, her, them whom
verbs	Agreement	John sleeps
verbs	Past	worked
verbs	Progressive	is working
verbs	Perfect	has given/ worked
verbs	Passive	was beaten/killed
adjectives and adverbs	Comparative	taller, faster
adjectives and adverbs	Superlative	tallest, fastest

Inflection with zero morphs of inflectional morphemes and root alternation (suppletion)

mouse/mice

teeth/tooth

men/man

go/went

take/took

good/better