1.

Germanic: -ful, -ing, -less, adverb-forming -ly, adjective-forming -ly, -ness,

-th, un-. Latin or French: -able, -ity, -ive, in-, re-.
2. 2(a) -able: Mostly attaches to free bases (indeed, it can attach to almost any
semantically appropriate transitive verb, e.g. wipable, understandable,
pleasable), but sometimes also to bound ones (e.g. formidable, palpable,
potable)
3. (b) -ful: Almost always attaches to free bases
(c) -ing: Attaches only to free bases.
(d) -ity: Attaches to some free bases. Some of these bound bases are
morphemes with no free allomorphs
(e) -ive: Like -ity, attaches to more bound bases (e.g. sensitive, aggressive,
receptive, compulsive) than free ones (e.g. defensive, disruptive).
(f) -less: Like -ful, attaches mostly to free bases, although some of its bases
have lost their freedom historically
(g) -ly (as in the adverb happily): Always attaches to free bases
(h) -ly (as in the adjective manly): Almost always attaches to free bases (a
rare bound base being come- in comely ‘attractive’).
(i) -ness: Always attaches to free bases.
(j) -th: Attaches to some free bases (warm-th, tru-th), but more often to a
bound allomorph of an otherwise free base, as in leng-th, streng-th, wid-th,
bread-th.
(k) in-: Attaches mostly to free bases, as in in-sane, in-tangible.
(l) re-: we need to distinguish between re- as it is pronounced in re-store
‘store again’ and re- as it is pronounced in restore ‘repair’.
(m) un-: Almost always attaches to free bases (rare bound bases being
-couth, -kempt and -ruly in uncouth, unkempt and unruly).
3. To my ear, the neologisms grintable, bledgeful, dorbening, bledgeless, dorbenly,
dorbenness, regrint, undorben sound more plausible words than dorbenity,
bledgive, bledgely, dorbenth, indorben. I would not expect a native speaker to
disagree with me over more than one or two of these items. My classification is
therefore:
• likely in neologisms: -able, -ful, -ing, -less, adverb-forming -ly, -ness, re-, un-
• unlikely in neologisms: -ity, -ive, adjective-forming -ly, -th, in-.
5. (a) dermatology: -derm(at)- ‘skin’, -(o)logy ‘science, area of expertise’
(b) erythrocyte: erythr(o)- ‘red’, -cyt(e)- ‘cell’
(c) pterodactyl: -pter(o)- ‘wing’, -dactyl- ‘finger’
(d) oligarchy: olig(o)- ‘few’, -archy ‘rule’
(e) isotherm: is(o)- ‘equal’, -therm(o)- ‘heat’
(f ) bathy- ‘deep’, sphere
6(a) In Old English, this distinction was expressed morphologically in some nouns,
but not in all
(b) This distinction is expressed in both Old and Modern English (Modern English
(I/you) help versus (he/she) helps; Old English (ic) helpe, (´u¯) helpest, (he¯/he¯o)
helpe´ )
(c) This distinction is expressed in Old English but not in Modern English. In the
past tense, Old English distinguishes number (singular versus plural) but not
person, while Modern English makes no morphological distinctions at all (except
in was/were)
(d) This distinction is expressed neither in Old nor in Modern English. Even in Old
English, all the plural forms are alike in any one tense.
7. (a) break inherited; fragile borrowed from Latin
(b) break inherited; frail borrowed from French
(c) legal borrowed from Latin; loyal borrowed from French
(d) dual borrowed from Latin; two inherited
(e) nose inherited; nasal borrowed from Latin
(f ) mere inherited; marine borrowed from Latin