Word

Formation
Blyth Lane B. Suyao
Reporter
Topics! 2
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 MORPHOLOGY
● This stock of words can be thought of as a sort of mental
dictionary that language users have internalized as part
and parcel of learning their particular language. This
mental dictionary is called the lexicon.
● The study of the formation of these words is called
morphology.

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 MORPHOLOGY
● Words each have a number of attributes, or ways in
which they can be categorized. The fact that words
belong to different part of speech classes is clear sign
that there are two words rather than two versions of
one word. (e.g. cat--- noun; catty--- adjective.)

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 MORPHOLOGY
(e.g. cat--- noun; catty--- adjective.)
● The word cat is the root on which catty is build.
● The process of creating new words out of the other
words is called derivation. It takes the phonological form
of one word and performs one or more operations on it,
the result being a new word.

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 MORPHOLOGY
● The root of the word is called the stem, and the
added pieces, the affixes. Affixes that follow
the stem are called suffixes, whereas affixes
which precede a stem are called prefixes.

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Classifying Elements
in Morphology
● The most basic acts of analysis are comparison
and segmentation which allows to see what the
constituent parts words are. From such analysis, it
becomes apparent that words and affixes do not
have the same status in language overall.
● Simple words do not have affixes and so cannot
be broken down into smaller meaningful pieces.
Single, irreducible pieces are called morphemes.

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●free morphemes
●bound morphemes
●content morphemes
●function morphemes
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1. Free Morpheme
Morphemes such as
simple words are
called free morphemes
because they can be
used as words all by
themselves. 9
2. Bound Morpheme
Affixes on the other hand,
always have to be attached to
the stem of some word in
order to be used. Because
they cannot stand alone,
affixes are also called bound
morphemes.
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Activity!
3. Content Morpheme
Some morphemes carry semantic
content. That is, some simple words
have some kind of identifiable
meaning and some affixes indicate a
change in meaning with respect to
the root to which they attach. These
are called content morphemes.

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4. Function Morpheme
Other morphemes serve only to provide
information about grammatical
function by relating certain words of
a sentence to each other. These
grammatical morphemes are called
function morphemes.

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Derivational Morpheme
● Create new words by changing the
meaning or by changing the word
class of the word ( make new words
or new words of a different
grammatical category from the stem)
● In derivation a new word is formed by
adding an affix to the root or stem.
● It change a words part of speech.
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Derivation of Nouns
● Verb Noun
speak – speaker
swim - swimming
read - reader/ reading

● Noun Noun
mother- motherhood

● Adjective Noun
kind – kindness
good - goodness
black - blackness
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Derivation of Nouns
● We can also add suffixes such as:
–hood (status)
– ship (state or condition)
– ity (state or condition)
– ness (quality, state or condition)
– ment (result or product of doing the action)
– al (act of something)
– er (agentive)

-in the words like brotherhood, friendship, sincerity,

wildness, government, refusal, walker.
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DERIVATIONAL SUFFIXES
MAKE NOUNS MAKE VERBS MAKE ADJECTIVES

- ER - ATE - ABLE

- MENT - EN - IVE

- NESS - IZE - OUS

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Derivation of Adjectives
● Noun Adjective
care – careful

● Verb Adjective
read – readable
love - loveable
● Adjective Adjective
common – uncommon
possible - impossible
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Derivation of Verbs
● Noun Verb
analysis- analyze
slave- enslave
● Adjective Verb
rich- enrich
legal- legalize
● Verb Verb
continue - discontinue
pack - unpack
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Inflectional Morpheme
● Does not produce new words in the
language
● Used to indicate aspects of
grammatical function of word
● Does not change category and does
not create new lexemes, but rather
changes the form of lexemes so that
they fit into different grammatical
contexts
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 VERB INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES
1. The suffix –s functions in the Present Simple as the third person
marking of the verb:
to work- he works
2. The suffix –ed functions in the past simple as the past tense marker in
regular verbs:
to love- loved
3. The suffixes –ed (regular verbs) and –en ( for some regular verbs)
function in the marking of the past participle and in general, in the marking
of the perfect aspect:

to study studied/ to eat ate eaten

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 VERB INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES
4. The suffix –ing functions in the marking of the present participle, the
gerund and in the marking of the continuous aspect:
to eat – eating/ to study- studying

5. The suffix –s functions in the marking of the plural of nouns:

dog- dogs

6. The suffix –s functions as a possessive marker :

Laura – Laura’s book

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 VERB INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES
7. The suffix –er functions as comparative marker:
quick – quicker

8. The suffix –est functions as superlative marker:

quick - quickest

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Activity!

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 Differences
Between
Inflection and
Derivation

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 INFLECTIONAL
Never changes category
Do not change part of Speech
Adds grammatical meaning
Is important to syntax
Is usually fully productive

DERIVATIONAL
Sometimes changes category
Can changes part of speech
Often adds lexical meaning
Produces new lexemes
Can range from unproductive to fully
productive 24
 MORPHEME

BASE AFFIX

FREE BOUND BOUND

INFLECTIONAL DERIVATIONAL

SUFFIX PREFIX SUFFIX

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Morphological Process
•The combination of words is rule-governed
and that a process is at work. This process is
called word formation process since new
words or forms of words are being formed.

•In the context of the description of a language,

the term formation refers to the systematic
relationships between roots and words derived
from them, and between a word and its various
grammatical forms.

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 Morphological Process

1 2 3 4 5

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 it is the process of forming new
AFFIXATION words by adding affixes to the stem
(prefixes, and suffixes or
morphemes inserted within the
root).
E.g. doubtful= doubt
(stem) + -ful (affix)

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COMPOUNDING it is the process that forms new
words not by means of affixes but
from two or more independent
words.
E.g. girlfriend = girl
(free morpheme)+friend(free morpheme)

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 it is the process of forming new
words either by doubling an entire
free morpheme (total duplication) or
REDUPLICATION part of it (partial reduplication).
English makes no systematic use of
reduplication, but other languages
do make extensive use of
reduplication.
E.g. (from Hiligaynon, a Filipino
language) sakit (painful)= sakit-
sakit (very painful)

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 Beside adding an affix to a
morpheme or copying all or part of
ALTERATION a morpheme to make new words or
make morphological distinctions, it
is also possible to make morpheme-
internal modifications called
alterations.
E.g. man=men; foot=feet

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 It is when a root will have one or
more inflected forms which is

SUPPLETION phonetically unrelated to the shape

of the root. This completely
irregular situation is called
suppletion and usually occurs only
in a few words of language.
E.g. go (present tense)= went
(past tense)

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Thanks for
Listening!