Exercises

What’s a word?
……………………………………………………………...

Ask anyone what a word is and . . . they’ll look puzzled. In some sense, we
all know what words are – we can list words of various sorts at the drop of a
hat. But ask us to define explicitly what a word is, and we’re flummoxed.
Someone might say that a word is a stretch of letters that occurs between blank
spaces. But someone else is bound to point out that words don’t have to be
written for us to know that they’re words. And in spoken (or signed) language,
there are no spaces or pauses to delineate words. Yet we know what they are.
Still another person might at this point try an answer like this: “A word is
something small that means something,” to which a devil’s advocate might
respond, “But what do you mean by ‘something small’?” This is the point at
which it becomes necessary to define a few specialized linguistic terms.
Linguists define a morpheme as the smallest unit of language that has its own
meaning. Simple words like giraffe, wiggle, or yellow are morphemes, but so
are prefixes like re- and pre- and suffixes like -ize and -er. 2 There’s far more
to be said about morphemes, but for now we can use the term morpheme to
help us come up with a more precise and coherent definition of word. Let us
now define a word as one or more morphemes that can stand alone in a
language. Words that consist of only one morpheme, like the words in (1), can
be Challenge: your word log Keep track of every word you hear or see (or
produce yourself) that you think you’ve never heard before. You might
encounter words while listening to the radio, watching TV, or reading, or
someone you’re talking to might slip one in. Write those new words down,
take note of where and when you heard/read/produced them, and jot down
what you think they mean. What you write down may or may not be absolutely
fresh new words – they just have to be new to you. We’ll be coming back to
these as the course progresses and putting them under the microscope.
For now it is enough to know that they are morphemes that cannot stand
on their own, and that prefixes come before, and suffixes after, the root or
main part of the word.

(1) Simplex words giraffe fraud murmur oops just pistachio

(2) Complex words :Words that are made up are called complex: opposition
intellectual crystallize prewash repressive blackboard

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 We now have a first pass at a definition of what a word is, but as we’ll see,
we can be far more precise.

Words and lexemes, types and tokens

How many words occur in the following sentence? My friend and I

walk to class together, because our classes are in the same building and we
dislike walking alone. You might have thought of at least two ways of
answering this question, and maybe more. On the one hand, you might have
counted every item individually, in which case your answer would have been
21. On the other hand, you might have thought about whether you should
count the two instances of and in the sentence as a single word and not as
separate words. You might even have thought about whether to count walk
and walking or class and classes as different words: after all, if you were not
a native speaker of English and you needed to look up what they meant in the
dictionary, you’d just find one entry for each pair of words. So when you count
words, you may count them in a number of ways. Again, it’s useful to have
some special terms for how we count words. Let’s say that if we are counting
every instance in which a word occurs in a sentence, regardless of whether
that word has occurred before or not, we are counting word tokens. If we
count word tokens in the sentence above, we count 21. If, however, we are
counting a word once, no matter how many times it occurs in a sentence, we
are counting word types. Counting this way, we count 20 types in the sentence
above: the two tokens of the word and count as one type. A still different way
of counting words would be to count what are called lexemes. Lexemes can
be thought of as families of words that differ only in their grammatical endings
or grammatical forms; singular and plural forms of a noun (class, classes),
present, past, and participle forms of verbs (walk, walks, walked, walking),
different forms of a pronoun (I, me, my, mine) each represent a single lexeme.
One way of thinking about lexemes is that they are the basis of dictionary
entries; dictionaries typically have a single entry for each lexeme. So if we are
counting lexemes in the sentence above, we would count class and classes,
walk and walking, I and my, and our and we as single lexemes; the sentence
then has 16 lexemes.

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 Open and Closed Word Classes

Some word classes are OPEN, that is, new words can be added to the
class as the need arises. The class of nouns, for instance, is potentially infinite,
since it is continually being expanded as new scientific discoveries are made,
new products are developed, and new ideas are explored. In the late twentieth
century, for example, developments in computer technology have given rise
to many new nouns:

Internet, website, URL, CD-

ROM, email, newsgroup, bitmap, modem, multimedia

New verbs have also been introduced:

download, upload, reboot, right-click, double-click

The adjective and adverb classes can also be expanded by the addition of new
words, though less prolifically.

On the other hand, we never invent new prepositions, determiners, or

conjunctions. These classes include words like of, the, and but. They are
called CLOSED word classes because they are made up of finite sets of words
which are never expanded (though their members may change their spelling,
for example, over long periods of time). The subclass of pronouns, within the
open noun class, is also closed.

Words in an open class are known as open-class items. Words in a closed

class are known as closed-class items.

3
 Why do languages have morphology? As native speakers of a
language we use morphology for different reasons. One reason for having
morphology is to form new lexemes from old ones. We will refer to this as
lexeme formation. (Many linguists use the term word formation in this
specific sense, but this usage can be confusing, as all of morphology is
sometimes referred to in a larger sense as ‘word formation’.) Lexeme
formation can do one of three things. It can change the part of speech (or
category) of a word, for example, turning verbs into nouns or adjectives, or
nouns into adjectives, as you can see in the examples in (3): (3) Category-
changing lexeme formation3 V→ N: amuse → amusement V → A: impress
→ impressive N → A: monster → monstrous Some rules of lexeme formation
do not change category, but they do add substantial new meaning: (4)
Meaning-changing lexeme formation A → A ‘negative A’ happy → unhappy
N → N ‘place where N lives’ orphan → orphanage V → V ‘repeat action’
wash → rewash And some rules of lexeme formation both change category
and add substantial new meaning: (5) Both category and meaning-changing
lexeme formation V → A ‘able to be Ved’ wash → washable N → V ‘remove
N from’ louse → delouse Why have rules of lexeme formation? Imagine what
it would be like to have to invent a wholly new word to express every single
new concept. For example, if you wanted to talk about the process or result of
amusing someone, you couldn’t use amusement, but would have to have a
term like zorch instead. And if you wanted to talk about the process or result
of resenting someone, you couldn’t use resentment, but would have to have
something like plitz instead. And so on. As you can see, rules of lexeme
formation allow for a measure of economy in our mental lexicons: we can
recycle parts, as it were, to come up with new words. It is probably safe to say
that all languages have some ways of forming new lexemes, although, 3. The
notation V → N means ‘changes a verb to a noun.’ What is morphology? 7 as
we’ll see as this book progresses, those ways might be quite different from
the means we use in English. On the other hand, we sometimes use
morphology even when we don’t need new lexemes. For example, we saw
that each lexeme can have a number of word forms. The lexeme WALK has
forms like walk, walks, walked, walking that can be used in different
grammatical contexts. When we change the form of a word so that it fits in a
particular grammatical context, we are concerned with what linguists call
inflection. Inflectional word formation is word formation that expresses
grammatical distinctions like number (singular vs. plural); tense (present vs.
past); person (first, second, or third); and case (subject, object, possessive),
among others. It does not result in the creation of new lexemes, but merely
changes the grammatical form of lexemes to fit into different grammatical
4
contexts. Interestingly, languages have wildly differing amounts of inflection.
English has relatively little inflection. We create different forms of nouns
according to number (wombat, wombats); we mark the possessive form of a
noun with -’s or -s’ (the wombat’s eyes). We have different forms of verbs for
present and past and for present and past participles (sing, sang, singing,
sung), and we use a suffix -s to mark the third person singular of a verb (she
sings). However, if you’ve studied Latin, Russian, ancient Greek, or even Old
English, you’ll know that these languages have quite a bit more inflectional
morphology than English does. Even languages like French and Spanish have
more inflectional forms of verbs than English does. But some languages have
much less inflection than English does. Mandarin Chinese, for example, has
almost none. Rather than marking plurals by suffixes as English does, or by
prefixes as the Bantu language Swahili does, Chinese does not mark plurals
or past tenses with morphology at all. This is not to say that a speaker of
Mandarin cannot express whether it is one giraffe, two giraffes, or many
giraffes that are under discussion, or whether the sighting was yesterday or
today. It simply means that to do so, a speaker of Mandarin must use a separate
word like one, two or many or a separate word for past to make the distinction.
(6) Wo jian guo yi zhi chang jing lu. I see past one CLASSIFIER giraffe4 (7)
Wo jian guo liang zhi chang jing lu I see past two CLASSIFIER giraffe The
word chang jing lu ‘giraffe’ has the same form regardless of how many long-
necked beasts are of interest. And the verb ‘to see’ does not change its form
for the past tense; instead, the separate word guo is added to express this
concept. In other words, some concepts that are expressed via inflection in
some languages are expressed by other means (word order, separate words) in
other languages.

Morphology is the study of forms. It has been used to describe that

type of investigation that analyses all those basic elements which are used in
a language. What we have been describing as elements in the form of a
linguistic message is known as morphemes. A morpheme is the minimal unit
of meaning or grammatical function.
♦ One Morpheme: boy
♦ Two Morphemes: boyish =boy+ish
♦ Three Morphemes: boyish ness=boy+ish+ness
♦ Four Morphemes:undesirability =un+desire+able+ly

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♦ More than Four: antidisestablishmentarianism
anti+dis+establish+ment+ari+an+ism
*Drove :two morphemes
Better: two morphemes
Driven : two morphemes
*Clitics

Clitics are unstressed reduced units of meaning that attached to a

limited number of host words. They generally are not considered a type of
affix since they do not meet specific minimal phonological requirements
(which will not be discussed here). Proclitics attach to the beginning of a
root, e.g., ‘tis for ‘it is’, ‘dyou for ‘do you’. Enclitics are attached word
finally, e.g., what’s for ‘what is’.

6
Types of morphemes:

Morpheme is the smallest indivisible unit of semantic content and

grammatical function. In other words, we can say that morpheme is the
minimal unit of a language which has a meaning, lexical or grammatical, and
cannot be divided into further smaller units. They are the minimal building
blocks of meaning. Morphemes function as the foundation of language. For
Example- the word “unjustifiable” consists of 3 morphemes – Un + justify +
able Where, ‘un-’ is a prefix which means “not” and in this example it is used
to negate the adjective “justifiable”. The suffix ‘-able’, is used to form
adjective that is usually placed at the end of a verb such as- ‘useable’,
‘lovable’, ‘deniable’ etc. All the three morphemes (‘un’, ‘justify’ and ‘able’)
in the word “unjustifiable” are indivisible if we divide them further they will
lose their meaning.

Morphemes can immediately be divided into two:

1- Free Morpheme 2- Bound Morpheme.

1- Free morphemes: are those that can stand alone as words and can
function independently. For Example: cat, boat, on, in etc. Free morphemes
are examples of ‘lexical morphemes’. They are nouns, adjectives, verbs,
prepositions or adverbs. Such morphemes carry most of the ‘semantic content’
of utterances.They comprise simple words (i.e. words made up of one free
morpheme) and compound words (i.e. words made up of two free
morphemes).
Examples:
Simple words: the, run, on, well
Compound words: keyboard, greenhouse, bloodshed, smartphone

The free morphemes can generally be identified as a set of ordinary

nouns, adjectives and verbs that we think of as the words that carry the
“content” of the messages we convey. These free morphemes are called
lexical morphemes and some examples are: girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long,
yellow, sincere, open, look, follow, break. We can add new lexical
morphemes to the language rather easily, so they are treated as an “open” class
of words.

7
 Other types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes.
Examples are and, but, when, because, on, near, above, in, the, that, it, them.
This set consists largely of the functional words in the language such as
conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns. Because we almost never
add new functional morphemes to the language, they are described as a
“closed” class of words.

2-Bound morphemes are those that can occur only in combination,

i.e. they are parts of a word. Bound morphemes always appear in conjunction
with a root and sometimes with other bound morphemes. For Example: -s, -
er, -ing, -ment etc.
Bound morphemes can further be divided into: Inflection Morphemes
and Derivational Morpheme .( also Portmanteau Morphemes, Empty
morphemes, Zero morphemes are bound)

An inflectional morpheme is a suffix that’s added to a word to assign a

particular grammatical property to that word, such as its number, mood, tense,
or possession. However, an inflectional morphology can never change the
grammatical category of a word. You can add an inflectional morphology to
a verb, noun, adjective, or an adverb. For example, adding a ‘-s’ to the verb
plural verb ‘run’ can make this verb singular. Similarly, adding ‘-ed’ to the
verb dance creates the past tense of the verb (danced).

* In English, all inflectional morphemes are suffixes (i.e. they all only attach
to the end of words).

Some more examples are as follows:

Cat → Cats

Teach→ Teaches

Clean → Cleaned

Pretty → Prettier

8
The inflectional morphemes of English
Suff Function Example Attaches
ix
-s plural cats to
Nouns
-’s possessive brother’s Nouns
-er comparative taller Adjectives
-est superlative tallest faste Adjectives
-s third person r(she) walks
faste Verbs
singular st
(he) eats
-ed past tense
present tense walked Verbs
-ing progressive walkingcalle Verbs
-en past participle d (have)givin Verbs
g
given
(have)
eaten

As evident from the above examples, inflectional morphemes usually

produce different forms of the same word, instead of different words. In
addition, inflection does not generally change the basic meaning of a word as
they only add specifications to a word or emphasize certain aspects of its
meaning. Thus, words under inflectional morphology are not found as
separate entries in dictionaries.

Derivational morphology is the study of the formation of new words that

differ either in syntactic category or in meaning from their bases. Thus, a
derivational morpheme is an affix we add to a word in order to create a new
word or a new form of a word. Moreover, a derivational morpheme can either
change the meaning or the grammatical category of the word. For example,

Change in Meaning

Leaf → Leaflet

Pure →Impure

Change in Grammatical Category

Help (verb) → Helper (noun)

9
Logic (noun) → Logical (adjective)

As seen from the above examples, derivational morphemes change

either the meaning or the category of the original words, forming new words.
These words are, thus, found under new entries in dictionaries.

**Derivational affixes derive new words by altering the definitional meaning

or the grammatical category of a word, whereas inflectional affixes show
grammatical relationships between words or grammatical contrast. In
English, both prefixes and suffixes can be derivational, but only suffixes can
be inflectional.

10
•
Affixation in English
Affixation is the morphological process in by which bound
morphemes are attached to a roots or stems to mark changes in meaning,
part of speech, or grammatical relationships. Affixes take on several forms
and serve different functions. In this tutorial, we will be looking specifically
at affixation in Standard English.
Prefix-suffix-infix-circumfix

1. Prefixes
Prefixes are abundant in English. Some are more commonly used
(productive) than others. As mentioned above, prefixes are only used
to derive new meaning or part of speech. Below is a list of those that
are more common.

Table 1 Commonly used prefixes in EnglishCLICK PHOTO FOR LARGE

VIEW
2. Suffixes

Suffixes can either be derivational or inflectional. Below is a list of

common derivational suffixes.

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 Table 2 Commonly used derivational suffixes in EnglishCLICK PHOTO
FOR LARGE VIEW
In English there are 8 inflectional suffixes. As you will see, these are
limited to showing some type of grammatical function.

Table 3 Inflectional suffixes in EnglishCLICK PHOTO FOR LARGE VIEW

You may have noticed that -er appears as both a derivational and inflectional
morpheme. Although they share phonological form, they are two separate
morphemes, having 2 separate functions and must not be confused. -
er attached to a verb causes the derivation: verb noun, e.g., write writer. -
er attached to an adjective shows inflection, i.e., the comparative form of an
adjective: nice nicer. This is also true for –ing and –en. A verb + -ing can
derive a noun or inflect a verb for past or present progressive.
(1)
set + ing = noun
The setting of the sun was covered by clouds.
set + ing + progressive verb
I was setting the table when the phone rang.
verb + -en = past participle (freeze + en)
The low temperatures had frozen all the crops.
noun + -en = verb (light + en)
Mary decided to lighten her hair.

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3. Infix
Like prefixes and suffixes, infixes are part of the general class
of affixes ("sounds or letters attached to or inserted within a word to
produce a derivative word or an inflectional form"). Infixes are relatively
rare in English, but you can find them in the plural forms of some words.
For example, cupful, spoonful, and passerby can be pluralized
as cupsful, spoonsful, and passersby, using "s" as an infix. Another
example is the insertion of an (often offensive) intensifier into a word, as
in "fan-freakin'-tastic." Such whole-word insertions are sometimes
called infixes, though this phenomenon is more traditionally known
as tmesis.

There is question as to whether the limited usage of infixation in English

actually a morphological process since the word being inserted is not itself
an infix, as it is free-standing and not a bound morpheme. Furthermore,
there is no resulting derivation or inflection.
Only expletives are used as infixes and in only a limited number of
words. For example, infixes are only permitted when the expletive is
flanked by stress. This means that only words with initial stress (trochees
and not iambs) will be candidates for infixation.
(2)
un-expletive-believable but *unbe-expletive-lievable

An infix is a word element (a type of affix) that can be inserted within

the base form of a word—rather than at its beginning or end—to create a
new word or intensify meaning. The process of inserting an infix is called
infixation.
There are those who claim that infixation is also used as an emphasis
marker in colloquial English. This occurs when an expletive is inserted into
the internal structure of a word, e.g., un-fricking-believable.

3. A circumfix
A circumfix consists of a prefix and a suffix that together produce a
derived or inflected form, as in the English word enlighten. .

13
 A type of affix known as a circumfix occurs in the two words en-ligh-
en and em-bold-en, where the prefix en/m– and the suffix –en/m are
attached simultaneously to the root

14
Rules of Formation

Although a speaker may generally count on intuition in forming complex

words in terms of which affixes may be attached to which roots, underlying
rules of word-formation actually account for the process. Our intuition
allows us to attach ‘un-‘ to ‘productive’ but not to ‘fish’. We can attach the
suffix ‘-ly’ to ‘kind’ but not to ‘sky’.
(3)
un + ‘productive’ but not *un + ‘fish’
‘kind’ + ly *’sky’ + ly
This distribution of affixes leads us to believe that there are rules of word-
formation to which we intuitively adhere. So let’s break this down.
Productivity
Certain affixes are more productive than others, meaning that they can be
added to a large number of words without obstructing meaning. An example
of a productive suffix in English would be –ness which we regularly use to
derive nouns from adjectives.
(4)
adjective + ness = noun
happy + ness = ‘happiness’
In fact, some affixes are so productive that they can be attached to almost
any stem creating nonce words in which meaning is transparent. Take –
ish for example in English. This suffix can be attached to almost any noun or
adjective to communicate like –ness. If a soup broth is not thick, it could be
described as ‘thin’-ish and there would be no ambiguity as to this non-
word’s meaning. All listeners would agree on the interpretation of ‘thin’-
ish.
Unproductive morphemes, on the other hand, are not frequently used. An
example would be the suffix –th as in ‘warmth’.
(5)
adjective + –th = noun
‘warm’ + –th = ‘warmth’
-th can only be attached to a small number of words. No English speaker
would consider using the word ‘thinth’ to describe soup broth that is not
thick.
So back to rules.

15
As we have seen, there are rules that govern the process of affixation
(3). Furthermore, we know that when specific suffixes are attached to one
part of speech, they derive another.
–ly will derive an adverb from an adjective.
(6)
adjective + –ly = adverb
‘calm’ + –ly = ‘calmly’
We can also use –ly with a limited number of nouns to derive adjectives.
(7)
noun + –ly = adjective
‘matron’ +-ly = ‘matronly’
‘friend’ + –ly = ‘friendly’
‘love’ + –ly = ‘lovely’
However this is not possible with verbs.
(8)
*verb +-ly = adverb/adjective
*’walk’ + –ly = adverb
Thus we can claim:
1. adjective + –ly = adverb
2. noun + –ly = adjective
Let’s look again at ‘-ness‘. This suffix can be attached to adjectives but not
to nouns or verbs.
Let’s look again at –ness. This suffix can be attached to adjectives but not to
nouns or verbs.
(9)
adjective + –ness = noun
‘sweet’ + –ness = ‘sweetness’
‘tender’ + —ness = ‘tenderness’
*noun + —ness = noun (or anything)
*‘house’ + —ness = ‘houseness’
*verb + –ness = noun (or anything)
*’study’ + –ness = ‘studiness’
Prefixes in English do not generally change the grammatical category of a
word, but rather meaning. Even so, there are still rules as to how they are
distributed.

16
Un- may combine with adjectives and certain verbs, but not with nouns or
adverbs.
(10)
u–n + ‘friendly’ = ‘unfriendly’
un– + ‘do’ = ‘undo’
but not
* un– + ‘computer’ = ‘uncomputer’
* un– + ‘very’ = ‘unvery’
In addition, to these distributional constraints, we will see that there is an
order in which affixes must be combined with roots and stems. For instance,
the word ‘unbelievable’ must be built by attaching –able to ‘believe’,
deriving ‘believable’, and then add un– to derive ‘unbelievable’. We cannot
add un– to ‘believe’ and then –able to ‘unbelieve.’ Even though the
outcome seems to be the same, the meaning derived from the different rule
orderings is not. This is due to the fact that un- generally attaches to an
adjective and not a verb. That’s why ‘unbelieve’ is not a word to which an
affix may be added.
This requirement for an ordered application of affixes is referred to as the
hierarchal structure of derived words, which is shown by tree diagrams.
These tree structures demonstrate the steps to adding multiple affixes to a
root and how each addition may create a new word form. Below is an
example of a diagram.
(11)

CLICK PHOTO FOR LARGE VIEW

We see in (11) that the result of attaching un– to a noun root yields an
ungrammatical structure. Furthermore, we cannot add –y to a noun. This
derivation fails. However we see in (12) that when -y is attached to a noun, it
yields an adjective. Now un– can be attached to an adjective. This
derivation results in a grammatical structure.

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 CLICK PHOTO FOR LARGE VIEW
(12)
Constructions such as (11 and 12) demonstrate an unambiguous word-
formation. This means that the ordering of affixes is clear. There are,
however, morphologically complex words in which two orders are possible
with meaning being dependent upon the ordering. In (13), the first
construction shows –able attaching to the verb root, resulting in the adjective
‘lockable’ to which un– is added, deriving an adjective with the opposite
meaning: ‘not capable of being locked’. In the second diagram un– is first
added to the verb root resulting in the verb ‘unlock’ to which –able can be
attached resulting in an adjective meaning ‘capable of being unlocked’. The
formation of the morphologically complex word ‘unlockable’ is ambiguous
since both orderings of affixes result in a grammatical structure.
(13)

CLICK PHOTO FOR LARGE VIEW

As you can see, it is crucial to be well-acquainted with the parts of speech
and rules of formation. For practice, visit our self-correcting morphology
exercises.
R. Aronow
[1] We use the term root as a bare, simple word that has not undergone any
morphological processes, e.g., read. Stem refers to a morphologically
complex word, i.e., 2 or more morphemes, to which additional morphemes
may be attached, e.g., reread rereading.

18
 morphemes, allomorphs, and morphs

Allomorphs are the different varieties that exist of the same

morpheme. Based on the context, these can bring about changes in the
spelling and also in pronunciation. When one allomorph of a morpheme is
replaced with another it can change the meaning completely. Let us attempt
to understand the function of the allomorph through an example of the
morpheme plural. Under this single morpheme, there are 3 variant allomorphs.
They are,

• /s/ – cats

• /z/ or – dogs

• /iz/ – matches

Note how the pronunciation defers in each case. Even though a single
morpheme is in play, it has different allomorphs that bring about changes not
only in the pronunciation, but also in the spellings. It has to be remembered in
mind that the allomorph is always conditioned by its phonetic environment.
Also, in some cases, the morpheme plural takes a complete different turn.

• Ox- oxen

• Man- men

• Sheep –sheep

In each case, the morpheme plural is different. This highlights that even
though it is a single morpheme plural, it has a variety of allomorphs. Not only
in the morpheme plural, but in the past participle also the varied allomorphs
can be identified.

19
What is the difference between Morpheme and Allomorph?

The difference between the morpheme and allomorph can be summarized in

the following manner.

• A morpheme is the smallest meaningful elements of a language.

• There two types of morphemes as free morphemes and bound morphemes.

• An allomorph can be defined as a single variety of a morpheme.

• A single morpheme can have different allomorphs.

• These can be noted when studying the morpheme plural, the past participle
endings, etc.

Morph

Morphs are the actual shape or the realization of a morpheme. They are
defined as “an element of speech or writing that represents and expresses
one or more morpheme. Langendoen defines morph as “a specific
pronunciation associated with a specific meaning such that the pronunciation
cannot be broken down into meaningful parts whose meanings combine to
form the meaning of the whole”. For example- 1) the word ‘man’ is
carrying- 1 morph, 1 morpheme while the word ‘men’ is carrying- 1 morph
and 2 morphemes (man + plural), because the form ‘men’ cannot be divided
so it is the actual form of the word means the ‘the morph’ but this single
form is carrying two different meanings (man + plural) means “the two
morphemes” 2) the word “students” is carrying two morphs (student + -s) as
well as two morphemes (student + plural marker). Thus, a morph can be
defined as a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is
a recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes).

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Root, stem, base
(Taken from: Bauer, Laurie (1983:20-21): English word-formation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
-‘Root’, ‘stem’ and ‘base’ are all terms used in the literature to designate that
part of a word that remains when all affixes have been removed.
-A root is a form which is not further analysable, either in terms of derivational
or inflectional morphology. It is that part of word-form that remains when all
inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed. A root is the basic
part always present in a lexeme. In the form ‘untouchables’ the root is ‘touch’,
to which first the suffix ‘-able’, then the prefix ‘un-‘ and finally the suffix ‘-
s’ have been added. In a compound word like ‘wheelchair’ there are two roots,
‘wheel’ and ‘chair’.
-A stem is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology.
In the form ‘untouchables’ the stem is ‘untouchable’, although in the form
‘touched’ the stem is ‘touch’; in the form ‘wheelchairs’ the stem is
‘wheelchair’, even though the stem contains two roots.
-A base is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added. This means
that any root or any stem can be termed a base, but the set of bases is not
exhausted by the union of the set of roots and the set of stems: a derivationally
analysable form to which derivational affixes are added can only be referred
to as a base. That is, ‘touchable’ can act as a base for prefixation to give
‘untouchable’, but in this process ‘touchable’ could not be referred to as a root
because it is analysable in terms of derivational morphology, nor as a stem
since it is not the adding of inflectional affixes which is in question.

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Common Latin and Greek roots
the Common Latin Roots chart shown below.

Common Latin Roots

Latin Root Definition Examples

ambi both ambiguous, ambidextrous

aqua water aquarium, aquamarine

aud to hear audience, audition

bene good benefactor, benevolent

cent one hundred century, percent

circum around circumference, circumstance

contra/counter against contradict, encounter

dict to say dictation, dictator

duc/duct to lead conduct, induce

fac to do; to make factory, manufacture

form shape conform, reform

fort strength fortitude, fortress

fract to break fracture, fraction

ject throw projection, rejection

jud judge judicial, prejudice

mal bad malevolent, malefactor

mater mother material, maternity

mit to send transmit, admit

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mort death mortal, mortician

multi many multimedia, multiple

pater father paternal, paternity

port to carry portable, transportation

rupt to break bankrupt, disruption

scrib/scribe to write inscription, prescribe

sect/sec to cut bisect, section

sent to feel; to send consent, resent

spect to look inspection, spectator

struct to build destruction, restructure

vid/vis to see video, televise

voc voice; to call vocalize, advocate

Download a copy of the Common Greek Roots chart shown below.

Common Greek Roots

Greek Root Definition Examples

anthropo man; human; humanity anthropologist, philanthropy

auto self autobiography, automobile

bio life biology, biography

chron time chronological, chronic

dyna power dynamic, dynamite

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dys bad; hard; unlucky dysfunctional, dyslexic

gram thing written epigram, telegram

graph writing graphic, phonograph

hetero different heteronym, heterogeneous

homo same homonym, homogenous

hydr water hydration, dehydrate

hypo below; beneath hypothermia, hypothetical

logy study of biology, psychology

meter/metr measure thermometer, perimeter

micro small microbe, microscope

mis/miso hate misanthrope, misogyny

mono one monologue, monotonous

morph form; shape morphology, morphing

nym name antonym, synonym

phil love philanthropist, philosophy

phobia fear claustrophobia, phobic

phon sound phone, symphony

photo/phos light photograph, phosphorous

pseudo false pseudonym, pseudoscience

psycho soul; spirit psychology, psychic

scope viewing instrument microscope, telescope

techno art; science; skill technique, technological

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tele far off television, telephone

therm heat thermal, thermometer

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Word-Formation Processes
The ‘Word Formation Process’ is regarded as the branch of Morphology, and
it has a significant role in expanding the vocabulary that helps us communicate
very smoothly. The main objectives of the word-formation process are to form
new words with the same root by deploying different rules or processes.

In other words, we can say that the word-formation process is a process in

which new words are formed by modifying the existing terms or completely
changing those words.

Word Formation Processes

o Derivation
o Back Formation
o Conversion
o Compounding
o Clipping
o Blending
o Abbreviation
o Acronyms
o Borrowing
o Conclusion
Let us see the fundamental word-formation processes in linguistics:

Derivation

‘Derivation’ is one of the significant word-formation processes that attach

derivation affixes to the main form to create a new word. Affixes (prefix or
suffix) are regarded as bound morphemes.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful syntactical or grammar unit of a

language that cannot be divided without changing its actual meaning. In
contrast to the free morpheme, a bound morpheme doesn’t have any
independent meaning, and it needs the help of a free morpheme to form a new
word.

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Let us see some examples of derivation in the below table:

Base Forms New Words

Appear Disappear

Justice Injustice

Lighten Enlighten

Friend Friendship

Happy Happiness

Back Formation

‘Back-Formation’ is a word-formation process that eliminates the actual

derivational affix from the main form to create a new word. However, Back-
Formation is contrary to derivation in terms of forming new words. Let us see
some examples of Back-Formation in the below table:

Base Forms Back Formation

Insertion Insert

Donation Donate

Precession Process

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 Obsessive Obsess

Resurrection Resurrect

Conversion

In conversion, a word of one grammatical form converts into another

grammatical form without changing any spelling or pronunciation. For
example, the term ‘Google’ is originated as a noun before the verb.

A few years ago, we used the term as a noun only (search it on Google), but
now we say ‘Google it. Let us see some examples of conversion in the below
table:

Noun To Verb

Access – to access

Google – to google

Email – to email

Name – to name

Host – to host

Verb To Noun

To hope Hope

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 To cover Cover

To increase Increase

To attack Attack

Compounding

‘Compounding’ is a word-formation process that allows words to combine to

make a new word. Compounding words can be formed as two words joined
with a hyphen. Let us see some examples in the below table:

Words Compounding Words

Class+room Classroom

Note+book Notebook

Break+up Breakup

Brother+in+law Brother in law

High+light Highlight

Clipping

‘Clipping’ is another essential word-formation process, and it reduces or

shortens a word without changing the exact meaning. In contrast to the back-
formation process, it reserves the original meaning.

Clipping is divided into four types. They are:

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 1. Back Clipping
2. Fore Clipping
3. Middle Clipping
4. Complex Clipping
Every Clipping has different roles in words when they are assigned. Back
Clipping removes the end part of a word; Fore Clipping removes the
beginning part of a word; Middle Clipping reserves the middle position.
Finally, Complex Clipping removes multiple pieces from multiple words.

Let us see some examples in the below table:

Words Clippings

Advertisement Ad

Photograph Photo

Telephone Phone

Influenza Flue

Cabletelegram Cablegram

Blending

In the ‘Blending’ word-formation method, the parts of two or more words

combine to form a new word. Let us see some examples in the below table:

Words Blendings

Breakfast+lunch Brunch

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 Biographical+picture Biopic

Motor+hotel Motel

Spanish+English Spanglish

Telephone+marathon Telethon

Abbreviation

‘Abbreviation’ is another famous and widely used word-formation method

used to shorten a word or phrase. In the modern era, ‘Abbreviation is
becoming more popular. Nowadays people used to use it everywhere. Let us
see some examples in the below table:

Words/Phrases Abbreviation

Junior Jr.

Mister Mr.

Mistress Miss.

Doctor Dr.

Department Dept.

Bachelor of Arts B.A.

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 Master of Arts M.A.

Master of Business Administration MBA

Acronyms

An Acronym is a popular word-formation process in which an initialism is

pronounced as a word. It forms from the first letter of each word in a phrase,
and the newly formed letters create a new word that helps us speedy
communication. For example, ‘PIN’ is an initialism for Personal Identification
Number used as the word ‘pin.’

However, let us see some other famous examples of acronyms in the below
table for better understanding:

Acronyms Words/Phrases

HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus

AIDS Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

ASAP As Soon As Possible

AWOL Absent Without Leave

Borrowing

‘Borrowing’ is another word-formation process in which a word from one

language is borrowed directly into another language. Let us see some English
words which are borrowed from another language:

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 Algebra Arabic

Cherub Hebrew

Murder French

Pizza Italian

Tamale Spanish

Conclusion

Now we know that Word-Formation Processes are the methods in which

words are formed by deploying different types of rules. We can create new
words by following the above word-formation methods.

we have to follow the fundamental rules or processes of word-formation.

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