This document summarizes key points from an English morphology lecture, distinguishing between different types of morphemes and word formation processes. It discusses bound and free morphemes, and inflectional versus derivational morphemes. Specific examples are provided to illustrate different morphological concepts like affixation, compounding, conversion and productivity in word formation. Tree diagrams are used to visualize complex derived words.

1. English Morphology – Lecture
2
David Brett
Antonio Pinna
University of Sassari 2007

2. Distinguishing between
morphemes:
• Bound and free morphemes:
• Free morphemes can occur on their own:
– happy, change, select, green, house, …
• Bound morphemes can occur only if they are attached to
other morphemes:
– Affixes (un-, -ness, -able, de-, -ive, -er, …)
– Binding forms liber-, oper-, circul-, legitim-, materi-, …
• Eg. liber-ation, oper-ate, circul-ar, legitim-(a)cy, materi-al

3. • Cran-berry (berry, straw-berry, black-berry)
• Dis-gruntle-d
• Gorm-less
• Cranberry morphemes

4. Bound morphemes as core
elements: words derived from Latin
Circul- Circular Liber- Liberty
Circulation Liberation
Circulator Liberalize
Circulatory Libertine

5. Problem case: Verbs of Latin origin
receive deceive conceive perceive
revert convert pervert
relate collate translate
reduce deduce conduce
Should these be considered to be composed of a single morpheme?
Or prefix + bound morpheme?

6. General tendency
• The core vocabulary of English is
generally composed of words of Anglo-
Saxon origin
• There is a general tendency for core
elements to be free morphemes
• E.g. Hand
• Hand-y, hand-le, hand-ful, mis-hand-le,

7. What is the difference between
these two sets of complex words
Fast-er
Sing-ing
Open-ed
Car-s
Write-s
Bigg-est
Treat-ment
Rude-ness
Un-kind
Fam-ous
Use-less
Help-ful
Ir-regular
Red-dish

8. Fast-er, Sing-ing, Open-ed,
Car-s, Write-s, Big-gest
• These affixes do not change the word
class (verb, noun etc.), but rather
contribute to meeting grammatical
constraints. These are called:
Inflectional morphemes

9. Treat-ment Rude-ness Un-kind Red-dish
Fam-ous Use-less Help-ful Ir-regular
These affixes do not necessarily change the
class of the word, but this is normally the
case, e.g. fame (n.)> famous (adj.)
• Since these words derive from others
these morphemes are called:
Derivational morphemes

10. • He go to the park every day
• She speaks to me yesterday
• He is a very fame actor
• He gave me very good treat

11. Inflectional morphemes: Plurals
#1
• Cat > cats; dog > dogs; case > cases
• N.b. these are pronounced /s/, /z/, /ɪz/
• These different realizations are called
allomorphs of the inflectional morpheme
for plurals

12. Inflectional morphemes: Plurals
#2
• Irregular plurals are also considered to
be allomorphs e.g.
• Foot > feet; man > men; child > children
• Sheep > Sheep; Fish > fish etc.

13. Inflectional morphemes: Verbs
#1
• English is particularly low on inflectional
morphemes for verbs cfr. Italian (amare
1st person> amo, amavo, amai, amerò,
ami (subjunctive), amassi, amerei x 6)
• English: love, loves, loved (past simple
and p.part.), loving
• BE has the largest number of realizations:
• Be, am, are, is, was, were, been, being

14. Inflectional morphemes: Verbs
#2
• Verbs in the past and p. participle form
can be:
• 1 Regular: kissed; changed; wanted
• Note that the –ed suffix has three,
phonologically determined, realizations
(i.e. three allomorphs): /t/, /d/, /ɪd/
• The following lines rhyme:
You were the first one I kissed
Because you were at the top of my list

15. Inflectional morphemes: Verbs
#3
• Verbs in the past and p. participle form can be:
• 2 Irregular
• Involving no change> hit-hit-hit
• Involving vowel change> drink-drank-drunk
• Involving consonant change > make-made-made
• Involving vowel and consonant change> leave-left-
left
• Suppletion (i.e. with no phonological relation)>
BE> was-were; GO> went

16. Inflectional morphemes:
Adjectives
• Comparatives
• HOT> hott-er – hott-est
• IMPORTANT > more important – most
important
• Note suppletion in
• GOOD > better – best
• BAD > worse – worst

17. Derivational morphemes
• Far more numerous than inflectional
morphemes
• Allow productivity (involved in the coining
of new words)
• Can be prefixes, or suffixes, not
circumfixes
• Suffixes usually, but not always, change
word class
• Prefixes, usually don’t

18. Derivational morphemes: some
examples
• Verbs > Nouns: work-er, act-or, treat-ment,
elect-ion
• Nouns > Adjectives: colour-ful, friend-less,
fac-ial, fam-ous
• Verbs > Adjectives: bor-ing, interest-ed
honour-able, access-ible

19. Derivation with –ful and –less
• Which words can be derived by adding the
following suffixes
-ful/less Only -ful Only -less
Age, Bag, Care, Cease, Cheer, Child, Colour, Cup,
Defence, Delight, Effort, End, Fate, Friend, Help, Hope,
Penny, Play, Spoon, Tact , Taste , Use,

20. -ful/less Only -ful Only -less
Care
Fate
Friend
Use
Spoon
Age
Cheer
Delight
Cease
Colour
Bag
Child
Help
Play
Defence
Taste
Cup
End
Hope
Effort
Tact
Penny

21. Tree diagrams
Label the boxes in the diagram

22. Greed >
Greedy >
Greediness

26. N.b. Specif- is a bound root cfr. Specif-y

27. Draw tree diagrams for the
following words
• Unwholesome
• Rulership
• Underdeveloped
• Overachiever
• Operational
• Indispensable

31. Productivity – the creation of new
words
• There a six main ways of creating new words
• By combining two or more core elements: this process is called
‘compounding’
– truck driver, mother-in-law, download;
• By adding parts to a core element: this process is called ‘affixation’
– clockwise, credible, coarsely, kingdom;
• By changing the word class of a given word: this process is called
‘conversion’
– Bottle > to bottle; to call > a call;
• By clipping a longer word: this process is called ‘truncation’
– Veterinary Surgeon > vet; Zoological gardens > Zoo;
• By amalgamating parts of different words: this process is called ‘blending’
– Smoke + fog > smog; Motor + Hotel > Motel; Camera + Recorder > Camcorder
• Acronyms
• - North Atlantic Treaty Organization > NATO; Absent without leave > AWOL;
Personal Identification Number > PIN

32. • We can also find multiple processes e.g.
• Camera > web camera (Compounding) >
webcam (Truncation)
• Ball > snowball (Compounding) > to
snowball (Conversion)

33. Exercise for next lecture
• Produce tree diagrams of the following
multiply affixed complex words:
• airworthiness; speechlessness; non-specialization;
developmental;
antihistorical; miscarriage;