3.4 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/” (id. at 140), which was subsequently dropped in the course of the language’s development.

Old SingularOld PluralUmlautLoss of Plural SuffixOther Changes

gos gos-i gжs-i gжsges-gis-geese

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

break

speak

bite

fallbroke

spoke

bit

fellbroken

spoken

bitten

fallen

3.5 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.

Suppletion in some other languages:

LanguageBasic FormSuppletive Form

Russian

Russian

German

German

French

German

good |horosho

bad |ploho

good | gut

have |haben

have |avoir

is |istbetter |lutshe

worse |huzhe

better |besser

had |hatte

had | eu

are |sind

3.6 Reduplication

Reduplication is a morphological process which marks a grammatical or semantic contrast by repeating all or part of the base to which it applies. Repetition of the whole base is called a full reduplication, and repetition of a part of the base is called partial reduplication.

Some Examples of Full Reduplication

LanguageBaseReduplicated Form

English

English

English

English

Tatar

Tatar

Russian

Turkish

Turkish

Indonesianwin

lose

dum

go

quickly |tiz

slowly | жkren

quickly |bistro

quickly |c?abuk

slowly |java?

man |ora?a win-win situation

a lose-lose situation

dum-dum bullets

go-go dancers

tiz-tiz

жkren- жkren

bistro-bistro

c?abuk- c?abuk

java?- java?

ora?- ora? (all sorts of men)

Some Examples of Partial Reduplication

LanguageBaseReduplicated Form

English

ding

chat

dally

cross

dangle

flam

knack

scrap

waddle

will

wriggleding-dong

chit-chat

dilly-dally

criss-cross

dingle-dangle

flim-flam

knick-knack

scrip-scrap

widdle-waddle

willy-nilly

wriggle-wraggle

1. Word Formation

Word formation is the process of coining new words from existing ones. Each word-formation process will result in the production of a specific type of word. If we know these word-forming devices, it will be easier to study the different types of words that exist in the English language. In the discussion of word-formation processes, we shall use the terms which were already introduced in the previous chapters, e.g., free forms are forms which can stand alone; bound forms are those which cannot occur alone; stems are forms which carry the basic meaning of the word; affixes add the meaning to the word. If a stem consists of a single morpheme, it is called a root or a base. Roots constitute the core of words and carry their basic meaning. Stems and roots may be bound or free; however, affixes are always bound. Georgious Tserdanelis and Wai Yi Peggy Wong define the word formation process as “the systematic relationships between roots and words derived from them, on the one hand, and between a word and its varied inflected, i.e., grammatical forms, on the other” (2004, p.156). The most important word-formation processes are derivation, compounding, conversion, blending, backformation, clipping, acronyms, and stress and tone placement.