MORPHOLOGICAL

DESCRIPTION
Leny Saili Rahmah, S.Pd., M.Hum
 – lexical (child, teach)
free
Functional (and, the)
■ Morpheme
derivational (re-, -ness)
bound

inflectional (-’s, -ed)

MORPHOLOGICAL FORMATION

Words are formed from simple word, using various processes. This make it possible to
create very large word. There are several distinct ways in wich word get formed :
a. Compounding
b. Derivation
c. inflection
a. Coumpounding
■ coumpunding is bringing together two roots or lexemes to produce a new lexeme.
■ Compounds are found in all word classes. The most common types of compounds are:
a) Nouns: car park, rock band
b) Adjectives: heartbreaking, sugar-free, airsick
c) Verbs: oven-bake, baby-sit, chain-smoke
d) Adverbs: good-naturedly, nevertheless
Compounding
A compound word is a combination of several words which formed a new word with distinct
meaning or different meaning.
■ There are 3 types of Compound Words :
a. Open Compound Word, Some of Open Compound Words are a combinaton of nouns and
adjectives that form a new word. Written separately.
Examples: ice cream, high school, real estate.
b. Closed Compound Word, The combination of words that written into one and did not
written separately.
Examples: handphone, bookstore, bodyguard.
c. Hyphenated Compound Word, Hyphenates are used to combine different words.
Examples: sister-in-law, up-to-date, cross-check.
 b. Derivation
We said that the derivation changes the category of the word, and is a forming of new word from an
already axisting word by adding prefix or by suffix.
Example : a. republican – republic (root) + an (suffix)
b. republicans – republic (root) + an (suffix) + s (plural)
a. Noun derivation.
Ex: imagination – imagine (root) + ation (suffix)
b. Verb derivation.
Ex: enclose – en (prefix) + close (root)
c. Adjective derivation.
Ex: friendly – friend (root) + Iy (suffix)
d. Adverb derivation
Ex: wherever – where (root) + ever (suffix)
derivational morpheme

■ a derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word

■ The verb teach becomes the noun teacher if we add the derivational morpheme -er
■ So, the suffix -er in Modern English can be an inflectional morpheme as part of an
adjective and also a distinct derivational morpheme as part of a noun. Just because they
look the same (-er) doesn’t mean they do the same kind of work.
■ Whenever there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix attached to the same
word, they always appear in that order.
■ First the derivational (-er) is attached to teach, then the inflectional (-s) is added to
produce teachers.
Analysis

■ The child’s wildness shocked the teachers

■ hand bags are taken by women

c. inflection

To fit a word into a syntactic construction, it may have to undergo

some changes Than a word in adding “s” suffix does not change
the category of that word. But thus makes more specific in
category
Example : girls, loves
Maulidina and kikit love him
I love him
Inflectional morpheme

■ An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word

■ both old and older are adjective . The -er inflection
Problems in morphological description

■ The inflectional morpheme -s is added to cat and we get the plural cats. What is the
inflectional morpheme that makes sheep the plural of sheep, or men the plural of man?
And if -al is the derivational suffix added to the stem institution to give us institutional,
then can we take -al off the word legal to get the stem leg? Unfortunately, the answer is
“No.”

■ Sheep
■ I have a sheep I have a cat
■ I have many sheep (s) I have many cats