Different word types grammar

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Every word in a sentence plays a different role, refer as the parts of speech. There are the following word classes in english grammar. Word Classes are very important part in grammar. They decide different rules of grammar. More precisely every grammar rule comes out of them. They are the most basic part of a sentences. Without word classes English language would never be possible and that why these 9 words classes are the base of English language.

9 Words Classes in English Grammar

There are following word classes in English grammar.

1. Nouns

A noun is the name of a person, place, concept, or object, like Marry, John, Canada, Japan, truth, honesty, table and, knife Etc. Nouns occupy the major part of English compositions and come in a wide variety of types. They are used as the subject, direct object, indirect objects, plurals, possessive nouns, opposites and adjectives. Mostly nouns are divided into two categories: common nouns and proper nouns.

Examples:

• Cat was under the table.
• Sarah comes out of no where.
• This purse does not belongs to my father.
• Mosque was very beautiful.

List of Some Nouns: 

Banana	Quill	Hospital
Car	School	Juice
Dinner	Tent	Lizard
Engine	Vulture	Morning
France	Girl	Oxygen
Ambulance	Pillow	Hair
Belgium	Restaurant	Insurance
Church	Spoon	Knife
Dress	Train	Magazine
Finland	Xylophone	Nest
Airport	Piano	Guitar
Bed	Refrigerator	Insect
China	Soccer	Kite

i. Common Noun Vs. Proper Noun

Common nouns

They refer the general things, like books and football.

Proper nouns

They deal with the specific names, like David and London.

ii. Countable Nouns Vs. Uncountable Nouns

Countable Nouns

Nouns which we can count like cats, books, pens Etc.

Uncountable Nouns

Nouns that we cannot count like liquid, air, intelligence.

2. Pronouns

Pronouns are the words that substitute for nouns. For example, he, she, it, her, his you, many, who, everybody Etc. Pronouns are divided into a range of categories. personal pronoun, possessive pronoun, relative pronoun, reflexive pronoun, indefinite pronoun, demonstrative pronoun, an interrogative pronoun, intensive pronoun and reciprocal pronoun.

Examples:

• Tom was going to Mosque, and I just followed him.
• Tina is the friend of Sara, and I am their class fellow.
• He is the man of a lot of sugar in his juice.

Some Pronouns are: 

he	her	hers
him	his	I
it	its	our
she	theirs	them
they	us	we
you	your

3. Adjectives

Adjectives describe the qualities or states of nouns. Adjectives are fast, funny, engaging, well-written. There are three degrees of adjectives positive, comparative and superlative adjectives black. They also describe the quality of nouns, many, few, millions Etc.

Examples

• Tom is a brave boy and that’s why he is in at Army.
• My brother is a good looking actor in Germany.
• Shimla is a coward lady of our society.

Here are some common adjectives:

dull	drab	doubtful
dizzy	disturbed	distinct
disgusted	difficult	different
determined	depressed	delightful
defiant	defeated	dead
dark	dangerous	cute
curious	cruel	crowded
creepy	crazy	courageous
cooperative	confused	condemned
concerned	comfortable	combative
colorful	clumsy	cloudy
clever	clear	clean
cheerful	charming	cautious
careful	calm	busy
bright	breakable	brave
brainy	bored	blushing
blue-eyed	blue	bloody
black	bewildered	better
beautiful	bad	awful
average	attractive	ashamed
arrogant	anxious	annoying
annoyed	angry	amused
alive	alert	agreeable
aggressive	adventurous	adorable

4. Verbs

Verbs describe specific actions, like running, winning, and amazing. There are six types of verbs.

Examples:

• Tina was playing cricket.
• Roma is eating bread with butter.

i. Action verbs

They describe action words a person or thing can do such as accept, ask, bake Etc.

Below are some common action verbs:

Zip	Yank	Write	Win
Whistle	Walk	Turn	Touch
Teach	Study	Solve	Sneeze
Sleep	Skip	Sing	Shout
Shop	See	Scream	Run
Replace	Read	Play	Plan
Paint	Listen	Lie	Laugh
Jump	Invent	Imitate	Exit
Enter	Edit	Eat	Drink
Draw	Describe	Dance	Cry
Create	Cough	Complete	Color
Coach	Buy	Build	Break
Arrange	Approve	Answer	Act

ii. Transitive Verbs

If action verbs follow the direct object is called transitive verbs. Like drive, want, write, eat, clean Etc.

iii. Intransitive verb

The action verbs do not have a direct object like landed, arrived.

iv. Linking verb

The various forms of to be are the linking verbs like am, is, are, where Etc.

v. Helping Verb

Helping verbs are used with main verbs. Auxiliary and model verbs are helping verbs like am, are, do, does, shall will Etc.

vi. Static Verb

The static verb is used to express a state rather than an action. Like believe, guess, know, remember Etc.

5. Adverbs

An adverb describes an adjective, a verb, or another adverb. For example, quickly, slowly, happily Etc. There are five different kinds of adverbs.

Examples:

• Tina was cutting the bread carefully.
• Sara was acting nervously in front of her parents.

i. Adverb of Manner

Adverbs that are use to tell manner: Nicely, beautifully, etc. Adverbs can be negative or positive. Below are some adverbs.

Positive	Negative	+Ve/-Ve
Carefully	Nervously	Badly
Justly	Angrily	Hastily
Politely	Cruelly	Angrily
Boldly	Hungrily	Awkwardly
Powerfully	Hastily	Anxiously
Kindly	Anxiously	Blindly
Calmly	Rudely	Loudly
Openly	Blindly	Hungrily
Quickly	Sadly	Noisily
Bravely	Roughly	Lazily
Promptly	Painfully	Frantically
Neatly	Greedily	Carelessly
Perfectly	Carelessly	Inadequately
Easily	Selfishly	Madly

ii. Adverb of Time

Adverb of time is related to time. Examples of adverbs of time are: Today, Yesterday, etc.

iii. Adverb of Place

Adverb of place is related to place. Examples of adverbs of place are: Here, There, Nowhere, etc.

iv. Adverb of Degree

Adverb of degree is related to degree of something or some action. Examples of adverbs of degree are: So, Very, almost, etc.

v. Adverb of Frequency

Adverb of frequency is related to how may time an action has been repeated. Examples of adverbs of frequency are: Always, Never, etc.

6. Prepositions

Prepositions explain the relationship between the words in a sentence. It indicates direction, time, location and space Etc. Examples are above, behind, in, off, Etc.

Examples:

• Cat was over the roof.
• Tina is in the opposite side of the mosque.

Some Prepositions are:

over	outside	opposite	onto
on	off	of	near
minus	like	into	inside
in	from	for	following
excluding	excepting	except	during
down	despite	considering	concerning
by	but	beyond	between
besides	beside	beneath	below
behind	before	at	as
around	anti	among	amid
along	against	after	across
above	about	aboard

7. Conjunctions

Conjunctions make it possible to build complex sentences that express multiple ideas like coordinating conjunction, subordinating conjunction and correlative conjunction.

Examples:

• I will dance rather than playing cricket.
• Because Tina is my girlfriend, she will not talk to you anymore.

Here are some most used conjunction:

Provided	Rather than	Even though
In order that	Now when	As if
Even	If then	for
Although	Because	and

8. Interjections

A word that express feelings and emotions in called as interjection. Interjection is somehow very important in grammar. It is very important parts of speech in English grammar. Some common interjection words are oh!, Ah! Yum!, Phooey!, Boo!, etc.

Examples:

• Yeah! I have seen a small cat.
• Oh God! He is under the table.
• Hurrah! We played well and won the game.

9. Articles

There are two categories of articles: definite and indefinite articles. A, an is the indefinite article, and the is the definite article. Articles play an important role in English grammar. They adds to the beauty of English grammar. It is very important to learn these three articles and how to use them. They have some simple rules that we have to follow to use them clearly and correctly.

Examples:

• The Pakistan is our beloved country.
• A cat was going into his room.
• An apple just falls off the table.

10. Determiner

A word placed before a noun provides information about quantity, ownership and specificity. It covers articles, demonstratives possessives and quantifiers, such as a, an, the, this, that, my, his, some, six, Etc.

Examples:

• This chair is made of wood.
• That was the ball, Raina was suppose to use in his home.

In a nutshell, we have discussed commonly used classes and examples of parts of speech.

About Author

Simi

Meet Simeron Khan, an experienced ESL teacher with a passion for guiding students towards fluency in English. With a knack for making even the most complex grammar rules accessible and enjoyable, Simeron has helped countless learners achieve their language goals.

1. Principles of grammatical classification of words. The
traditional classi­fication of words.

2. The syntactico-distributional classification of words.

3. The theory of three ranks (O. Jespersen).

4. The notion of lexical paradigm of nomination.

5. Functional words and their properties in the light of

— the traditional classification,

— the syntactico-distributional classification,

— the mixed approach.

6. Pronouns and their properties in the light of

— the traditional classification,

— the syntactico-distributional classification,

— the mixed approach.

1. Principles of Grammatical Classification of Words

In modern linguistic descriptions different types of word classes are
distinguished: grammatical, etymological, semantic, stylistic, etc.,
one can presume, though, that no classification can be adequate to
its aim if it ignores the grammatical principles. It is not
accidental that the theoretical study of language in the history of
science began with the attempts to identify and describe grammatical
classes of words called «parts of speech».

In Modern Linguistics parts of speech are differentiated either by a
number of criteria, or by a single criterion.

The polydifferential («traditional») classification of
words is based on the three criteria: semantic, formal, and
functional. The semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of the
generalized (categorial) meaning of the words of the given part of
speech. The formal criteri­on provides for the exposition of all
formal features (specific inflec­tional and derivational) of all
the lexemic subsets of a particular part of speech. The functional
criterion concerns the typical syntactic func­tions of a part of
speech. Contractedly the set of these criteria is re­ferred to as
«meaning, form, function».

2. Traditional Classification of Words

In accord with the traditional criteria of meaning, form, and
func­tion, words on the upper level of classification are divided
into no­tional and functional.

In English to the notional parts of speech are usually referred the
noun, the adjective, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, the adverb.

On the lines of the traditional classification the adverb, e.g., is
described in the following way: the adverb has the categorial
mean­ing of the secondary property (i.e. the property of process
or another property); the forms of the degrees of comparison for
qualitative ad­verbs, the specific derivative suffixes; the
syntactic functions of vari­ous adverbial modifiers.

The notional parts of speech are the words of complete nomina­tive
value; in the utterance they fulfil self-dependent functions of
nam­ing and denoting things, phenomena, their substantial
properties. Opposed to the notional parts of speech are the
functional words which are words of incomplete nominative value, but
of absolutely essential relational (grammatical) value. In the
utterance they serve as all sorts of mediators.

To the basic functional parts of speech in English are usually
re­ferred the article, the preposition, the conjunction, the
particle, the modal word, the interjection. As has been stated
elsewhere, function­al words are limited in number. On the lines
of the traditional classi­fication they are presented by the
list, each of them requiring its own, individual description.

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Definition of a Word

A word is a speech sound or a combination of sound having a particular meaning for an idea, object or thought and has a spoken or written form. In English language word is composed by an individual letter (e.g., ‘I’), I am a boy, or by combination of letters (e.g., Jam, name of a person) Jam is a boy. Morphology, a branch of linguistics, deals with the structure of words where we learn under which rules new words are formed, how we assigned a meaning to a word? how a word functions in a proper context? how to spell a word? etc.

Examples of word: All sentences are formed by a series of words. A sentence starts with a word, consists on words and ends with a word. Therefore, there is nothing else in a sentence than a word. 

Some different examples are: Boy, kite, fox, mobile phone, nature, etc.

Different Types of Word

There are many types of word; abbreviation, acronym, antonym, back formation, Clipped words (clipping), collocation, compound words, Content words, contractions, derivation, diminutive, function word, homograph, homonym, homophone, legalism, linker, conjunct, borrowed, metonym, monosyllable, polysyllable, rhyme, synonym, etc. Read below for short introduction to each type of word.

Abbreviation

An abbreviation is a word that is a short form of a long word.

Example: Dr for doctor, gym for gymnasium

Acronym

Acronym is one of the commonly used types of word formed from the first letter or letters of a compound word/ term and used as a single word.

Example: PIA for Pakistan International Airline

Antonym

An antonym is a word that has opposite meaning of an another word

Example: Forward is an antonym of word backward or open is an antonym of word close.

Back formation

Back formation word is a new word that is produced by removing a part of another word.

Example: In English, ‘tweeze’ (pluck) is a back formation from ‘tweezers’.

Clipped words

Clipped word is a word that has been clipped from an already existing long word for ease of use.

Example: ad for advertisement

Collocation

Collocation is a use of certain words that are frequently used together in form of a phrase or a short sentence.

Example: Make the bed,

Compound words

Compound words are created by placing two or more words together. When compound word is formed the individual words lose their meaning and form a new meaning collectively. Both words are joined by a hyphen, a space or sometime can be written together. 

Example: Ink-pot, ice cream,

Content word

A content word is a word that carries some information or has meaning in speech and writing.

Example:  Energy, goal, idea.

Contraction

A Contraction is a word that is formed by shortening two or more  words and  joining them by an apostrophe.

Example:  ‘Don’t’ is a contraction of the word ‘do not’.

Derivation

Derivation is a word that is derived from within a language or from another language.

Example: Strategize (to make a plan) from strategy (a plan).

Diminutive

Diminutive is a word that is formed by adding a diminutive suffix with a word.

Example: Duckling by adding suffix link with word duck.

Function word

Function word is a word that is mainly used for expressing some grammatical relationships between other words in a sentence.

Example: (Such as preposition, or auxiliary verb) but, with, into etc.

Homograph

Homograph is a word that is same in written form (spelled alike) as another word but with a different meaning, origin, and occasionally pronounced with a different pronunciation

Example:  Bow for ship and same word bow for shooting arrows.

Homonym

Homonyms are the words that are spelled alike and have same pronunciation as another word but have a different meaning.

Example: Lead (noun) a material and lead (verb) to guide or direct.

Homophone

Homophones are the words that have same pronunciation as another word but differ in spelling, meaning, and origin.

Example: To, two, and too are homophones.

Hyponym

Hyponym is a word that has more specific meaning than another more general word of which it is an example.

Example: ‘Parrot’ is a hyponym of ‘birds’.

Legalism

Legalism is a type of word that is used in law terminology.

Example: Summon, confess, judiciary

Linker/ conjuncts

Linker or conjuncts are the words or phrase like ‘however’ or ‘what’s more’ that links what has already been written or said to what is following.

Example: however, whereas, moreover.

Loanword/ borrowed

A loanword or borrowed word is a word taken from one language to use it in another language without any change.

Example: The word pizza is taken from Italian language and used in English language

Metonym

Metonym is a word which we use to refer to something else that it is directly related to that.

Example: ‘Islamabad’ is frequently used as a metonym for the Pakistan government.

Monosyllable

Monosyllable is a word that has only one syllable.

Example: Come, go, in, yes, or no are monosyllables.

Polysyllable

Polysyllable is a word that has two or more than two syllables.

Example: Interwoven, something or language are polysyllables.

Rhyme

Rhyme is a type of word used in poetry that ends with similar sound as the other words in stanza.

Example; good, wood, should, could.

Synonym

Synonym is a word that has similar meaning as another word.

Example: ‘happiness’ is a synonym for ‘joy’.

WORD STRUCTURE IN MODERN ENGLISH

  I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of morphemes. Allomorphs.

II.   Structural types of words.

III.   Principles of morphemic analysis.

  IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of stems. Derivational types of words.

I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of Morphemes.  Allomorphs.

There are two levels of approach to the study of word- structure: the level of morphemic analysis and the level of derivational or word-formation analysis.

Word is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of linguistic analysis.

It has been universally acknowledged that a great many words have a composite nature and are made up of morphemes, the basic units on the morphemic level, which are defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language units.

The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphe “form ”+ -eme. The Greek suffix –eme has been adopted by linguistic to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these cases a recurring discrete unit of speech. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of single morpheme. Even a cursory examination of the morphemic structure of English words reveals that they are composed of morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and affixational morphemes. Words that consist of a root and an affix are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word building known as affixation (or derivation).

The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of the word; it has a very general and abstract lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words constituting one word-cluster, e.g. (to) teach, teacher, teaching. Besides the lexical meaning root-morphemes possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots.

Affixational morphemes include inflectional affixes or inflections and derivational affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms. Derivational affixes are relevant for building various types of words. They are lexically always dependent on the root which they modify. They possess the same types of meaning as found in roots, but unlike root-morphemes most of them have the part-of-speech meaning which makes them structurally the important part of the word as they condition the lexico-grammatical class the word belongs to. Due to this component of their meaning the derivational affixes are classified into affixes building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.

Roots and derivational affixes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, fill-, are understood as the lexical centers of the words, and –less, -y,      -ness, -er, re- are felt as morphemes dependent on these roots.

 Distinction is also made of free and bound morphemes.

Free morphemes coincide with word-forms of independently functioning words. It is obvious that free morphemes can be found only among roots, so the morpheme boy- in the word boy is a free morpheme; in the word undesirable there is only one free morpheme desire-; the word pen-holder has two free morphemes  pen- and hold-. It follows that bound morphemes are those that do not coincide with separate word- forms, consequently all derivational morphemes, such as –ness, -able, -er are bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes theor- in the words theory, theoretical, or horr- in the words horror, horrible, horrify; Angl- in  Anglo-Saxon; Afr- in Afro-Asian are all bound roots as there are no identical word-forms.

It should also be noted that morphemes may have different phonemic shapes. In the word-cluster please , pleasing , pleasure , pleasant the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other. All the representations of the given morpheme, that manifest alternation are called allomorphs/or morphemic variants/ of that morpheme.

The combining form allo- from Greek allos “other” is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members together consistute a structural unit of the language (allophones, allomorphs). Thus, for example, -ion/ -tion/ -sion/ -ation are the positional variants of the same suffix, they do not differ in meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound form depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. They are considered as variants of one and the same morpheme and called its allomorphs.

Allomorph is defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment and so characterized by complementary description.

Complementary distribution is said to take place, when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment.

Different morphemes are characterized by contrastive distribution, i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different meanings. The suffixes –able and –ed, for instance, are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because adjectives in –able mean “ capable of beings”.

Allomorphs will also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on the initials of the stem with which they will assimilate.

Two or more sound forms of a stem existing under conditions of complementary distribution may also be regarded as allomorphs, as, for instance, in long a: length n.

II. Structural types of words.

The morphological analysis of word- structure on the morphemic level aims at splitting the word into its constituent morphemes – the basic units at this level of analysis – and at determining their number and types. The four types (root words, derived words, compound, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive ways of word building.

According to the number of morphemes words can be classified into monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphic or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All polymorphic word fall into two subgroups:  derived words and compound words – according to the number of root-morphemes they have. Derived words are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes, e.g. acceptable, outdo, disagreeable, etc. Compound words are those which contain at least two root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant. There can be both root- and derivational morphemes in compounds as in pen-holder, light-mindedness, or only root-morphemes as in lamp-shade, eye-ball, etc.

These structural types are not of equal importance. The clue to the correct understanding of their comparative value lies in a careful consideration of: 1)the importance of each type in the existing wordstock, and 2) their frequency value in actual speech. Frequency is by far the most important factor. According to the available word counts made in different parts of speech, we find that derived words numerically constitute the largest class of words in the existing wordstock; derived nouns comprise approximately 67% of the total number, adjectives about 86%, whereas compound nouns make about 15% and adjectives about 4%. Root words come to 18% in nouns, i.e. a trifle more than the number of compound words; adjectives root words come to approximately 12%.

But we cannot fail to perceive that root-words occupy a predominant place. In English, according to the recent frequency counts, about 60% of the total number of nouns and 62% of the total number of adjectives in current use are root-words. Of the total number of adjectives and nouns, derived words comprise about 38% and 37% respectively while compound words comprise an insignificant 2% in nouns and 0.2% in adjectives. Thus it is the root-words that constitute the foundation and the backbone of the vocabulary and that are of paramount importance in speech. It should also be mentioned that root words are characterized by a high degree of collocability and a complex variety of meanings in contrast with words of other structural types whose semantic structures are much poorer. Root- words also serve as parent forms for all types of derived and compound words.

III. Principles of morphemic analysis.

In most cases the morphemic structure of words is transparent enough and individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word. The segmentation of words is generally carried out according to the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on the binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents. Each Immediate Constituent at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referred to Ultimate Constituents.

A synchronic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by the procedure known as the analysis into Immediate Constituents. ICs are the two meaningful parts forming a large linguistic unity.

The method is based on the fact that a word characterized by morphological divisibility is involved in certain structural correlations. To sum up: as we break the word we obtain at any level only ICs one of which is the stem of the given word. All the time the analysis is based on the patterns characteristic of the English vocabulary. As a pattern showing the interdependence of all the constituents segregated at various stages, we obtain the following formula:

un+ { [ ( gent- + -le ) + -man ] + -ly}

Breaking a word into its Immediate Constituents we observe in each cut the structural order of the constituents.

A  diagram presenting the four cuts described looks as follows:

1. un- / gentlemanly

2.   un- / gentleman / — ly

3.   un- / gentle / — man / — ly

4.   un- / gentl / — e / — man / — ly

A similar analysis on the word-formation level showing not only the morphemic constituents of the word but also the structural pattern on which it is built.

The analysis of word-structure at the morphemic level must proceed to the stage of Ultimate Constituents. For example, the noun friendliness is first segmented into the ICs: [frendlı-] recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and [-nıs] found in a countless number  of nouns, such as unhappiness, blackness, sameness, etc. the IC [-nıs] is at the same time an UC of the word, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. Any further division of –ness would give individual speech-sounds which denote nothing by themselves. The IC [frendlı-] is next broken into the ICs [-lı] and [frend-] which are both UCs of the word.

Morphemic analysis under the method of Ultimate Constituents may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root-principle and affix principle.

According to the affix principle the splitting of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of the affix within a set of words, e.g. the identification of the suffix –er leads to the segmentation of words singer, teacher, swimmer into the derivational morpheme – er  and the roots teach- , sing-, drive-.

According to the root-principle, the segmentation of the word is based on the identification of the root-morpheme in a word-cluster, for example the identification of the root-morpheme agree-  in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree.

As a rule, the application of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentation of words.

However, the morphemic structure of words in a number of cases defies such analysis, as it is not always so transparent and simple as in the cases mentioned above. Sometimes not only the segmentation of words into morphemes, but the recognition of certain sound-clusters as morphemes become doubtful which naturally affects the classification of words. In words like retain, detain, contain or  receive, deceive, conceive, perceive the sound-clusters [rı-], [dı-] seem to be singled quite easily, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing in common with the phonetically identical prefixes  re-, de- as found in words re-write, re-organize, de-organize, de-code. Moreover, neither the sound-cluster [rı-] or [dı-], nor the [-teın] or [-sı:v] possess any lexical or functional meaning of their own. Yet, these sound-clusters are felt as having a certain meaning because [rı-] distinguishes retain from detain and [-teın] distinguishes retain from receive.

It follows that all these sound-clusters have a differential and a certain distributional meaning as their order arrangement point to the affixal status of re-, de-, con-, per- and makes one understand —tain and –ceive as roots. The differential and distributional meanings seem to give sufficient ground to recognize these sound-clusters as morphemes, but as they lack lexical meaning of their own, they are set apart from all other types of morphemes and are known in linguistic literature as pseudo- morphemes. Pseudo- morphemes of the same kind  are also encountered in words like rusty-fusty.

IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of Stems. Derivational types of word.

The morphemic analysis of words only defines the constituent morphemes, determining their types and their meaning but does not reveal the hierarchy of the morphemes comprising the word. Words are no mere sum totals of morpheme, the latter reveal a definite, sometimes very complex interrelation. Morphemes are arranged according to certain rules, the arrangement differing in various types of words and particular groups within the same types. The pattern of morpheme arrangement underlies the classification of words into different types and enables one to understand how new words appear in the language. These relations within the word and the interrelations between different types and classes of words are known as derivative or word- formation relations.

The analysis of derivative relations aims at establishing a correlation between different types and the structural patterns words are built on. The basic unit at the derivational level is the stem.

The stem is defined as that part of the word which remains unchanged throughout its paradigm, thus the stem which appears in the paradigm (to) ask ( ), asks, asked, asking is ask-; thestem of the word singer ( ), singer’s, singers, singers’ is singer-. It is the stem of the word that takes the inflections which shape the word grammatically as one or another part of speech.

The structure of stems should be described in terms of IC’s analysis, which at this level aims at establishing the patterns of typical derivative relations within the stem and the derivative correlation between stems of different types.

There are three types of stems: simple, derived and compound.

Simple stems are semantically non-motivated and do not constitute a pattern on analogy with which new stems may be modeled. Simple stems are generally monomorphic and phonetically identical with the root morpheme. The derivational structure of stems does not always coincide with the result of morphemic analysis. Comparison proves that not all morphemes relevant at the morphemic level are relevant at the derivational level of analysis. It follows that bound morphemes and all types of pseudo- morphemes are irrelevant to the derivational structure of stems as they do not meet requirements of double opposition and derivative interrelations. So the stem of such words as retain, receive, horrible, pocket, motion, etc. should be regarded as simple, non- motivated stems.

Derived stems are built on stems of various structures though which they are motivated, i.e. derived stems are understood on the basis  of the derivative relations between their IC’s and the correlated stems. The derived stems are mostly polymorphic in which case the segmentation results only in one IC that is itself a stem, the other IC being necessarily a derivational affix.

Derived stems are not necessarily polymorphic.

Compound stems are made up of two IC’s, both of which are themselves stems, for example match-box, driving-suit, pen-holder, etc. It is built by joining of two stems, one of which is simple, the other derived.

In more complex cases the result of the analysis at the two levels sometimes seems even to contracted one another.

The derivational types of words are classified according to the structure of their stems into simple, derived and compound words.

Derived words are those composed of one root- morpheme and one or more derivational morpheme.

Compound words contain at least two root- morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant.

Derivational compound is a word formed by a simultaneous process of composition and derivational.

Compound words proper are formed by joining together stems of word already available in the language.

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