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1. M O R P H E M E S , W O R D C L A S S E S , A N D
M O R P H O L O G I C A L P R O C E S S E S
5.2 Morphology

2. Lexical and grammatical
morphemes

3. examples of roots that are bound morphemes
 -tain – hold
 -fer - bring
 -com – revel (Greek)
abstain, attain, contain, detain, entertain,
maintain, obtain, pertain, retain, sustain.
refer, infer, prefer, differ, prefer, offer.
comic, comedian, comedy, comical, sitcom, comically

4.  Nouns: How do nouns work in your LS? Are they gendered?
What are the morphemes that signify gender and/or plural
nouns?
 Verbs: Would you describe your LS as mostly regular or
irregular in terms of its verb paradigms? Explain with
examples. What verb forms give you the most trouble as a
language learner? Why?
 What types of modification and suppletion (as explained on
pages 137-9) occur in your LS? Give two examples (if
possible).
 What suffixes (or prefixes) can you think of in your LS that are
used to convert verbs, adjectives, or nouns, into other parts of
speech (-er: bake à baker, -ist: style à stylist, -ish: fool à
foolish). Does your LS have a lot of options for derivational
morphology?

5. Lexical morphemes?
 AKA content morphemes
 convey core meaning of a
word
 nouns
 verbs
 adjectives
 adverbs
 dog
 happy
 fast
 large
 sing
 duck
 funny

6. Grammatical morphemes
 AKA function
morphemes
 Express grammatical
relationships between
words in a sentence.
Often affixes indicating:
 tense
 plural
 possessive
 -s “dogs”
 -ed “walked”
 -ing “eating”
 -un “unhappy”
 -ful “beautiful”
 -ment

7. Word classes/parts of speech
C L A S S I F I C A T I O N B Y U S E

8. Nouns
 Nouns are one type of word class, or parts of
speech.
 Nouns are often called naming words, but also
includes abstract ideas. It is more useful to define the
class in relation to morphological patterns.
 For instance, all nouns and noun-phrases in English
can occur with the possessive ‘s (e.g., student’s,
James’s, children’s, the student in the corner’s).

9. What is a noun?
 Why are nouns harder than that?
 They can act as verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.

10. Adverbial nouns
 act as an adverb to modify the verb with an aspect of
time, distance, weight, or age.
 tomorrow
 I am leaving tomorrow.
 mile
 She can run four miles.
 dollar
 It is worth a dollar.

11. Adjective nouns
 When can a noun act like an adjective?
 mint
 mint tea
 race/sports
 race car
 ladies
 ladies room

12. Verbal nouns
 derived from a verb but has no verb-like properties
 Gerund:
 The movie is ending.
 Verbal noun:
 The movie has a stupid ending.

13. Flexibility of classes - conversion
 Words moving to a new class without modification:
 ask (verb)
 this is a big ask (noun)
 regular (adjective)
 She’s a regular at the bar (noun)
 sleep (verb)
 good sleep
 cup
 drink
 dress
 more?

14. Nouns in your LS
 How do nouns work in your LS? Are they gendered?
What are the morphemes that signify gender and/or
plural nouns?

15. Verbs
 Verbs prototypically refer to actions. More generally, they
describe situations. For instance, the following examples do
not involve an actor doing something.
 Savita’s fish died.
 The cars crashed.
 May understands where I’m
coming from.
 Trin completed her degree.

16. Verbs
 Inflection for person and number of the subject
along with tense and aspect are key indicators that a
word is functioning as a verb. Consider these verbs
from Mali:
Gloss Past Present Future
call, read mes tes thes
stand mair tair thair
sleep, lie down mas tas thas
get mat tat that
eat mēs tēs thēs
sit muchun tuchun thuchun

17. Verbs in your LS
 Would you describe your LS as mostly regular or
irregular in terms of its verb paradigms? Explain
with examples. What verb forms give you the most
trouble as a language learner? Why?

18. Adjectives
 Adjectives are loosely defined as describing words,
as they generally refer to properties and modify
nouns.
 Adjectives in English can come before the noun (the
wonderful movie) or after (the movie was
wonderful).
 In English, adjectives sometimes inflect for grade
(fast, faster, fastest). In contrast, other languages
have no inflection associated with the adjectives
themselves, but require agreement between an
adjective and noun class or number.

19. Adjectives
 In other languages adjectives have agreement, they
have agree in noun class and number with the noun
they modify. A single masculine noun will trigger
singular masculine marking on the adjective, for
example.
 How do adjectives work in your LS? If adjectives and
nous that generally agree in number and gender, are
there some adjectives that only have one of the two
inflections?

20. Adverbs
 Adverbs encode properties as well, but describe
situations. They modify adjectives, verbs, and other
adverbs.
The adverb modifies:
That movie is astoundingly
wonderful
an adjective
That wonderful movie really
impressed me
a verb
That movie is quite astoundingly
wonderful
an adverb

21. More morphological processes
B E Y O N D D E R I V A T I O N A N D I N F L E C T I O N

22. Reviewing derivation
 Derivation creates new vocabulary items by
drawing on existing morphology in the language.
 In English this usually involves affixes, and can
involve old affixes (re-tweet and tweetable) or new
affixes (twitter-holic and twitterati).

23. Other strategies
 Other strategies for filling gaps in the lexicon
include:
 blending (chocoholic, bromance)
 shortenings (PEBCAK ‘problem exists between chair
and keyboard’, selfie)
 compounding (twitterbling, darkroom)
 conversion (to google, to skype)
 commonisation (quixotic, boycott, dumpster?)
 backformation (burgle from burglar, automate
from automation)
 reduplication (cray cray, choo choo).

24. Modification
 Describes slight changes in the stem itself
 Verb tense in English present  past
 drink
 drank
 ring
 rang
 ride
 rode

25. Modification
 Examples of vowel modification:
Earlier Modern
oke
stope
clomb
shove
crope
rewe
yold
ached
stepped
climbed
shaved
crept
rowed
yielded

26. Modification (continued)
 Both vowel and consonant modification can indicate
differences between parts of speech. For example,
seat and sit, belief and believe, or advice and advise.
 Modification can also involve changes to the stress
pattern.
 The pairs ‘record and re’/cord, ‘conduct and
con’/duct, and ‘produce and pro/’duce are
differentiated by what syllable is stressed.

27. Suppletion
 Suppletion is complete modification of the stem,
when the addition of a grammatical morpheme
causes a total change in the original form.
 For example, go becoming went. Went is the
suppletive form of GO + PAST.
 Suppletive forms can’t be broken into parts
 Other examples in English?

28. Your LS
 What types of modification and suppletion (as
explained on pages 137-9) occur in your LS? Give two
examples (if possible).

29. Productive morphemes

30. Adjective  noun: -nes, -ity, -th, -
hood
 hardness
 rarity
 strength
 likelihood

31. 5 groups - think of examples
 Adjective noun: -nes, -ity, -th, -hood
 verb  noun: -ation, -dom, -ing, -ment, -al, -ee,
-ant, -age
 Noun  adjective: -al, -ous, -y, -ful, -ly, -some, -
ish, -an, -ic, -ical,
 Verb  adjective: -ant, -tory, -ing, -able, -d, -ive
 Noun/adjective  verb: -ize, -en, -ify

32. Verb  noun: -ation, -dom, -ing, -
ment, -al, -er -ee, -ant, -age
 adoration
 boredom
 painting (as a noun)
 payment
 reversal
 painter
 employee
 disinfectant
 coverage

33. Noun adjective: -al, -ous, -y, -ful, -ly, -
some, -ish, -an, -ic, -ical
 national
 joyous
 sugary
 careful
 burdensome
 foolish
 republican
 atomic
 fanatical

34. verb  adjective: -ant, -tory, -ing, -
able, -d, -ive
 expectant
 mandatory
 flying (tiene que ser verb  adjetivo)
 workable
 tired
 difective

35. Derivations
 What are productive derivational morphemes
in your LS?
 Spanish: person who does a thing
 -ero/a, -ista, or/a
 enfermo – enfermero

36. 5 grups – think of examples
(use your phones)
 adjective  noun: –ez, -ura, -itud, -idumbre, -
idad (tad)
 verb  noun: –ción, -o, -e, -dura, aje, -anza, -
ón, -miento, -dor, -do, -zón, -nte,
 noun  adjective: -al, -oso, -ano, -ero, -ístico, -
il, -ado, -udo, -iego, -izo, -ario, -ico
 verb adjective: -nte, -dizo, -do, -ble, -dor, -
ón, -orio, -ivo, -dero
 noun/adjective  verb: -izar, -ar, -a…ar-, -ecer,
-en...ecer, -ear, -ificar

37. German
 Suffix "-e" to Derive Feminine Nouns from Verbs:
 ehren  die Ehre (honor)
 haben  die Habe (belonging)
 "-t" or "-st” to derve (mostly) feminine nouns
 ankommen  die Ankunft (arrival)
 fahren  die Fahrt (drive)