TOM MBOYA

SCHOOL OF ARTS
FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND
ECONOMICS
COURSE CODE: AEN 203
UNIT:ENGLISH WORD AND
MORPHOLOGY
LECTURER’S NAME: DR. JESSE
NAPWORA
DATE OF SUBMISSION:13th
October 2024

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GROUP NUMBER: SEVENTEEN
(17)

NAME ADMISSION NO. SIGNATURE

1. HARMON MOSOTI SAS/AR/00277/023 ______________

2. JUSTUS OGENCHE SED/AR/00798/023 ______________

3. DORICE MUKOSHI SAS/AR/00213/023
______________
4. RICHARD MUTISO SAS/AR/00052/023
______________
5. COLLINS BARASA SAS/AR/00236/023
______________
6. PAUL OCHIENG SAS/AR/00339/023 ______________
7. OSEBE MELSIDA SAS/AR/00275/023
______________
8. VALENTINE AMONDI SAS/AR/00336/023
______________
9. Anjieho atekha SAS/AR/00220/023 ______________
10. FARREL KWAMBOKA SAS/AR/00146/023
______________
11. LATRIVIAN MUKALAVAYI SAS/AR/00223/023
______________
12. SHEILA KEMUNTO SAS/AR/01295/023
______________
13. MERCY ATIENO SAS/AR/02974/023
______________
14. EVANS NYARIKI SAS/AR/00283/023
______________
15. Tatu joseph SAs/AR/00060/023
______________
16. TERESA KWAMBOKA SAS/AR/00269/023
______________

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17. SHARON MAGETO SAS/AR/00270/023
______________
18. IRENE BARASA SAS/AR/00232/023
______________
19. WENDY AWUOR SAS/AR/00364/023
______________
20. ALFRED AYANDO SAS/AR/00228/023
______________
21. EMMANUEL ETYANG SAS/AR/00226/023
______________
22. EVERLYNE AKINYI SAS/AR/03104/023
______________
23. EUGENE OCHIENG SAS/AR/00043/023
______________
24. CAROLINE CHEPKOECH SAS/AR/00149/023
______________

Task given: Discuss the derivational morphology and

inflectional morphology.
INTRODUCTION
Definition of terms
Morphology- is a foundational aspect of linguistics that examines the structure and formation of
words. It majorly focuses on how words are formed from smaller units of meaning called
morphemes and how these morphemes combine to create new words. For example, if you take
the morpheme ‘cookie’ and add the suffix “-s”, you create a new word ‘cookies’, a plural form
with a slightly different meaning than the singular form.
There are two types of morphology; derivational morphology
inflectional morphology

Derivational morphology
Derivational morphology -is a type of word formation process in which a new word is created by
adding a morpheme (prefixes and suffixes) to the root or base of a word. This type of

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morphology can result to the change in meaning, or grammar of the resulting word. For instance,
if you a root word act and add prefixes,” re-” “en-” and suffix “-or” you will form the following
words re+ act=react, enact and actor respectively.
As well it can be also seen in the transformation of the word “happy” to happiness by adding the
suffix “-ness” which changes the word from an adjective to a noun.

Characteristics or features of derivational morphology

Affixation
Affixation involves the addition of affixes (prefix and suffix) to a base or to the root of a word to
create new words. For example, in prefixes there are added to the beginning of a base of a word
to alter its meaning e.g. Conditional when we add a prefix “un-” to the root word conditional we
form the word unconditional. That is, Un+conditional=Unconditional
In suffixes, they are added to the end of a base of a word to change its meaning for example;
happy+ness=happiness, in this example the suffix “-ness” is added. There is also a change of “y”
to “i” rule.
Compounding
Compounding occurs when two or more words are joined together to form meaningful longer
words. For example; black+board=blackboard, class+mate=classmate, ear+phones=earphones,
water+mark=watermark etc. There can be four types of compounding and these are exocentric,
endocentric, copulative and appositional compounding.
Endocentric compounds: In endocentric compounding, one of the elements is the head or the
central part while the rest modify the meaning or specify the head. Also, is a compound word
whose meaning is derived from central component, also known as the head. For example, the
word “toothbrush”, “blackboard” is an endocentric compound with tooth and board as the head
and the meaning of the compound is primarily based on the meaning of the head whereas brush
and black are used to specify the type or color of brush and board respectively. In simple terms,
endocentric compound consists of a head whereby the meaning gets restricted to the head of the
compound.
Exocentric compounds: In exocentric compounding, it represents a concept that is distinct from
the meaning of individual components. For example, “redhead” compound refers to a person
with red hair but neither ‘red’ nor ‘head’ alone captures the meaning That is, there is a formal
head but the meaning is not restricted to the head of the compound. The meaning generated is
totally independent of the word formed. In this section it also contains sub-sections of
compounding and these are;
Noun-noun compounds; comprises of: sunflower, bookshelf
Verb-noun compounds comprise of: swimming pool, drinking water

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Adjective-adjective compounds comprise of: hot-headed, black white
And Adjective-noun compounds comprise of: blackboard, greenhouse
Copulative compounds: Copulative compound words are formed when two or more words
which have a coordinate relationship are put together to form a new word with a new meaning.
This means that in order to form a copulative compound, two nouns must be able to be connected
by and they are joined together. For example, copulative compounds are words like;
teaspoon(tea+spoon), Haircut(hair+cut), Rainbow(rain+bow) among others.
Appositional compounds: Appositional compounds are made up of two words that each
describe the compound differently. Here are examples of appositional compound words; Mother-
son, (shows the relationship between mother and the son also as in father-daughter) player-
coach (shows a person who can occupy the position of player and as well a coach in sports.
Productivity
Derivational morphology is a productive process, meaning that new words can be created by
adding affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to existing roots or base forms of words. For example, in
the word “forgive” prefix “un-” and the suffix “-able” can be added to form the word
unforgivable hence derivational morphology is referred to as highly productive.
Grammatical change
Grammatical change in derivational morphology simply refers to alteration or change in meaning
of a word in terms of grammar. It can be achieved through the addition of affixes (prefixes and
suffixes). This is significant in languages that use derivational morphology to create new words
and express complex meaning. For example, when adding a suffix to a word “run” a (verb) and
add the suffix “-er” to the base word “run” it alters the grammar of the word from being a verb to
a noun. Therefore, there is final consonant doubling rule hence resulting to a spelling change in
the base word. run+er= (runner).
Semantic change
The addition of an affix can result in a change in the meaning of the resulting word. For example,
adding the prefix "un-" to the word "happy" results in the word "unhappy," which has the
opposite meaning of "happy."
For example, when we add the suffix “-ful” to the word help(verb) we form the word helpful.
The “-ful” indicates the quality of a being helpful hence “-ful” alters the semantic meaning of the
word help
Functions of derivational morphology
Creating new word with related meanings

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Derivational morphology can be used to create new words with related meanings by adding
suffixes and prefixes to existing words it is often used to create words with a specific semantical
meaning or to create words with related meanings, this reflects changes in societal, technological
and cultural context. For example, the word ‘computer’ evolved from ‘compute’ which meant to
calculate.
Word formation
The major function of derivational morphology is to create new words by adding affixes to roots
or base of the new words from existing words hence allows expansion of language vocabulary
and creation of new words to express new concepts, ideas, feelings and desires. For example, the
word ‘happy’(noun) but when “-ness” is added, it changes the entire meaning to ‘happiness’
(an adjective)
Expression of grammar
Derivational morphology can be used to indicate grammatical relationships such as time, mood
and case or state. For example, when the prefix “pre” is added to the word colonial, (to form
precolonial indicating time before colonialism or ancient times) and historic to form prehistoric
indicating days before written history. In mood for example, joyful, hopeful, wrecked Ness,
happiness shows the state of something or someone.
Semantic Change
The addition of an affix can result in a change in the meaning of the resulting word. This can be
used to create words with related or opposite meanings, or to create words with a specific
semantic focus. For example, happy-unhappy, lead-mislead agree- disagree (show the opposite of
the related words).

Significance of derivational morphology

Language Evolution: Derivational morphology is an important process in language
development and is essential for the evolution of a language. This can be verifiable since the
addition of prefixes and suffixes to the base of word creates new words hence entry of new
words to the dictionary in each edition. For instance, if you add you act these affixes “re-”, “en-”
and “-or” to the root word “act” the following words; react, enact and actor will be formed
respectively thus resulting a new entry of words to the dictionary. This process makes language
dynamic hence language development. The creation of new words through the addition of affixes
allows for the expression of new concepts and ideas, and for the adaptation of a language to
changing social and cultural contexts.
Word Formation
Derivational morphology allows for the creation of new words, expanding vocabulary and
enabling nuanced expression. This is because it delves into addition of affixes that generate

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production and creation of new words as compared to inflectional morphology. For example,
adding the suffix "-ness" to "forgive" creates "forgiveness." Addition of the suffixes “-ment”, “-
er”, “-able” “-ee” to ‘employ’ creates employment, employer, employable and employee
respectively.
Semantic and Grammatical Complexity: The addition of an affix can result in a change in the
meaning or grammatical category of the resulting word. This allows for the expression of a wide
range of concepts and ideas, and for the creation of words with related or opposite meanings. For
example, consider the following sentences;
The project hub has created employment.
The project hub has job opportunity for one employee.
The project hub has only one employer.
The project hub needs person who is employable and has attained qualifications.
The first sentence denotes that the hub has preserved job opportunity for the job seekers, while
the second sentence denotes that the hub has vacancy for only one person, while the third
sentence denotes that the hub is under one person who is the creator of the jobs in the hub and
the fourth sentence denotes that any person in need of job can secure a position in the hub but
you must have required qualifications. The difference in the above sentence is brought about by
addition of different suffixes to the root word ‘employ’ hence changing semantical and
grammatical meaning.

Inflectional morphology
Inflectional morphology involves modifying a word to express different grammatical categories
without changing its core meaning or part of speech. Inflectional morphemes convey information
about tense (either past tense, past participle, present progressive etc.). For example, the verb
"jump" can be inflected to indicate simple present tense: "jumps”, present progressive
“jumping," past participle “have/has jumped” and past tense "jumped".
The tractor passed in the market two weeks ago.
The tractor passes in the market every Friday.
The tractor will pass in the market Tomorrow.
The tractor is passing in the market at the moment.
Now the first, second, third and fourth sentence, the verb ‘pass’ is changing its form in
accordance with the tense and condition in which it is being used.
In the first, second, third and fourth sentence, suffix “-ed”, “-s”, ‘modal(will)+verb’, “-ing”
form is added to the root word “pass” to express past tense, present simple tense {by third person

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singular of the subject(tractor)}, act in future and to express an action which is happening or
going on.
The inflection of verbs is called as conjugation whereas the inflection of nouns, adjectives,
prepositions, adverbs and articles is called as declension. The inflected form of a word often
contains both one or more free morphemes (a unit of meaning which can stand by itself as a
word), and one or more bound morphemes (a unit of meaning which cannot exist independently
as a word). Words which never undergo the process of inflection are said to be invariant; for
example, the English verb ‘must’ is an invariant item: it never takes a suffix or changes form to
signify a different grammatical category. Its categories can be determined only from its context
as illustrated below;
For example,
You must pay your school fees before you sit for your exams.
If you are on your feet all the day, flat shoes are a must. In the first sentence, must has been used
as a verb whereas in the second sentence, must has been used as a noun.
The set of related forms of a word is called as a paradigm. For example, crawl:
crawl/crawled/crawls/ crawling, hop: hop/hopped/hops/hopping, walk: walk/ walked/
walks/walking. An inflected form expresses its grammatical category/s through various prefixes
and suffixes it gets attached to.

Functions of Inflectional Morphology

Grammatical Function: Inflectional morphemes provide essential grammatical information that
clarifies the roles of words in sentences. For example, "school" (singular) and "schools" (plural)
demonstrate how inflection signals quantity. This is the result of addition of suffix “s” to the root
word ‘school’.
Clarity in Communication: Inflection helps convey essential relationships between entities,
such as subject-verb-Object agreement (SVO). For instance, "Cecilia bought a house" illustrates
how inflectional endings indicate the number of subjects. Whereby “Cecilia” (noun) represents
subject, “bought” (past tense) is the verb and “a house” become the object.
Indicating Tense and Aspect: Inflectional morphology allows for the expression of time-related
concepts. For instance, "dance" (present) changes to "danced" (past) to denote when an action
occurs.

Significance or importance of inflectional morphology

Ensures Grammatical rules: Inflectional morphology ensures that sentences are grammatically
correct by marking key grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, number, gender, case, and
mood. This allows speakers to communicate nuanced meanings effectively. For example, verb
inflections in English (Mosoti bought a bicycle) show subject-verb-object agreement.

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Clarifies Relationships Between Words: Inflection indicates how words relate to each other
within a sentence, reducing ambiguity. For instance, in languages with case systems, noun
inflections indicate whether a noun is the subject, object, or possessive (e.g. Charles and
Raymond are playing football, in this case ‘Charles’ and ‘Raymond’ act as a subject and
‘football’ as the object in the sentence, “Simon’s dictionary” indicates possession respectively.
Endeavors to Communicate efficiently: Inflections convey a lot of information in a compact
form. Instead of adding extra words to describe time, number, or mood, a single word with
inflections can carry all this information. For example, the English word "walked" implies both
the action and when the action took place or happened(past) this is due to addition of suffix “-ed”
to base word “walk”, hence making communication more efficient and precise.

Similarities between derivational and inflectional morphology

Inflectional and derivational morphology both involve the modification of words to convey
different meanings or grammatical functions. Here are some similarities:
Both processes create new forms of words, altering their structure. Both derivational and
inflectional morphology delve into creation of new words as a result of adding morphemes to the
root word. For example, in derivational morphology, if you add morphemes like “-er”, to teach it
will form noun(teacher) and “-or” to instruct it will form instructor(noun) of which it changes the
meaning of original or root word. Same case, is seen in inflectional morphology in addition of “-
er”, “-est” to cheap which modifies existing word to ‘cheaper’ (to show comparative),
‘cheapest’(superlative) respectively therefore not changing the meaning of the root word.
Both can involve the addition of prefixes and suffixes to base or root words. For instance, in case
of derivational morphology there is addition of affixes (prefix and suffix) to the root word
“happy” to “unhappy” (prefix un to show negation), happy to happiness (suffix “-ness” which
changes happy(adjective) to happiness(noun), similarly in inflectional morphology where there is
addition of suffix “-ed” to ‘cook’ to form ‘cooked’ to show (past tense) action that happened in
the past.
Morphological Rules- They follow specific linguistic rules and patterns in a given language. For
example, if you take a root word like happy(adjective) and decide to add the suffix “-ness the
resulting word to be formed is ‘happiness’ but not ‘happyness’ this is because there is a rule
that exemplifies or accounts for change “y” to “i” rule as well in inflectional morphology
whereby there is rule termed as drop final “e” rule in word like ‘write’ to ‘writing’ if you add
suffix “-Ing”. In addition, there is another rule that emphasizes on final consonant doubling in
words like ‘spin’ to ‘spinning’, ‘dig’ to ‘digging’ among others.
Grammatical rules- Both derivational and inflectional morphology adhere or pay close attention
to grammatical rules to ensure effective communication and to imply or deliver intended
message. In inflectional morphology for instance, it ensures Subject-Verb-Object agreement
(SVO). Examples in sentences is John kicked the ball (active voice) whereby the action was

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acted on the object (the ball) or the ball was kicked by John (Passive voice). In the first sentence
John(subject) kicked {verb (past tense)} the ball(object) and vice versa.
Morphemes: Both derivational and inflectional morphology are characterized with insertion of
morphemes to the root of a word. For instance, in derivational morphology, there are morphemes
from Anglo-Saxon influence and they are: “Un-(unhappy), re-(react), dis-(dislike), in-
(inexpensive), mis-(mistreat), fore-(forecast) de-(decompose) pre-(prefix) en-(enact), inter-
(interrelationship), trans-(transport) super-(supernatural), semi-(semi-circle), anti-(antivirus),
mid(midday) etc. From Latin influence are this kind of morpheme: Non-(Non-exotic) ex-(Ex-
boyfriend) con-(Concur) per-(persist) mal-(malpractice) bi-(bilabial) co-(coordinate) di-
(dicotyledon), tri-(triplets) twi-(twilight) circum-(circumnavigate) intra-(intranet), extra-
(extraordinary), multi-(multipurpose)” and from Greek are: -ion(population), -
sion(suspension), -tion(pollution), -acy(accuracy)-hood(childhood), -ment(government)-
ism(colonialism) etc. and in inflectional morphology there are morphemes like “-
ed(jumped), -ing(jogging), -en{(have/has) woken} to show tenses etc.
While their primary functions differ, both can change the meaning of a word, either subtly
(inflection) or more significantly (derivation). As described in the words in inflectional
morphology in addition of “-er”, “-est” to cheap which modifies existing word to ‘cheaper’ (to
show comparative), ‘cheapest’(superlative) and in derivational morphology in the root word
“happy” to “unhappy” (prefix un to show negation), “happy” to “happiness” (suffix “-ness”
which changes happy(adjective) to happiness(noun) respectively.

Distinction between Derivational and Inflectional morphology

While derivational and inflectional morphology are interconnected, they exhibit distinct
differences:
Derivational morphology creates new words and can change a word's grammatical category,
while inflectional morphology modifies words to convey grammatical relationships without
changing their core meanings. For instance, in the case of act whereby you add affixes “re-”,
“en-” and “-or” will result to the words; react, enact and actor hence many words compared to
inflectional morphology whereby you add “ed” to the word ‘walk’ to form ‘walked’ which
implies the action that happened in the past rather than creating new words.
Derivational processes tend to be more productive, allowing for the continual formation of new
words. Inflectional processes are typically more restricted and governed by specific grammatical
rules. Examples of derivational morphology include "happy" to "unhappy”, care which changes
to careless as a result of addition of suffix “-less” while inflectional morphology tends to change
singular to plural and tense “book” to “books” and “walk” to “walked” for process of adding
suffix “-s” and “-ed” eat to (have/has) “eaten” respectively.

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In inflectional morphology, inflectional morphemes are used to express comparative and
superlative degrees of adjectives and adverbs. In English, adding "-er" or "-est" to adjectives
(e.g., "cheap" to "cheaper" to "cheapest") indicates the degree of comparison between objects.
Inflection can signal belonging/ possession or ownership. In English, the possessive suffix “-'s”
indicates ownership (For example, “Cecilia’s house”, Mutua’s book was stolen, James’ sweater
etc.), in languages with case systems, the genitive case shows possession.
Inflectional Morphology modifies a word to express grammatical relationships such as tense,
mood, number, or case. Does not change the word's part of speech. For example, “cat” (noun)
becomes “cats” (plural) or “walk” (verb) becomes “walked” (past tense), walk to “walking” “-
ing” (present continuous or progressive), (have/has) “woken” (past participle) among others.
CONCLUSION
In brief, derivational and inflectional morphology are fundamental components of linguistic
study, providing critical insights into how words are formed(derivation) and modified(inflection)
within languages. Derivational morphology facilitates the creation of new words and meaning
alterations, while inflectional morphology conveys essential grammatical relationships. By
exploring these two branches of morphology, linguists can better understand the complexities of
language structure, and evolution. The study of morphology not only enriches our understanding
of language but also informs teaching practices and linguistic research, revealing the intricacies
of human communication. As languages continue to evolve, the relevance of morphological
analysis remains vital, highlighting the dynamic nature of linguistic expression.
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