Lecture 3

Morphology as the study of internal structure of words.

Basic morphological concepts of English grammar. Ways of
grammatical word-forming in Modern English.

The most basic concept of morphology is the concept of a word. There are two different
notions of word: a dictionary word and a text word. A dictionary word is an abstract entity called
a lexeme (this is because the mental dictionary in our heads is called the lexicon). A text word is a
concrete entity called a word-form. Word-forms are concrete as they can be pronounced and used
in texts.
A set of word-forms of one lexeme expressing a categorical grammatical meaning represents
its grammatical paradigm. For instance, the words live, lives, lived, has lived or has been living are
different word-forms of the lexeme live, therefore they constitute its grammatical paradigm.
Different lexemes may also be related to each other. A set of related lexemes represents a word
family. For example, the word family of the English word “read” is: read, readable, unreadable,
reader, readability, reread, etc.
There are two kinds of morphological relationship among words:
1. derivational relationship which exists among lexemes of a word family. E.g.: beauty,
beautiful, beautifully, beautify, etc.
2. inflectional relationship which exists among word-forms within the paradigm of a
lexeme. For instance, the word-forms give, gives, gave, is giving, has given, has been
giving, etc. are interconnected through inflectional relationship.
What does morphology study? Morphology studies internal structure of words and the rules
by which words are formed. The term morphology was invented in the second part of the 19 th
century. It derives from Greek and means “the science of word forms” (morphe = “form”, -ology
= “science of”).

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 Basic morphological concepts of English grammar.
Roots and Stems

Every word in every language may be composed of one or more morphemes. For instance,
the word boys consists of two morphemes one of which ( boy) is the root morpheme which is
built up by a sequence of phonemes, whereas the other morpheme ( –s) is an affixal inflexion
indicating grammatical meaning of number (plural).
A root is a lexical, content morpheme that cannot be subdivided any further into smaller
parts (ძირი არის ლექსიკური შინაარსის მქონე მორფემა, რომელიც აღარ იშლება პატარა
ნაწილებად). When a root morpheme is combined with a derivational affix it forms a stem
(ფუძე), which may or may not be a word (painter is both a word and a stem; ceive + er is only a
stem).
Morphologically complex words consist of a root and one or more affixes. There are three
types of affixal morphemes: prefixes, suffixes and inflexions. Of these, prefixes and suffixes have
word-building or derivational function and when they are affixed to roots, they change lexical
meaning and grammatical class of the word (e.g.: beauty - beautiful; interest – interesting, etc.).
Unlike them, inflexions have only grammatical or form-building function. They never change
grammatical class of the word to which they are attached, they only mark morphological
categories such as tense, aspect, voice, number, case and so forth (e.g.: plays, played, playing; girl,
girls, etc.).
Compared to many languages of the world, English has relatively few inflections. According
to Fromkin’s data, at the present stage of English history, there are totally eight inflectional affixes
(“An Introduction to Linguistics” by Fromkin et al. 2003: 100-101).
English Inflectional Morphemes Examples

-s third-person singular present She wait-s at home.

-ed past tense She wait-ed at home.
-ing progressive She is eat-ing the donut.
-en past participle Mary has eat-en the donuts.
-s plural She ate the donut-s.
-‘s possessive Disa’s hair is short.
-er comparative Disa has short-er hair than Karin.
-est superlative Disa has the short-est hair.

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 Bound and free Morphemes. Allomorphs.

One of the things we know about particular morphemes is whether they can stand alone or
must be attached to a host morpheme. Accordingly, linguists differentiate free and bound
morphemes. Morphemes, that can stand alone and constitute words by themselves, are free
morphemes. Free morphemes can only be represented by root morphemes. For instance,
morphemes like boy, desire, gentle, man are free morphemes. Morphemes that cannot form words
by themselves and are always attached to a host morpheme, are bound morphemes (ბმული
მორფემები). They are identified only as component parts of words. That’s why they are always
represented by affixal morphemes (prefixes, suffixes and inflexions). For instance, in the word
handful the root hand is a free morpheme, while the suffix -ful is a bound morpheme.
Morphemes may have different pronunciations or shapes under different circumstances. For
such cases, linguists use the term allomorph. If two or more morphs have the same meaning or
function and the difference in their form is explained by different environments, they are
considered to be the allomorphs of the same morpheme. For instance, [s], [z] and [iz] are the
allomorphs of the plural morpheme in English: [s] is pronounced after voiceless consonants ( cats,
cups, pets, etc.); [z] is pronounced after vowels and voiced consonants ( toys, dogs, bags, apples,
etc.), [iz] is pronounced in the words like faces, cases, paces and in the words ending in -s, -ss,
-sh, -ch and -x as in buses, businesses, bushes, benches, boxes, and so on. Or the morpheme - en
as in children and oxen.

Ways of grammatical word-forming in Modern English

Grammatical category is a system of concepts expressing a generalized grammatical meaning

by means of paradigmatic correlation of word forms.
There are two ways of grammatical word-forming in Modern English: synthetic and
analytic. Synthetic grammatical forms are based on the morphemic composition of the word (e.g.,
girls, toys, bigger, biggest, dances, cried, shouted, etc.), while analytic forms are built up by a
combination of at least two words, one of which is a grammatical auxiliary and the other is a
content word with concrete lexical meaning (e.g. is buying, was bought, has bought, etc.).
Synthetic grammatical forms are based on inner inflection, outer inflection and suppletivity.

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 Inner inflection or grammatical infixation is based on vowel interchange. Inner inflection is
used to form the past indefinite and past participle of English irregular verbs or it is also used in a
few nouns to form their plural. For instance:

Irregular verbs Nouns

begin – began – begun man – men

do – did – done goose – geese
drive – drove – driven foot – feet
give – gave – given mouse – mice
keep – kept – kept tooth – teeth
sell – sold – sold woman – women
Outer inflection implies only grammatical suffixation. Outer inflection is used to build up the
plural and possessive forms of English nouns ( cars, teachers, dog’s, father’s ), the person-number
and tense forms of verbs (sings, drinks, called, dropped, played), participial and gerundial forms of
the verb (playing, played); degrees of comparison of adjectives and the adverbs ( soft –softer –
softest, fast – faster – fastest, etc.).
Suppletivity is based on the correlation of different roots as a means of forming paradigmatic
opposition of grammatical category. Suppletivity implies the grammatical interchange of word
roots, and this unites it with the inner inflection. Suppletivity is used in the following cases:
1. in the forms of the verbs be (be – am – is – are – was – were) and go (go – went);
2. in the irregular forms of the degrees of comparison:
good – better; bad – worse; much – more; little – less.
3. in some forms of the personal pronouns: I – me; we – us; she – her.
As for analytic forms, they are very typical of modern English, that’s why English is regarded
as a classical sample of analytic languages. Traditional analytic morphological forms in English are
built up by a combination of at least two words, one of which is a grammatical auxiliary and the
other is a content word with concrete lexical meaning. The classical analytical forms in the
English grammar are the following verbal forms:

1. Perfect forms: have gone/had gone;

2. Continuous forms: is going/was going;
3. perfect-continuous forms: have been going/had been going;
4. passive voice forms: is built/was built;
5. interrogative forms of present and past indefinite: Do you go?/ Did you go ?
6. negative forms of present and past indefinite: You don’t go/didn’t go
7. future tense forms with the auxiliaries shall and will:
I shall/will leave now. Shall I leave now?

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 Study questions:

1. Define the concepts of a dictionary word and a text word.

2. Define the notions of a grammatical paradigm of a lexeme and of a word family.
3. Name the types of morphological relationship among words and explain how they differ from
each other.
4. What does morphology study? When was the term “morphology” mean?
5. Define the concepts of a root and a stem.
6. Name the types of affixal morphemes and characterize them.
7. What kind of morphemes are called free morphemes? Give examples.
8. What kind of morphemes are called bound morphemes? Give examples.
9. Define the concept of allomorphs.
10. Define the concept of grammatical category.
11. How many ways of grammatical word-forming are there in modern English? How do they
differ from each other?
12. Define the essence of inner inflection. Give examples.
13. Define the essence of outer inflection. Give examples.
14. Define the essence of suppletivity. Give examples.
15. How are analytic morphological forms built up in modern English? Name some examples of
classical analytic forms in English grammar.