Morphology | Saul Garcia Corbillo

--MORPHOLOGY (I).

• Morphology deals with two topics:

o The internal structure of words.
o Different word-formation processes.
• We have two types of morphology:
o Inflectional morphology: creation of word-forms (affixation).
o Derivational or Lexical morphology: creation of new lexemes (we have different word-
formation processes: affixation, compounding, conversion, blending, clipping, acronym).
• Lexemes as different dictionary entries and word-forms as the different physical representations
of the lexemes base word (i.e. the words-forms of a verb lex. are: base, -ed, -s, ing, and irregular).
o Lexeme 1: WORK[V]
▪ Base.
▪ -s form.
▪ -ing form.
▪ -ed form.
▪ Irreg. form.
o Lexeme 2: WORK[N]
▪ Base (sing.).
▪ -s form (plural).
o Lexeme 3: COLD[Adj]
▪ Base (neutral)
▪ -er form (comparative).
▪ -est form (superlative).
• Word-forms between them have in common the same gram. category/semantic content (meaning).
• If we have the lexeme “CREATE:”
o CREATE + “-s” (-s form) → “CREATES” (inflectional morphology – affixation).
o CREATE + “-ion” (suffix) → “CREATION” (derivational morphology – affixation).
• Internal structure of words? These are formed by “morphemes” → The different parts/components
of words (lexemes and word-forms). A unit(s) of semantic content and/or grammatical function
which words are made of (Bloomfield’s definition).
• We have two types of morphemes:
o Free morphemes (roots, bases): morphemes that have independent existence, they exist
on their own, they do not have to be attached to a word to have meaning on their own.
Love, love, loves, lovers…
o Bound morphemes (affixes: prefixes & suffixes): morphemes that cannot be separated
from the base word because if we separate them, they lose all their meaning.
-er, -s…
• FREE MOPHEMES (roots, bases & stems):
o Root (free morpheme*): the basic part always present in a morphologically similar group
of words. To have the same root does not mean that those two words belong to the same
lexeme; for example, “farm” and “farmer,” both words have the same root (“farm”), but
they are both different lexemes (“granja” y “granjero” respectively).
--Love, lover, loves, lovers → the root is “love.”
--*Local, locality, location… → the root is “loc.” This is what we call a bound root, which
are mainly Latinates or Greek words and that do not have meaning on their own.
o Base: any lexeme and any word-form; any unit to which affixes of any kind can be added.
In English, all words are bases (i.e. Love, lover, loves, lovers, sheep…).
 Morphology | Saul Garcia Corbillo

o Stem: the part of a word that is in existence before any inflectional affix has been added.
A base to which inflectional affixes can be added. Consider the next examples:
▪ Farm[V] – Base, stem (and root of all the words under).
▪ *Farms[V] – Base.
▪ *Farmed[V] – Base.
▪ *Farming[V] – Base
▪ Farmer[N] – Base, stem.
▪ *Farmers[N] – Base.
The forms with (*) cannot be any more inflected, so they are not stems. Stem
can be inflected, if they do not accept more inflections – because, for instance,
they are already inflected all that they can – they will continue being bases
(because all English lexemes and word-forms are), but not stems.

All stems are bases, but not all bases will be stems (i.e. “Farmers” is a base, but not a stem).

• CHILDISH[Adj] → BASE.
• CHILD[N] → BASE, ROOT, STEM.
• CHILDREN[N] → BASE.
• INTERESTING[Adj] → BASE.
The lexeme “childish” is not a word-form of the word “child,” because they do not share the same
grammatical category. “Children;” however, is, as it is the plural form of the lexeme. So, when we
talk about the word “childish,” we do not say that we have created a new word-form (inflectional
morph.), we say we have created a new word, a new lexeme (derivational morph.).
• BOUND MOPHEMES (affixes: prefixes and suffixes):
o *Affixation:
▪ (1) Inflectional: creates new word-forms.
▪ (2) Derivational or Lexical: creates new lexemes.
o (1) Inflectional affixes:
▪ Selected for syntactic reasons.
▪ Always suffixes.
▪ Attached to nouns (i.e. -s), adjectives (i.e. -er, -est) or verbs (i.e. -s, -ed, -ing.)
Girls, taller, loves, loving…
o (2) Derivational affixes:
▪ Alter/modify the meaning and/or the grammatical category of the base.
▪ Prefixes & suffixes.
Girlish. Ex-lover, governmental…
▪ Class changing derivational affixes (the majority of suffixes).
[love]V + [-er]N → [Lover]N
▪ Class maintaining derivational affixes (the majority of prefixes).
[un-]Adj + [kind]Adj → [Unkind]Adj
o There will be some times in which an affix can be inflectional and derivational (i.e. -er).
▪ [farm]N + [-er]N suffix → [Farmer]N → The suffix “-er” is creating a new lexeme,
so this is an example of derivational morphology.
▪ [cold]Adj + [-er]Infl → [Colder]N → The suffix “-er” in this case is creating a new
word-form (colder) from the lexeme / base (cold), so this is an example of
inflectional morphology.

*In affixation, the prefix and/or the suffix is always the head.
 Morphology | Saul Garcia Corbillo

INFLECTIONAL MORPH.
-Creates word-forms.
-Maintains syntactic category.
-Affects morphosyntax.
-Modifies semantic slightly.
DERIVATIONAL MORPH.
Class changing Class maintaining
-Creates lexemes. -Creates lexemes.
-Changes syntactic category. -Maintains syntactic category.
-Morphosyntax unaffected. -Morphosyntax unaffected.
-Significant semantic change. -Significant semantic changed.

--MORPHOLOGY: An overview of COMPOUNDING.

• MORPHOLOGY:
o INFLECTIONAL (deals with forms of individual lexemes).
o WORD-FORMATION (deals with formation of new lexemes):
▪ Derivation (affixation):
• Class changing.
• Class maintaining.
▪ Compounding (more than one base):
• Compound nouns.
• Compound verbs.
• Compound adjs.

COMPOUNDING: Combination of two bases that appear together and that refer to the same.

• COMPOUNDS: Basic features.

o Lexemes constructed out of other simple (i.e. “play”) /complex lexemes (i.e. “player”).
o Possible categories: nouns, verbs and adjectives.
o Consisting of at least 2 bases.
I.e.: [bedroom]N → [bed] N + [room] N
• COMPOUNDS: Syntactic structure.
o [BASE 1]Non-head + [BASE 2]Head
o The head is usually the constituent on the right.
Teapot (“a type of pot”), Bedroom (“a type of room).
• COMPOUNDS: Semantics/Meaning.
Semantically speaking, compounds can be classified into:
o (1) Endocentric compounds: the syntactic and the semantic head coincide.
o (2) Exocentric compounds: they are headless from a semantic perspective.
o (3) Copulative compounds: both constituents (bases) are in an equal basis.
(1)Endocentric compounds:
• Headed.
• Compositional meaning (“bedroom:” a kind of room with a bed in it; “school boy:” a boy that goes
to school; “teapot:” a kind of pot; etc.).
• Two types:
o Verbal compounds.
▪ The meaning of the compound is compositional (“bookseller:” who sells books).
▪ They have a complex deverbal head; complex head that comes from a verb.
▪ The non-head constituent can be interpreted as a syntactic argument of the verb.
o Root (non-verbal) compounds.
▪ The meaning of the compound is compositional (“teapot:” a kind of pot for
making and pouring tea inside of it).
 Morphology | Saul Garcia Corbillo

(2)Exocentric compounds:
• Headless (no semantic head, they have a syntactic one).
• Opaque meaning (“greenhouse” – a house which is green?; “skinhead” – a kind of head?).
Headless compounds do NOT contain an element that functions as the semantic head which is modified by
the non-head element. Such compounds are also called exocentric compounds. Compare:
a) Dark-room // Football
b) Green house // Lazy-bones
Both sets of examples contain an adjective/noun followed by a noun. The words in a) are endocentric (a
dark-room is a kind of room, a football is a type of ball, etc.). By contrast, from a semantic point of view,
words in b) do NOT have a semantic head-modifier relationship (i.e. they have NO semantic head). A
greenhouse does not refer to a house that is green, and, similarly, “lazy” does not specify a type of bone in
lazy-bones, which its real meaning is a person who is lazy.
In EXOCENTRIC compounds, there is NO element that functions as the SEMANTIC head of the
compound which is modified by the non-head element. So the compound does not have the meaning of X
is a kind of Y (like endocentric).
Obviously, the meaning of an exocentric compound is OPAQUE. It is impossible to work put what an
exocentric compound means form the sum of the meanings of its constituents. For this reasons, exocentric
compounding tends to be used much less frequently than endocentric compounding when it comes to the
topic of creation of new words.
How should the grammar deal with exocentric compounds? As mentioned, from a semantic point of view,
exocentric compounds are opaque like idioms, i.e. They are not subject to compositionality. So this is why
we list their meanings in the lexicon as we do for idioms.

(3)Copulative compounds:
• Both bases are on an equal basis.
• It is difficult to identify the HEAD: “deaf-mute, South-West, Sweet-Sour, etc.”

--MORPHOLOGY: Other Word Formation Processes.

• CLIPPING: shortening of a word by removing part of it, without changing its meaning. It’s a kind
of abbreviation which is now very popular.
o Microphone > micro.
o Zoological Garden > zoo.
o Laboratory > lab.
o Advertisement > ad.
o Electronic mail > e-mail.
o Information > info.
• BLENDING: it’s a combination of clipping and compounding; both elements in the compound
word they form have been clipped or shortened.
o Breakfast + Lunch = Brunch.
o Oxford + Cambridge = Oxbridge.
o Smoke + Fog = smog.
• ACRONYMY: formation of a word by spelling out the initials of the original word. 2 types of:
o The abbreviation is pronounced as individual letters:
▪ CIA = Central Intelligence Agency // LFG = Lexical Functional Grammar.
o The abbreviation is pronounced as a new word:
▪ Asap = as soon as possible.