Inflection of Derived or Compound Words

Derived Form	Compound Form
kingdom+s professor+s achievement+s hospitalize+d activate+d clean+ed	baseball+s blackboard+s brother+s-in-law passer+sby babysit+s manhandle+d

The difference between functional and derivational affixes is the following: derivational affixes serve to supply the stem with components of lexical and lexico-grammatical meaning, and thus form different words, whereas a functional affix does not change either the grammatical category or the type of meaning found in the word to which it belongs.

The word to which the suffix –s is attached is still a noun and still has the same type of meaning. Similarly, the past tense suffix –ed, attached to the verb, does not change the grammatical category: played is still a verb, and it still retains its meaning; played still denotes an action, regardless of the tense of the verb.

In contrast, derivational affixes change the category and the meaning of the form. Derivational affixes serve to supply the stem with components of lexical and lexico-grammatical meaning, thus forming different words (derivational affixes will be discussed more in depth in the word-formation section). Consider the following examples:

4.2.6 Cliticization

Some morphemes act like words in terms of their meaning or function; however, they are unable to stand alone by themselves. These morphemes are called clitics (O’Grady, Archibald, Aronoff, & Rees-Miller, 2001, p.139). These elements should be attached to another word, which is called a host word. A good example in English is the contracted forms, e.g., I’m, he’s, we’ve, they’re, and others. Clitics which are attached to the end of the host are called enclitics, as the examples show. Clitics which are attached to the beginning of the host are called proclitics; they are not observed in the English language but are characteristic of French: Suzanne les voit (Suzanne them- sees). Clitics act like affixes because they cannot stand alone; however, they are members of a lexical category such as verbs, pronouns, or nouns.

4.2.7 Internal Change/Alternation

Internal change is the process which substitutes one non-morphemic part for another to mark a grammatical contrast. This is characteristic of irregular verbs and the plural form of some nouns, e.g., sing-sang-sung, sink-sank-sunk, goose-geese, foot-feet, man-men, and others. The term ablaut is used for vowel changes to mark grammatical contrast. However, for goose-geese and foot-feet, there is a different explanation. This type of change in English and other Germanic languages is called umlaut. The original vowel in the words goose and foot was “fronted under the influence of the front vowel in the old plural suffix /i/” (O’Grady, Archibald, Aronoff, & Rees-Miller, 2001, p. 140), which was subsequently dropped in the course of the language development.

Some verbs show both an alternation and the addition of an affix to one form:

4.2.8 Suppletion

Suppletion is a morphological process that replaces one morpheme with an entirely different morpheme to indicate a grammatical contrast. The examples of this phenomenon in English are the following: go-went-gone, good-better-best, bad-worse-worst, is-are, and others.

There are examples of suppletion in some other languages: