Pavlk2017EnglishLexicologyI-1

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3 Structure of words

3.1 Morphemes and their types

Words consist of morphemes. Morphemes can be defined as the smallest meaningful units into which words can be divided. Words can be monomorphemic (e.g. run, hand, nice, etc.) or poly-morphemic (e.g. like-ly, famous, un-able, etc.). Sometimes, morphemes may have different realizations in different words. Such realizations are called allomorphs, e.g. fame – famous; books /s/ – mugs /z/ – busses /ɪz/; wolf – wolves; omit – omission, etc.

Morphemes can be divided into free – bound, root – affixational, and inflectional – derivational.

Free morphemes are units which can occur as separate words (e.g. rock, wait, pretty, etc.), while bound morphemes cannot (e.g. enlarge, re-write, dangerous etc.). A root morpheme is the base form of a word which remains when all affixes are removed (e.g. heading, taller, omission, etc.). Affixational morphemes, on the other hand, are normally non-autonomous units which are added to roots to create new words and word-forms (e.g. nearly, overweight, abnormal, bats, etc.). Finally, inflectional morphemes only signal grammatical relationships and do not change the word-class of the roots to which they are attached (e.g. sings, singing, worked, etc.), whereas derivational morphemes always change the lexical meaning of a word and usually also its word-class (e.g. disagree, teacher, restriction, etc.).

EXERCISES

1 Form different word classes from the following root words by adding affixes. Then circle all allomorphs and transcribe them.

(OALD, CALD, LDCE)

2 Read this text. Mark all affixational morphemes.

Blunder as BBC Breakfast shows escaped gorilla instead of Nicola Sturgeon

Mark Molloy, The Telegraph, October 2016

There was a slightly awkward moment on BBC Breakfast this morning when footage of the gorilla that escaped at London Zoo was shown during a segment on Nicola Sturgeon. “We’re going to be joined by Scottish First

Minister Nicola Sturgeon,” explained Munchetty as Kumbuka the gorilla popped up on screen. Her co-presenter Charlie Stayt then apologised for the error: “I’m sorry we’ve … err… very clearly run the wrong pictures over that particular sequence. My apologies there.

“The story we will be talking about later, as you’ve probably guessed from the pictures, is about the escaped gorilla at London Zoo.

“We will be speaking to one of the gorilla keepers from the zoo. That’s coming up a little later on.”

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3 Underline affixational morphemes in the following words. Determine whether they are free or bound.

3.2 Inflection versus derivation

Inflection can be defined as a grammatical process in which at least one root is combined with an affix (in English it is always a suffix) to produce different grammatical forms of words. Adding an inflectional suffix changes neither the word class of the root, nor its lexical meaning. For example, adding -s to a verb does not lexically change the verb in any way – he runs, she works, it seems, etc. Derivation, on the other hand, is a lexical process which creates new words by adding derivational affixes (prefixes or suffixes) to at least one root. For instance, adding the suffix -ness to an adjective will change the word class as well as the lexical meaning of the root – blindness, happiness, goodness, etc.

Certain suffixes, especially -s, -ing, -ed, and -en, can sometimes function as inflectional suffixes and sometimes as derivational suffixes. Consider the following examples:

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In these cases, it is the context of the sentence that determines whether a particular suffix is inflectional or derivational.

The suffixes -s, -ing, -ed, and -en are derivational in the following cases:

1.When adding them to the root changes the word class of the lexeme: to work

(v) – the works (n); to build (v) – a building (n); to cook (v) – cooked (adj), etc.

2.When adding them to the root changes the lexical meaning of the word: the works of art (e.g. paintings) = inflection – the works (factory) = derivation; vague notions (ideas) = inflection – notions (small items used for sewing) = derivation, etc.

3.Lexemes with the suffix -s which do not have a singular form with the same meaning: coffee grounds (sediment), hotel grounds (park, garden), give sb the willies (nervous feeling), take great pains (effort), etc.

EXERCISES

1 Look at these sentences. Determine whether the suffixes are inflectional or derivational. Distinguish between regular and irregular inflection/derivation.

GROUND

(a)He retired from the job on health grounds.

(b)The snowstorm meant that all planes were grounded.

(c)We went for a walk around the hospital grounds.

(d)My parents grounded me for a week.

(e)This course will give drivers a grounding in car maintenance.

BREAK

(a)She dropped the plate and it broke into pieces.

(b)He’s always broke at the end of the month.

(c)We’ve had a few bad breaks along the way.

(d)We’ll bring you all the latest breaking news as it happens.

(e)My watch has broken.

(f)Charles is always breaking things.

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(g)Her nerves were at breaking point.

(h)Her voice breaks as she talks about her missing children.

(i)He was a broken man after the failure of his business.

(OALD, CALD, LDCE)

2 Determine the function of the suffix -s in the underlined words (inflectional or derivational). Translate them into Slovak.

(a)

Add the lamb chops and garlic and cook over moderately high heat. The dog sat licking its chops.

The woman hit me right in the chops.

Has he got the chops to carry off such a big role?

(b)

She made several interesting points in the article. The train rattled as it went over the points.

Tact is not one of her strong points.

(c)

She bought two steam irons last week.

It was common practice for the prisoners to be clapped in irons.

(d)

This movie is worth seeing for its special effects alone. I could feel the effects of the thin mountain air.

The insurance policy covers all baggage and personal effects.

(e)

This word has many shades of meaning.

She was wearing a black leather jacket and shades. The lamps all had matching purple shades.

(OALD, CALD, LDCE)

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3 Read this text. Circle all suffixes and determine whether they are inflectional or derivational.

Fraudsters take six seconds to steal bank card details

Mark Bridge, The Times, December 2016

Criminals can find the card number, expiry date and security code for a Visa debit or credit card in only six seconds using computer-powered guesswork, researchers have warned.

Experts at Newcastle University said that fraudsters could figure out the complete details starting with as little as the first six digits of the card number — which cover the bank and the card type, and so are the same for every card from a single provider.

They said the “frighteningly easy” attack could explain the raid on Tesco Bank, when about 9,000 customers had a total of £2.5 million taken from their accounts.

The technique involves a so-called distributed guessing attack, which is designed to get round security features supposed to stop fraud.

3.3 Word-formation

Word-formation is a process of building new lexemes. This often means combining morphemes already present in a language. In this process, a wordformative element is added to a word-formative base. The word-formative base normally consists of at least one root morpheme (free or bound), whereas the word-formative element can be a root or a derivational morpheme.

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The analysis of words from the point of view of word-formation will therefore always be concerned with determining two parts – the base and the wordformative element (inflectional morphemes do not create new lexemes and they are thus disregarded). The morphological analysis of words, on the other hand, is concerned with finding all possible morphemes of the word.

Morphological analysis: writers → write+er+s, likelier → like+ly+er Word-formation analysis: writers → write+er(s), likelier → like+ly(er)

The word-formative base can be simple (friend-ly), derivative (dis-interest-ed), or compound (gentle-man-ly).

It should be noted, however, that there are other ways to create new words – other word-formation processes. For example, new words may be formed without adding any element (e.g. an eye → to eye), by taking away a part of the word (e.g. photograph → photo), by changing the vowels and/or consonants of the root morpheme (e.g. blood → bleed), etc.

EXERCISES

1 Analyse these words from the morphemic and word-formative points of view.

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2 Form as many lexemes as you can by adding the affixes en-, un-, -less, and - ish, to the following bases. Explain their meaning.

3 Analyse these words. Underline the base and determine whether it is simple, derivative, or compound.

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 Now form 5 meaningful sentences using at least 3 of the above words in each sentence, e.g.

1._______________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

2._______________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

3._______________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

4._______________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

5._______________________________________________________________

 Chapter 3 – Further reading:

Bauer 1983: chapters 2.5, 2.6, and 2.10 Carstairs-McCarthy 2002: chapter 3 Finegan 2008: chapter 2

Ginzburg et al. 1979: chapter 4 Haspelmath and Sims 2010: chapter 2 Huddleton and Pullum 2002: chapter 19.1.2

Jackson and Zé Amvela 2007: chapters 4.2 – 4.4 Kvetko 2009: chapters 3.1 and 3.2

Lančarič 2016: chapters 5.1.1 and 5.1.2

Lipka 1992: chapter 2.3.1

Plag 2003: chapters 1.2 and 1.3 Singleton 2000: chapters 3.2 – 3.4

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4 Primary types of word-formation

We can distinguish between primary (major), secondary (minor), and marginal word-formation types, according to how many new lexemes can be formed by a particular word-formation process (i.e. how productive such a process is). The most productive word-formation processes in English are affixation, compounding, and conversion.

4.1 Affixation

Affixation is a productive word-formation process in which new lexemes are produced by adding derivational affixes to at least one root lexeme. We distinguish between prefixation and suffixation.

In the process of prefixation, a derivational morpheme is placed before the word-formative base. Most prefixes do not change the word class of the roots they are attached to, but there are some exceptions, e.g. sleep → asleep, friend → befriend, slave → enslave, etc. In all cases of prefixation, however, new lexemes are built.

Suffixation, on the other hand, is a process of adding a derivational morpheme after the word-formative base. Suffixes usually change both the lexical meaning of the word-formative base and its word class. There are some, however, which do not change the word class, e.g. king → kingdom, mountain

→ mountaineer, child → childhood, etc.

There are special types of affixes which, unlike most affixes, can function as free morphemes, i.e. they can be used as regular words. Such affixes are called semi-affixes or affixoids. For example, words like over, super, proof, man, etc. can also be used as prefixes/suffixes: overweight, supernatural, bulletproof, postman, etc.

EXERCISES

1 Add a negative prefix to form an acceptable word. Choose from the following: un-, dis-, in-, im-, il-, ir-, non-, de-, mis-.