Republic of the Philippines

SULTAN KUDARAT STATE UNIVERSITY

Graduate School
ACCESS, EJC Montilla, Tacurong City

ADELA R. SOMOSA, MAT-English

MTE 613 (Grammatical Theories and Analysis)
Saturday 10:30-2:00PM

DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY

Derivational Morphology is branch of morphology dealing with word-formation. (Trask

1993)
 Morph (form) + ology (science of word forms)
 The rules by which words are formed.
1.Root, derivational, and inflectional morphemes
Being bound or free, morphemes can also be classified as root, derivational, or
inflectional. A root morpheme is the basic form to which other morphemes are attached.
It provides the basic meaning of the word. The morpheme (saw) is the root of sawer.
Derivational morphemes are added to forms to create separate words: (-er) is a
derivational suffix whose addition turns a verb into a noun, usually the meaning the
person or thing that performs the action denoted by the verb. For example, (paint) + (-
er) creates painter, one of whose meanings is “someone who paints.” Inflectional
morphemes do not create separate words. They merely modify the word in which they
occur in order to indicate grammatical properties such as plurality, as the (-s) of
magazines does, or past tense, as the (ed) of barbecued does.
Lexeme a meaningful linguistic unit that is an item in the vocabulary of a language
Affix a word element, a prefix, and suffix that can be attached to a base or root to form
a new word.
We distinguish affixes in two (2) principal types:
Prefixes - a letter or group of letters attached to the beginning of a word that partly
indicates its meaning. Common prefixes include anti- (against), co- (with), mis- (wrong,
bad), and trans- (across).
Suffixes – a letter or group of letters added to the end of a word or root (i.e., base
form), serving to form a new word or functioning as an inflectional ending.
Consider the words in all of which contain the word believe plus at least one other
morpheme. Intuitively, we might say that the examples are really just different forms of
the same word, while the forms are actually different words, which are “derived from”
believe. (1) base: believe a believe-s, believe-d b believe-er, un-believe-able What is
this intuition based on? One obvious factor is that the words
in (1b) belong to different syntactic categories from believe: the first is a
noun; the second an adjective. The words on the other hand are both verbs, just as
believe is. Another important factor is that the words have meanings which are in some
way different from the meaning of believe. In defining the forms we need to add some
extra components of meaning: “a believer is a person who believes”; “something which
is unbelievable is difficult or impossible for us to believe.” But the forms mean
essentially the same thing as the base form (believe). The suffixes
in these forms simply add information about when it is appropriate to use
that specific form, e.g. “believes describes the present time, but believed
refers to sometime in the past.

2. Free vs. Bound Morpheme

Analysis at a morphological level is concerned with structural elements of meaning
called morphemes.
Morphemes are classified into two (2) types:
Free Morphemes: girl, boy, mother, etc. These are words with a complete meaning, so
they can stand alone as an independent word in a sentence.
Bound Morphemes: These are lexical items incorporated into a word as a dependent
part. They cannot stand alone, but must be connected to another morpheme. This also
operates in the connection process by means of derivation, inflection, and
compounding.

3. Roots vs. Bases

The root of a word is the morpheme left over when all the derivational and inflectional
morphemes have been removed.
For example, in immovability, {im-}, {-abil}, and {-ity} are all derivational morphemes,
and when we remove them we are left with {move}, which cannot be further divided into
meaningful pieces, and so must be the word’s root.
We must distinguish between a word’s root and the forms to which affixes are attached.
In moveable, {-able} is attached to {move}, which we have determined is the word’s
root. However, {-im} is attached to moveable, not to {move} {there is no word immove},
but moveable is not a root. Expressions to which affixes are attached are called bases.
While roots may be bases, bases are not always roots.

Examples of Morphological Derivation

a.Lexical item (free morpheme): like (verb) + prefix (bound morpheme)
dis- = dislike (n.)
b.Lexical item: like + suffix –able = likeable
+prefix un- = unlikeable
+suffix –ness =unlikableness
Derivational affixes can cause semantic change
Prefix pre- means before; post- means after, un- means not, re- means again.
Prefix = fixed before, Unhappy = not happy, Retell= tell again de- added to a verb
conveys a sense of subtraction; dis- and un– have a sense of negativity.
4. Derivational vs. Inflectional Morphology
Derivatonal morphemes are added to roots to create separate word: {-er} is a
derivational suffix whose addition turns to a verb into a noun, usually meaning the
person or thing that performs the action denoted by the verb.
For example, {paint} (v.) + {-er} creates painter (n.), one of whose meanings is
“someone who paints.”
Sometimes derivational morphology does NOT change the part of speech but it does
change the meaning especially prefixes. For example, happy (adj.) + un/happy (adj.) but
the meaning changes.
Here are some of the examples of English derivational patterns and their suffixes:

adjective-to-noun: -ness (slow – slowness)

adjective-to-verb: -en (weak –weaken)

adjective-to-adverb: -ly (personal – personally)

noun-to-verb: -fy (glory – glorify)

verb-to-adjective: -able (drink – drinkable)
However, derivational affixes do not necessarily alter the lexical category; they may
change merely the meaning of the base and leave the category unchanged. A prefix
(write – re-write; lord – over-lord) rarely changes the lexical category in English. The
prefix un-applies to adjectives (healthy – unhealthy) and some verbs (do- undo) but
rarely to nouns.

5. Inflectional Morphology
Inflection is a morphological process that adopts existing words so that they function
effectively in sentences without changing the category of the base morpheme. English
has the following inflectional suffixes:
Verb Inflectional Suffixes
1. The suffix – s functions in the Present Simple as the third person making 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:
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.
Noun Inflectional Suffixes
5. The suffix- s functions in the marking of the plural nouns: dog- dogs
6. The suffix – s functions as a possessive marker: Laura – Laura’s book.
Adjective Inflectional Suffixes
7. The suffix –er functions as comparative marker: quick – quicker
8. The suffix –est functions as superlative marker: quick –quickest

Suffix Grammatical Change Example of Base Example of Suffixed

Form Word
-s Plural Dog Dogs
 -en Plural (Irregular) Ox Oxen
-s Third Person singular Like He likes
present
-ed Past tense/Past Work He worked/ He has worked
Participle
-en Past Participle Eat He has eaten
(Irregular)
-ing Continuous Progressive Sleep He is sleeping
-er Comparative Big Bigger
-est Superlative Big Biggest

Properties of Inflection and Derivation

Derivation Inflection
(lexical) (grammatical)

not relevant to syntax relevant to syntax

replaceable by a single word not replaceable by a single word

relatively concrete meaning relatively abstract meaning

6.Conversation vs. Nominalization

When derivation occurs without any change to the word, such as in the
conversation of the noun breakfast into the verb to breakfast, it’s known as
conversation, or zero derivation. On the other hand, derivation that results in a noun
may be called nominalization. It may involve the use of an affix (such as with employ –
employee, or it may occur via conversation (such as with the derivation of the noun run
from the verb to run). In contrast, a derivation resulting in a verb may be called
verbalization (such as from the noun butter to the verb to butter).
It is not at all uncommon for languages to use the same nominalizer for
agentive and instrumental nouns; this pattern is found in Dutch, English,
French, Italian, and a number of Malayo-Polynesian languages, to name a
few. Note that the Malay examples and use the same prefix, peN-,
but with different meanings. (The N- here represents a nasal sound which
changes according to its environment, and may also trigger changes in
the following consonant.
Malay Actor Nominalizations
Root Derived Form
tulis ‘write’ penulis ‘writer’
bantu ‘help’ pembantu ‘helper’
nyanyi ‘sing’ penyanyi ‘singer’
pimpin ‘lead’ pemimpin ‘leader’
dengar ‘hear’ pendengar ‘listener’
pohon ‘request’ pemohon ‘applicant’
References
Kroeger, Paul R. (2005). Analyzing grammar: An introduction. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Sobin, Nicholas (2011). Syntactic Analysis The Basics. West Sussex: Wiley-
Blackwell. Pp.17-18
Yule, G. (2006) . The study of language. United Kingdom: Cambridge University
Press.
Speech and Language Processing, Jurafsky, D. & Martin J.,H.