Morphology Revision

412210205 Trần Châu Anh – 21CNATMCLC01
1. What’s the difference between clipping and back-formation? Clarify.

2. Analyze the morphological process of the following complex words:
disorganization and incomprehensibility.
3. What’s the difference between derivational and inflectional
morphemes. Give example for illustration.
4. What are the differences between affixes and combining form?
5. What’s the difference between homonym, homograph and homophone?
Give examples for illustration.
1.
The difference between clipping and back-formation:
 Clipping creates shortened words from longer words, but does not change the class
or meaning of the word.
 Back-formation is the process of forming new word by removing actual or
supposed affixes from another word, back-formation may change the word's class or
meaning
Examples
- Clipping: gas (gasoline), auto (automobile), movie (moving picture)
+ gasoline -> gas
- Back-formation: beg (from begger), edit (from editor), babysit (from babysitter)
2.
Disorganization
Incomprehensibility
3.
The differences between derivational and inflectional morphology:
- Definition
 Inflectional morphology is the study of the modification of words to fit into
different grammatical contexts.
 Derivational morphology is the study of the formation of new words that differ
either in syntactic category or in meaning from their bases.
=> Therefore, this is the principle difference between inflectional and derivational
morphology.
- In usage
 Inflectional morphemes are affixes that merely serve as grammatical markers and
indicate some grammatical information about a word.
 Derivational morphemes are affixes that are capable of either changing the
meaning or the grammatical category of the word.
- The key difference between inflectional and derivational morphology is

 Inflectional morphemes create new forms of the same word.
 Derivational morphemes create new words and change the meaning.
3 Major Differences
1. Inflectional morphemes do not change the grammatical category of a word, only
derivational morphemes do. So when you add morpheme to a word and the word
class or the part of speech changes, then you do not have inflectional morpheme;
rather, you have a derivational morpheme.
2. Derivational morphemes are recursive. There can be more than one in a word or
words may be derived through the addition of several derivational morphemes.
Inflectional morphemes are not recursive.
3. When derivational suffixes and inflectional suffixes are attached to the same word,
they always appear in that order. Inflectional morphemes always come at the end
of a word in English, that is, no other morpheme can be added after an inflectional
morpheme. Take this sentence for example:
 The girl’s wildness shocked the teachers.
 The + girl+s + wild+ness +shock+ed + the +teach+er+s
You will notice that it is the inflectional morpheme that appeared last in the sample
sentence above.
Differences between Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes

1/ First, inflectional morphemes never change the grammatical category (part of
speech) of a word.
For example, tall and taller are both adjectives. The inflectional morpheme -
er (comparative marker) simply produces a different version of the adjective tall.
However, derivational morphemes often change the part of speech of a word.

For example, ‘read’ is a verb but ‘reader’ is a noun. In some cases, derivational
morphemes do not change the grammatical category of a word. For example,
both happy and unhappy are adjectives, and both fill and refill are verbs.
2/ Second, when a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix are added to the
same word, they always appear in a certain relative order within the word
that inflectional suffixes follow derivational suffixes. For example, the derivational
(-er) is added to read, then the inflectional (-s) is attached to produce readers.
3/ A third point worth emphasizing is that certain derivational morphemes serve
to create new base forms or new stems to which we can attach other derivational
or inflectional affixes. For example, the derivational suffix -ize is often added to
create verbs from adjectives, as in modernize, and we can add the inflectional
suffix -s (modernizes) to such -ize verbs.
To sum up, we can state that certain derivational affixes produce new members
for a given class of words, but inflectional affixes are always added to available
members of a given class of words.
Derivational morphemes Inflectional morphemes
Derivational morphemes create new Inflectional morphemes show

words grammatical relationships.
Example: friendship, lovely Example: friends, loved
Derivational morphemes change the Inflectional morphemes don’t change

meaning of words the meaning of words
Example: beautiful, beautify, Example: cooks, cooked, cooking

beautifulness
Derivational morphemes can change the Derivational morphemes can not change
word’s form class. the word’s form class.
Example: care (n) -> careful (adj) Example: boy (n) -> boys (n)
Examples
- of inflectional morphemes: happier, classes, shortest, sang, Chloe’s, waited…
- of derivational morphemes: joyful, understandable, entertainment, classify...
4.
The differences between affixes and combining form:
- Unlike affixes, combining forms are substantial enough to form a word simply by
connecting to an affix.
- A combining form can also differ from an affix in its being derived from an independent
word.
- A combining form can also be distinguished historically from an affix by the fact that it
is borrowed from another language in which it is descriptively a word or a combining
form.
5.
The difference between homonym, homograph and homophone:
 Homophones are words pronounced alike but different in meaning of derivation or
spelling.
 Homographs are words that are spelled alike but are different in meaning or
derivation or pronounciation.
 Homonyms (are words that have the same name, in other words, they sound the
same and they're spelled the same) / may be used to refer to either homophemes or
to homographs. Some people feel that the use of homonym should be restricted to
words that are spelled alike but are different in pronunciation and meaning.
=> homophones sound the same; homographs are spelled the same; and homonyms do
both.
Examples
- homonyms: pen meaning the writting instrument and pen meaning an enclosure
for an animal
- homophones: buy-by-bye; sea-see; write-right.
- homographs: + saw meaning a sharp tool used for cutting hard materials and saw
meaning the past tense for the word "see"
+bat: the basketball equipment
the wingled animal
SAMPLE TEST
1. State morphological process (i.e root, base, morphemes (bound, free), affixes etc.) of
the following words: incredibility and reorganization.
2. Clarify morphological features of -ly and -ship in friendly and friendship.
3. State the difference in term of morphological features between affixes as shown in
restart or rearragement and combining forms as in Sino- Japanese or technophobe.
1.
Incredibility
-incredibility:
Reorganization
N
V Suffn
Pref V -tion
reorganize
reorganize
reorganization
2.
-ship: a native English suffix of nouns denoting condition, character, office, skill, etc..
-ly: adding -ly to the end of a noun turns the word into adjective. The adjectives now have the
meaning of "like (the noun), or something that is characteristic of (the noun)".

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412210205 Trần Châu Anh – 21CNATMCLC01

1. What’s the difference between clipping and back-formation? Clarify.

- The key difference between inflectional and derivational morphology is

 The girl’s wildness shocked the teachers.

 The + girl+s + wild+ness +shock+ed + the +teach+er+s

Differences between Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes

However, derivational morphemes often change the part of speech of a word.

Derivational morphemes Inflectional morphemes

Derivational morphemes create new Inflectional morphemes show

Example: friendship, lovely Example: friends, loved

Derivational morphemes change the Inflectional morphemes don’t change

Example: beautiful, beautify, Example: cooks, cooked, cooking

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