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Inflection, Derivation & Other Processes

The document discusses inflection and derivation in English morphology, detailing various inflectional affixes for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. It also outlines key differences between inflectional and derivational processes, including category change, order, productivity, and semantic transparency. Additionally, it covers other morphological processes such as internal change, suppletion, reduplication, and the creation of new words through various means.

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16 views30 pages

Inflection, Derivation & Other Processes

The document discusses inflection and derivation in English morphology, detailing various inflectional affixes for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. It also outlines key differences between inflectional and derivational processes, including category change, order, productivity, and semantic transparency. Additionally, it covers other morphological processes such as internal change, suppletion, reduplication, and the creation of new words through various means.

Uploaded by

nneedjolly
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Inflection, Derivation &

Other Morphological Operations

PAGE 132
Inflection In English

— English Inflectional Affixes:

— Nouns:

Plural –s The books


Possessive (genitive) –s John’s book
Inflection In English

— English Inflectional Affixes:

— Verbs:

— 3rd person singular He reads well


— Progressive -ing He is working
— Past tense –ed He played football
Inflection In English

— Adjectives:

— Comparative –er the smaller one


— Superlative –est the smallest one
Inflectional Vs Derivation

— Some diagnostic criteria are used to differentiate between inflection and


derivation.

¡ 1. Category change
¡ 2. Order
¡ 3. Productivity
¡ 4. Semantic Transparency
Inflectional Vs Derivation

— 1. Category Change:

— Derivational affixes are known to change the category or the part of


speech while inflectional affixes are known not to cause any change in
the category or the part of speech.
Inflectional Vs Derivation

— 2. Order:

— If both derivational affixes and inflectional affixes are attached to a


root, it is always the derivational affix that is closer to the root than the
inflectional one.
— Example:
— Neighbor (Root)
— Add: ‘hood’ and ‘s’ Neighbor +hood+ s = Neighborhoods
* Neighbor +s+ hood = Neighborshood
Inflectional Vs Derivation

— 3. Productivity:

— Inflectional Affixes have less restrictions and exceptions.


— Example: the plural s can attach to almost all of the nouns except from
irregular nouns (like: foot, tooth, mouse,,,etc).

— Derivational Affixes have more restrictions and exceptions that need to


be obeyed.
÷ Modern –ise *New-ise
Inflectional Vs Derivation

— 4. Semantic Transparency

— Inflectional Affixes are more transparent in meaning than derivational


ones.
— Examples:
— Plural s / the past –ed are more transparent in meaning than –er/ -or/
-ment
Inflectional Phenomena

— Case: is an inflectional phenomenon which involves a change in the word’s


form to reflect a grammatical role (subject, direct object,, etc)

— With nouns: Case with nouns is not shown overtly


¡ Nora called Ahmad
¡ Nora is the subject . Its Case is Nominative.
¡ Ahmad is the direct object. Its Case is Accusative.

— With pronouns: Case is shown overtly with pronouns


¡ She called him
¡ She is the subject. Its Case is Nominative.
¡ Him is the direct object. Its Case is Accusative.
Inflectional Phenomena

¡ *She called he
¡ She is the subject. Its Case is Nominative.
¡ He is NOT the correct form of the direct object. Its Case cannot be Accusative. ‘He’ in
this form can only be a subject and can only have the Nominative Case.

¡ *Her called him


¡ Her is NOT the correct form of the subject. Its Case cannot be Nominative. ‘Her’ in
this form can only be an object and can only have the Accusative Case.
Inflectional Phenomena

— Agreement: is a morphological phenomenon which takes place when


one word is inflected to match certain grammatical properties of
another word.
— Example of the grammatical properties between words:
¡ Number (Singular vs. Plural)
¡ Person (1st Person, 2nd Person, 3rd Person).
Other Morphological
Processes
1. Internal change

— Internal change is a process that substitutes one non-morphemic segment for another to
mark a grammatical contrast.
— A. Ablaut Change: is often used for vowel alternations that mark grammatical contrasts.
— Sing → sang

— The verb sing is changed to the past form sang by changing the vowel from /i/ into /a/.

— Sink → sank Drive → drove Man → men


1. Internal change

— B. Umlaut Change:
— This when the internal change reflect phonologically conditions
alternations from an earlier stage in the language’s history.
— Example:
— Old singular form of goose: /go:s/
— Old plural form of goose: /go:s-i/

— Umlaut Change (loss of the plural suffix): /gi:s/


2- Suppletion

— Suppletion replaces a morpheme with an entirely different morpheme in

order to indicate a grammatical contrast.

— Ex.

— Go →went

— Be → was were
2- Suppletion

— In some cases, it is hard to distinguish between suppletion and internal


change.

— Examples:
— Think ------- thought Seek ------- sought

— This type of alternation is often treated as an extreme form of internal


change, but the term partial suppletion is used.
3. Reduplication
Reduplication is a grammatical or semantic contrast which
repeats all or part of the base to which it applies.
Full reduplication: Repetition of the entire base.
Ex. Turkish
tʃabuk = quickly tʃabuk tʃabuk = very quickly

javaʃ = slowly javaʃ javaʃ = very slowly

Ex. Colloquial Arabic


‫ﻣﺮة ﻣﺮة‬
‫ﺷﻮﯾﺔ ﺷﻮﯾﺔ‬
3. Reduplication

— Reduplication is a grammatical or semantic contrast which repeats

all or part of the base to which it applies.


— Partial reduplication: copies only part of the base.

— Ex. Colloquial Arabic


‫— ﺣﯿﻞ وﻣﯿﻞ‬
4. Tone Placement

— In some languages, tone is used to make distinction between past and


future tenses.

— See table 4.21 in page 138 for examples from Mono-Bili (a language
spoken in the Congo).
5. conversion

Conversion is a process that assigns an already existing word to a new category.

Conversion is considered a type of derivation. Because no affix is added, we


call this process zero-derivation.

Ex. a noun from adjective


Poor = Adjective . The poor = noun; as in The poor need help.

Ex. A verb from a preposition.


Down a beer.
Up the price.
6. Cliticisation

— Some morphemes behave like words in their meanings and function,


but are unable to stand alone for phonological reasons. They are called
Clitics.

— These words must always be pronounced with another word known as


the host.
¡ I’m leaving now.
¡ Mary’s going to succeed.
¡ They’re here now.
7. clipping
Clipping is a process that shortens a polysyllabic word by deleting one or more syllables.
Ex.
— Sue Suzan
— Phys-ed physical education
— Prof professor
— Poli-sci political science
— Doc doctor
— Zoo zoological garden
— Burger hamburger
— Ad advertisement.
— Auto automatic/automobile.
— lab laboratory.
— Demo demonstration
8. Blends

Blends are words that are created from non-morphemic parts of two already existing
items.

Ex.
Brunch
It is a blend of breakfast and lunch
Smog
It is a blend from smoke and fog.

Motel
It is a blend from motor and hotel
9. Backformation

— Backformation is a process that creates a new word by removing a


real or supposed affix from another word in the language.

— Examples:

— Resurrect is formed by backformation from resurrection.


— Self-destruct is formed by backformation from self-destruction.
— Edit is formed by backformation from editor.
10. Acronyms

— Acronyms are formed by taking the initial letters of (some or all) the
words in a phrase or a title and pronouncing them as a word.

— Examples:

— UNICEF for United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.


— NATO for North Atlantic Treaty Organization
10. Acronyms

— There is a distinction between Acronyms and Initialism.

— When the letters of the names or titles are pronounced as series of


separate letters rather than a word, this process is called initialism.

— Examples:
— PEI for Prince Edward Island
— USA for United states of America
11. Onomatopoeia

— Some words have been created to sound like the thing they name or
refer to. The process of creating such words is called onomatopoeia.

— Examples:
— Buzz
— Hiss
— Sizzle
— Splash

— Examples from other languages are in table 4.25.


Other Sources of New Words

— When a word is created from scratch and brought to the language as such,
this is a process which is called word manufacture or coinage.
— It is very common in the case of product names, including Kodac, and Teflon.

— New words are sometimes created and brought to the language from names.
For example:
— Watt James Watt
— Fahrenheit Gabriel Fahrenheit

— More examples are in table 4.26 and in P.142 in your handout.


Morphophonology

— Pronunciation can be sensitive to some morphological factors, including


a word’s internal structure.

— The study of how morphology and phonology interact together and


effect each other is called morphophonology.

— Lips
— Pills
— Judges

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