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Descriptive Grammar of English part 2 – Syntax
Topic 2: Morphology
Tutor: Jadwiga Bogucka
Reference: Wardhaugh, Ronald. Understanding English Grammar. Malden, MA: Blackwell, Chapter 11
1. Basic notions
Words - can be defined as smallest, meaningful units of language that can be moved freely.
Lexeme – includes all inflected forms of a word, it is thus a kind of abstraction or class of forms of a
word
Lexeme RUN can be realized by various words such as run, running, ran
Homonyms – different lexemes that happen to be pronounced alike, such as: bank, as in:
walk down the river bank vs. keep your money in the bank
Polysemy – one lexeme, with a different shades of meaning, such as:
He likes to play the guitar vs. He played a major role in the movie
Morphemes – smallest units of meaning with grammatical significance
The word cat consist of a single morpheme
The word cats consist of two morphemes – “cat” and “plural”
Morpheme “cat” is a free morpheme, i.e. can stand on its own
“plural” –s is a bound morpheme – it must be attached to a word
Plural morpheme can have different allomorphs – different phonetic realizations of a single
morpheme, such as /iz/ /s/ /z/.
Different allomorphs are in complementary distribution.
Regular, i.e. phonological conditioning of allomorphs – we can explain the distribution of a given
allomorph in phonological terms:
/t/ ending => /s/ plural
/g/ ending -=> /z/ plural
Irregular, i.e. morphological conditioning – we must cite the actual morpheme and the form of the
allomorph:
man - men
2. Inflectional and derivational morphemes
Inflectional marking – occurs among the various words that compose a lexeme eg. run, runs , running
Derivational marking - creates one lexeme from another, eg: runner
Base – a fundamental unit, stripped of any kind of inflectional or derivational marking – one can
attach either an inflectional or a derivational morpheme to it
stem
Redoes
base
derivational
morpheme
inflectional
morpheme
Redo => re- is a prefix
Does => -s is a suffix
Re- and –s are affixes
There is one more type of affix - infix, which occurs within words, but this class of affixes is not very
productive in English (however it is in other languages).
For example: expletive infixes such as: abso-fucking-lutely, abso-bloody-lutely
3. Inflection
In English, there are only inflectional suffixes
a. Nouns
 Inflectional marking for plural and genitive
b.




Pronouns
Very irregular morphology
Plural forms
Possessive forms
Inflected for case: he vs. him; who – whose – whom (nominative – genitive – accusative)
c. Verbs
 Tense marking:
Present ( 3rd person singular): -s morpheme
Past: -ed morpheme
Past participle: -en morpheme
Past and participle morphemes:

Zero allomorphs – no overt marking, as in put, cut
Final consonant replacement: build - built
Vowel replacement: drink – drank – drunk
Vowel replacement + regular ending
Suppletive forms: go – went
Modal verbs are sometimes referred to as defective verbs, i.e. they are deficient in their
inflectional morphology:
- Irregular past forms – would, might
- No past forms or infinitives: *musted, *to must
d. Adjectives:
 Comparative and superlative:
- Regular forms: large – larger – largest
- Suppletive forms: good – better – best
4. Derivation
May (but doesn’t have to) result in category change of a given word
Both suffixes and prefixes
Inflectional suffix must always follow derivational suffix as in: king-dom-s / *king-s-dom
Derivation is a productive process – it is still alive in the language and can produce new words - such
words as receive, deceive, prefer, refer, obtain, detain should not be analyzed as bimorphemic.
a. Prefixes
 Prefixes which change the word class
a- (aside, alive), be- (becalm, bewitch), en- (enslave, entrain)

Prefixes which do not change the word class:
Noun
anti-, arch- , fore-, mid-, step- etc.
Verbal
circum-, co-, de-, re-, sub- etc.
Adjectival
dis-, im-, in-, over- un- etc.
im- and in- prefixes are allomorphs of the same morpheme
b. Suffixes

Forming nouns
From nouns
- dom, -ful, -hood, -ship etc.
From verbs
-ant, -ation, -er, -ment etc.
From adjectives
-dom, -sim, -ist, -ness

Forming verbs
From nouns
-ize,- ify
From adjectives
-en

Forming adjectives
From nouns
-en, -ish, -ful, -ic, -less
From verbs
-able, -ful, -ive, -less
From adjectives
-ish

Forming adverbs
From adjectives
-ly
From other sources
-wards, -ways, -wise
An affix can have different meaning depending on an element to which it attaches
classification -> an act of, the result of, the system of
Sometimes affixes attach to elements which themselves are bound:
Negative prefixes:
unkempt (*kempt), nondescript (*descript), impeccable (*peccable) etc
Multiple derivational affixes create a word with clear constituent structure:
industrialization: [industry] al] ize] ation]
disproportionate: [[dis [proportion]] ate]
5. Word formation processes
a. Compounding
Complex word – a word with a single base and multiple derivational affixes
Compound word – a word with multiple bases
Distinguished from phrases by stress pattern: full stress on the first constituent and reduced
stress on the second
blackbird vs. black bird
Sometimes written as single words, hyphenated and sometimes as two words
Endocentric compounds: an substitute for one of its component parts, transparent in
meaning
rattlesnake, girlfriend, windmill
Exocentric compounds: highly idiomatic, have meaning which cannot be derived from the
sum of their parts:
hotdog, redneck, highbrow

Noun compounds:
Noun-noun: boyfriend, death blow, blood test, newspaper
Verb-noun: cut-throat, pickpocket, rattlesnake
Noun-verb: boat-ride, striptease, sunrise
Verb-verb: hearsay, make believe
Adjective and noun: fast-food, hot-dog, blackboard
Particle and noun: off-Broadway, bystander
Verb and particle: takeoff, leftover

Verb compounds:
Noun-verb: sightsee, gatecrash
Adjective and verb: fine-tune
Particle and verb: outlast, undermine
Adjective and noun: bad-mouth

Adjective compounds:
Noun-adjective: duty-free, ice-cold, jet-black
Noun and verb: man-made, breathtaking, airborne
Adjective and adjective: bitter-sweet, red-hot
Adjective and verb: good-looking, easy-going
Particle and noun: in-depth, offside
Particle and verb: hard-hitting, well-read
Verb and particle: see-through, tow-away
Particle and adjective: wide awake, oversensitive

Compound adverbs:
overnight, flat-out

Neoclassical compounds:
aquanaut, anglophile, homophobe, francophone
b. Conversion or functional shift
A word can be shifted from one class to another class:
Noun – verb: bottle, google
Verb – noun: fight, guess
Adjective to verb: better, empty
Adjective to noun: poor, daily
Particle to noun: up, down
Particle to verb: down
However, such pairs can be interpreted as belonging concurrently to both classes, without
one taking primacy over another, especially in pairs with phonological differences:
Stress shift: import (n.) – import (v.), record-record
Voice-voiceless: house (n.) – house (v.)
c. Back-formation:
Words originally consisting of one morpheme are reanalyzed as having two constituent and
one of them is removed:
burglar – burgle, affliction – afflict
d. Clipping:
Omission of a part of a word:
flu - (in)flu(enza); lab- lab(oratory)
e. Blending:
New word out of two old ones
smoke + fog =smog
breakfast + lunch = brunch
motor + hotel = motel
f. Acronyms:
Words formed from initials of other words:
NATO, WASP, RADAR
g. Reduplication:
initial syllable or the entire word is doubled, exactly or with a slight phonological change
- exact reduplication: hush-hush, fifty-fifty
- ablaut reduplication in which the vowel alternates while the consonants are identical:
mish-mash, wishy-washy, clip-clop
- rhyme reduplication: flower-power, hodge-podge, fuddy-duddy
h. Invention:
root creation, the invention of an entirely new root morpheme:
Xerox, Teflon, Kleenex, google
i.
Idiom:
Combination of two or more words in which the combination takes on a unique meaning:
kick the bucket, shut up, passed away
No, or little, variation is allowed in the words that constitute: *hold your stallions; *bite the
dirt