5 Morphology and Word Formation – Colorado State University

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5 Morphology and Word Formation

key concepts
Words and morphemes
Root, derivational, inflectional morphemes
Morphemes, allomorphs, morphs
Words
English inflectional morphology
English derivational morphology
Compounding
Other sources of words
Registers and words
Internal structure of complex words
Classifying words by their morphology

i n t ro d u c t i o n
This chapter is about words—their relationships, their constituent parts,
and their internal organization. We believe that this information will be of
value to anyone interested in words, for whatever reason; to anyone inter-
ested in dictionaries and how they represent the aspects of words we deal
with here; to anyone involved in developing the vocabularies of native and
non-native speakers of English; to anyone teaching writing across the curric-
ulum who must teach the characteristics of words specific to their discipline;
to anyone teaching writing who must deal with the usage issues created by
the fact that different communities of English speakers use different word
forms, only one of which may be regarded as standard.

Exercise
1. Divide each of the following words into their smallest meaningful
parts:landholder, smoke-jumper, demagnetizability.

2. Each of the following sentences contains an error made by a non-
native speaker of English. In each, identify and correct the incorrect
word.

a. I am very relax here.
b. I am very boring with this game.
c. I am very satisfactory with my life.
d. Some flowers are very attracting to some insects.
e. Many people have very strong believes.

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f. My culture is very difference from yours.
g. His grades proof that he is a hard worker.
h. The T-shirt that China drawing. (from a T-shirt package from

China)

In general terms, briefly discuss what English language learners must
learn in order to avoid such errors.

3. Some native speakers of English use forms such as seen instead
of saw, come instead of came, aks instead of ask, clumb instead of
climbed, drug instead of dragged, growed instead of grew. Are these
errors? If they are, are they the same kinds of errors made by the non-
native speakers of English listed in Exercise 2? If not, what are they?

wo r d s a n d m o r p h e m e s
In traditional grammar, words are the basic units of analysis. Grammarians
classify words according to their parts of speech and identify and list the
forms that words can show up in. Although the matter is really very com-
plex, for the sake of simplicity we will begin with the assumption that we are
all generally able to distinguish words from other linguistic units. It will be
sufficient for our initial purposes if we assume that words are the main units
used for entries in dictionaries. In a later section, we will briefly describe
some of their distinctive characteristics.
Words are potentially complex units, composed of even more basic units,
called morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that has
grammatical function or meaning (NB not the smallest unit of meaning);
we will designate them in braces—{ }. For example, sawed, sawn, sawing,
and saws can all be analyzed into the morphemes {saw} + {-ed}, {-n}, {-ing},
and {-s}, respectively. None of these last four can be further divided into
meaningful units and each occurs in many other words, such as looked,
mown, coughing, bakes.

{Saw} can occur on its own as a word; it does not have to be attached
to another morpheme. It is a free morpheme. However, none of the other
morphemes listed just above is free. Each must be affixed (attached) to some
other unit; each can only occur as a part of a word. Morphemes that must
be attached as word parts are said to be bound.

Exercise
1. Identify the free morphemes in the following words:

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Delahunty and Garvey kissed, freedom, stronger, follow, awe, goodness, talkative, teacher,
actor.

2. Use the words above (and any other words that you think are rel-
evant) to answer the following questions:
a. Can a morpheme be represented by a single phoneme? Give ex-

amples. By more than one phoneme? Give examples.

b. Can a free morpheme be more than one syllable in length? Give

examples. Can a bound morpheme? Give examples.

c. Does the same letter or phoneme—or sequence of letters or pho-
nemes—always represent the same morpheme? Why or why not?
(Hint: you must refer to the definition of morpheme to be able to
answer this.)

d. Can the same morpheme be spelled differently? Give examples.
e. Can different morphemes be pronounced identically? Give examples.

f. A morpheme is basically the same as:

i. a letter
ii. a sound
iii. a group of sounds
iv. none of the above

3. The words district and discipline show that the sequence of letters
d-i-s does not always constitute a morpheme. (Analogous examples are
mission, missile, begin, and retrofit.) List five more sequences of let-
ters that are sometimes a morpheme and sometimes not.

4. Just for fun, find some other pairs like disgruntled / *gruntled and
disgusted / *gusted, where one member of the pair is an actual English
word and the other should be a word, but isn’t.

Affixes are classified according to whether they are attached before or
after the form to which they are added. Prefixes are attached before and
suffixes after. The bound morphemes listed earlier are all suffixes; the {re-}
of resaw is a prefix. Further examples of prefixes and suffixes are presented in
Appendix A at the end of this chapter.

Root, derivational, and inflectional morphemes
Besides being bound or free, morphemes can also be classified as root, deri-
vational, or inflectional. A root morpheme is the basic form to which other

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Morphology and Word Formation morphemes are attached. It provides the basic meaning of the word.The
morpheme {saw} is the root of sawers. Derivational morphemes are added
to forms to create separate words: {-er} is a derivational suffix whose ad-
dition turns a verb into a noun, usually 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 prop-
erties such as plurality, as the {-s} of magazines does, or past tense, as the {ed}
of babecued does. English has eight inflectional morphemes, which we will
describe below.
We can regard the root of a word as 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 di-
vided into meaningful pieces, and so must be the word’s root.
We must distinguish between a word’s root and the forms to which af-
fixes are attached. In moveable, {-able} is attached to {move}, which we’ve
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.

Exercise
1. Can an English word have more than one prefix? Give examples. More
than one suffix? For example? More than one of each? Give examples.
Divide the examples you collected into their root, derivational, and
inflectional morphemes.

2. Check your dictionary to see how it deals with inflected and derived
word forms. Does it list all the inflections of regular inflected words?
Just irregular ones? Does it accord derived forms their own entries or
include them in the entries of the forms from which they are derived?

3. Does your dictionary list bound morphemes? Which kinds?

m o r p h e m e s, a l lo m o r p h s, a n d m o r p h s
The English plural morpheme {-s} can be expressed by three different but

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Delahunty and Garvey clearly related phonemic forms /@z/ or /z/, /z/, and /s/. These three have
in common not only their meaning, but also the fact that each contains an
alveolar fricative phoneme, either /s/ or /z/. The three forms are in comple-
mentary distribution, because each occurs where the others cannot, and it is
possible to predict just where each occurs: /Iz/ after sibilants (/s, z, S, Z, tS,
dZ/), /z/ after voiced segments, and /s/ everywhere else. Given the semantic
and phonological similarities between the three forms and the fact that they
are in complementary distribution, it is reasonable to view them as contex-
tual pronunciation variants of a single entity. In parallel with phonology,
we will refer to the entity of which the three are variant representations as a
morpheme, and the variant forms of a given morpheme as its allomorphs.
When we wish to refer to a minimal grammatical form merely as a form,
we will use the term morph. Compare these terms and the concepts behind
them with phoneme, allophone, and phone. (Hint: note the use of / /, [ ],
and { }.)

Exercise
Consult the glossary in the chapter on Phonetics and Phonology and
try to determine the meanings of the morphemes {phone}, {allo-}, and
{-eme}.

(1)

/phoneme/

[allophone] [allophone]

[allophone] etc.

(2)

{morpheme}

/allomorph/ /allomorph/

/allomorph/ etc.

wo r d s
Words are notoriously difficult entities to define, both in universal and in
language specific terms. Like most linguistic entities, they look in two direc-
tions—upward toward larger units of which they are parts (toward phrases),
and downward toward their constituent morphemes. This, however, only
helps us understand words if we already understand how they are combined
into larger units or divided into smaller ones, so we will briefly discuss sev-

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Morphology and Word Formation eral other criteria that have been proposed for identifying them.
One possible criterion is spelling: in written English text, we tend to
regard as a word any expression that has no spaces within it and is separated
by spaces from other expressions. While this is a very useful criterion, it
does sometimes lead to inconsistent and unsatisfactory results. For instance,
cannot is spelled as one word but might not as two; compounds (words com-
posed of two or more words; see below) are inconsistently divided (cf. influx,
in-laws, goose flesh, low income vs. low-income).
Words tend to resist interruption; we cannot freely insert pieces into
words as we do into sentences. For example, we cannot separate the root of
a word from its inflectional ending by inserting another word, as in *sock-
blue-s for blue socks. Sentences, in contrast, can be interrupted. We can in-
sert adverbials between subjects and predicates: John quickly erased his fin-
gerprints. By definition, we can also insert the traditional interjections: We
will, I believe, have rain later today.

In English, though by no means in all languages, the order of elements
in words is quite fixed. English inflections, for example, are suffixes and
are added after any derivational morphemes in a word. At higher levels in
the language, different orders of elements can differ in meaning: compare
John kissed Mary with Mary kissed John. But we do not contrast words with
prefixed inflections with words with suffixed inflections. English does not
contrast, for example, piece + s with s + piece.

In English, too, it is specific individual words that select for certain in-
flections. Thus the word child is pluralized by adding {-ren}, ox by adding
{-en}. So if a form takes the {-en} plural, it must be a word.
So words are units composed of one or more morphemes; they are also
the units of which phrases are composed.

English inflectional morphology
Inflectional morphemes, as we noted earlier, alter the form of a word in or-
der to indicate certain grammatical properties. English has only eight inflec-
tional morphemes, listed in Table 1, along with the properties they indicate.
Except for {-en}, the forms we list in Table 1 are the regular English in-
flections. They are regular because they are the inflections added to the vast
majority of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs to indicate grammatical
properties such as tense, number, and degree.
They are also the inflections we typically add to new words coming into
the language, for example, we add {-s} to the noun throughput to make it
plural. When we borrow words from other languages, in most cases we add
the regular English inflections to them rather than borrow the inflections

126

Delahunty and Garvey they had in their home languages; for example, we pluralize operetta as oper-
ettas rather than as operette as Italian does; similarly, we sing oratorios rather
than oratori. [Thanks to Paula Malpezzi-Price for help with these examples.]
The regular inflections are the default inflections that learners tend to use
when they don’t know the correct ones (for example, growed rather than
grew).

nouns:
noun phrases:

{-s}
{-s}

plural

genitive/possessive

(the birds)
(the bird’s song)

adjectives/adverbs:

{-er}
{-est}

comparative
superlative

(faster)
(fastest)

verbs:

{-s}
{-ed}
{-ing} progressive/present participle
{-en}

3rd person singular present tense

past tense

past participle

(proves)
(proved)
(is proving)
(has proven)
(was proven)

table 1: the eight english inflectional morphemes

[Note: the regular past participle morpheme is {-ed}, identical to the
past tense form {-ed}. We use the irregular past participle form {-en} to
distinguish the two.]

However, because of its long and complex history, English (like all lan-
guages) has many irregular forms, which may be irregular in a variety of
ways. First, irregular words may use different inflections than regular ones:
for example, the modern past participle inflection of a regular verb is {-ed},
but the past participle of freeze is frozen and the past participle of break
is broken. Second, irregular forms may involve internal vowel changes, as
in man/men, woman/women, grow/grew, ring/rang/rung. Third, some forms
derive from historically unrelated forms: went, the past tense of go, histori-
cally was the past tense of a different verb, wend. This sort of realignment
is known as suppletion. Other examples of suppletion include good, better,
and best, and bad, worse, and worst. (As an exercise, you might look up be,
am, and is in a dictionary that provides etymological information, such as
the American Heritage.) Fourth, some words show no inflectional change:
sheep is both singular and plural; hit is both present and past tense, as well
as past participle. Fifth, many borrowed words, especially nouns, have ir-
regular inflected forms: alumnae and cherubim are the plurals of alumna and

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Morphology and Word Formation cherub, respectively.

Irregular forms demonstrate the abstract status of morphemes. Thus the
word men realizes (represents, makes real) the two morphemes {man} and
{plural}; women realizes {woman} and {plural}; went realizes {go} and {past
tense}. Most grammar and writing textbooks contain long lists of these ex-
ceptions.
As a final issue here we must note that different groups of English speak-
ers use different inflected forms of words, especially of verbs. When this is
the case, the standard variety of the language typically selects one and rejects
the others as non-standard, or, illogically, as “not English,” or worse. For
example, many English speakers use a single form of be in the past tense
(was) regardless of what the subject of its clause is. So they will say, We was
there yesterday. This is an uncontroversial issue: was in instances like this is
universally regarded as non-standard. Other forms are more controversial.
For example, what is the past tense of dive—dived or dove? How are lie and
lay to be used? How does your dictionary deal with such usage issues?

Exercise
1. Can you think of a reliable way to distinguish the past tense and past
participle of a verb, regardless of whether it is regular or irregular?
(Hint: think of words or classes of words that often occur with these
forms.)

2. Check a reference grammar for further examples of irregular inflec-
tions. Also, for an excellent discussion of this and related issues, read
Pinker (1999).

3. From the following words, determine the three distinct pronuncia-
tions or allomorphs of the past tense morpheme {-ed}: towed, sighed,
tapped, tabbed, tossed, buzzed, raided. Specify the phonological envi-
ronment in which each allomorph occurs. (Hints: look at the last sound
of the word to which the morpheme is added and think of the allo-
morphs of the plural morpheme discussed earlier.)

4. Pinker (1999) notes that children learning English as their native
language sometimes produce forms like goed and readed. Why do you
think they do this?

5. Would you expect adult non-native learners of English to produce

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Delahunty and Garvey