Morphological Processes
Morphological processes shape how words change and form in a language. Two major types are inflectional morphology, which adjusts words to fit grammatical contexts, and derivational morphology, which builds entirely new words. Understanding the difference between these two is one of the most important skills in this unit.
Inflectional vs. Derivational Morphology
Inflectional morphology modifies a word to express grammatical information (like tense or number) without changing its word class. These modifications typically appear at the end of words. For example, adding -s to cat gives you cats, but it's still a noun.
Derivational morphology creates new lexemes from existing words and often does change the word class. For example, adding -tion to the verb educate produces the noun education. Derivational affixes can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a word.
Here are the key differences to remember:
- Function: Inflectional morphemes serve a grammatical purpose (marking tense, number, etc.). Derivational morphemes serve a lexical purpose (creating new words with new meanings).
- Productivity: Inflectional morphology is more regular and predictable. Most English verbs take -ed for past tense, for instance. Derivational patterns are less consistent.
- Position: When both types appear on the same word, inflectional morphemes always come after derivational ones. In nationalizations, the derivational suffixes (-al, -ize, -ation) all precede the inflectional plural -s.
Categories of Inflectional Morphology
English has a relatively small set of inflectional categories compared to many other languages. Here are the main ones:
- Tense marks the time of an action.
- Present: unmarked or -s for third person singular (she walks)
- Past: -ed for regular verbs (walked)
- Future uses the auxiliary will rather than an inflectional suffix (will walk)
- Number indicates quantity.
- Singular is often unmarked (cat)
- Plural is usually marked with -s or -es (cats, boxes)
- Case shows a noun or pronoun's grammatical role in a sentence. English nouns don't change much for case, but pronouns do:
- Nominative (subject): I, he, she
- Accusative (object): me, him, her
- Genitive (possession): 's for nouns (the dog's bone); special pronoun forms (my, his, her)
- Person distinguishes the speaker (first person), the listener (second person), and others (third person). In English, this shows up mainly as the -s on third person singular present tense verbs (she runs).
- Gender classifies nouns as masculine, feminine, or neuter. English doesn't inflect for grammatical gender, but many languages (like Spanish, German, and Arabic) do.
- Aspect expresses how an action unfolds over time.
- Progressive: -ing (walking)
- Perfect: auxiliary have + past participle (have walked)
Role of Derivational Affixes
Derivational affixes are the primary tool for building new words. They attach to existing words and change their meaning, their word class, or both.
Prefixes attach to the beginning of a word. They usually change meaning without changing word class:
- un- adds negation: happy (adj.) → unhappy (adj.)
- re- indicates repetition: do (verb) → redo (verb)
- pre- means "before": historic (adj.) → prehistoric (adj.)
Suffixes attach to the end of a word. Unlike prefixes, suffixes frequently change the word class:
- -tion forms nouns from verbs: educate → education
- -ize creates verbs from adjectives or nouns: standard → standardize
- -able forms adjectives from verbs: read → readable
Infixes are inserted inside a word. These are rare in English, mostly showing up in expressive or informal speech, like abso-bloody-lutely.
Circumfixes surround a word, attaching material to both the beginning and end simultaneously. A commonly cited English example is en-...-en in enlighten, though true circumfixes are more productive in other languages (like German's ge-...-t for past participles).
To summarize what derivational affixes do:
- Change word class (verb → noun, adjective → adverb, etc.)
- Modify meaning by adding negation, repetition, or specialization
- Create new lexemes that are related to but distinct from the original word
Analysis of Word Components
Breaking a complex word into its morphemes is a core skill in morphology. Follow these steps:
- Identify the root or base word. This is the core morpheme that carries the main meaning.
- Separate derivational affixes from inflectional suffixes. Remember, inflectional morphemes will always be on the outermost layer.
- Determine the function of each morpheme. Ask: does it change the word class? Does it add grammatical information? Does it shift the meaning?
Worked example: "unhappiness"
- Root: happy (adjective)
- Derivational prefix: un- (adds negation; word stays an adjective → unhappy)
- Derivational suffix: -ness (converts adjective to abstract noun → unhappiness)
- No inflectional suffixes
- Result: an abstract noun meaning "the quality of not being happy"
Notice the order of operations: derivation happens first (un- then -ness), and any inflection would go on the outside.
Practice with these complex words:
- internationalization: inter- + nation + -al + -ize + -ation. The root is the noun nation. Each suffix shifts the word class: noun → adjective (national) → verb (nationalize) → noun (nationalization). The prefix inter- adds the meaning "between."
- misunderstandings: mis- + under- + stand + -ing + -s. The root is the verb stand. The prefixes under- and mis- modify meaning. The suffix -ing derives a noun, and -s is the inflectional plural on the outside.
- rewritable: re- + write + -able. The root is the verb write. The prefix re- adds "again," and the suffix -able converts it to an adjective meaning "able to be rewritten."
When you analyze a word, trace how each morpheme contributes to the overall meaning and grammatical function, building outward from the root.