Introduction to word structure

This is my paper summary of English Morphology Class

2.1 WHAT IS A WORD?

The assumption that languanges contain word is taken for granted by most people. Even illiterate speakers know that therer are words in their language. True, sometimes there are differences of opinion as to what units are to be treater as word.

2.1.1 The Lexeme

However, closer examination of the nature of the ‘word’ reveals a somewhat more complex picture than i have painted above. What we mean by ‘word’ is not clear. As we shall see in the next few paragraphs, diffuculties in clarifying the nature of the word are largely due to the fact the term ‘word’ ised in a variety of senses which usually are not clearly distinguished.

What would you do if you were reading a book and you encountered the ‘word’ pockled for the first time in this context?

[2.1]  He went to the pub for a pint and then  pockled off.

We shall refer to the ‘word’ in this sense of abstact of vocabulary item using the term lexeme.

Which one of the word in [2.2] below belong to the same lexeme?

[2.2]     see       catches                        taller                boy      catching           sees

sleeps   women                        catch                saw      tallest               sleeping

boys     sleep                seen                 tall       slept                 caught

seeing  jump                women                        slept     jumps               jumping

we shoul all agree that :

The physical word form                      are realisation of                      the lexeme

See,sees,sleeing,saw,seen                                                                    SEE

Sleeps, sleeping,slept                                                                          SLEEP

Catch, catches, catching, caught                                                         CATCH

2.1.2 Word form

As we have just seen above,sometimes, when we use the term ‘word’, it is not the abstract vocabulary item with a common core of meaning,the lexeme, that we want to refer to. Thus we can refer to see, sees, seeing, saw and seen as five different word we counting the number of word.

2.1.3 The Gramatical Word

The ‘word’ can also be seen as a representation of a lexeme that is associated with certain morpho-syntactic properties such as noun, adjective,verb, tense, gender, number, etc.

Should why cut should be regarded as representing two distinct grammatical word in the following :

[2.3]     a.         Usually i cut the bread on the table

b.         Yesterday i cut the bread in the sink

The same word-form cut, belonging to the verbal lexeme CUT, can represent two different grammatical words. In [2.3] cut represents the grammatical word cut [verb,present,noun 3rd person]. But in [2.3b] it represents the grammatical word cut [verb, past] which realises the past tense of CUT.

2.2 MORPHEMES : THE SMALLEST UNITS OF MEANING

Morphology is the study of word structure. The claim that words have structure might come as a suprise becayse normally speakers think of word as indivisble units of meaning. This is probably due to the fact that many word are morphologically simple. For example the,fierce, desk, eat, boot, at, fee, mosquito,etc.

The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible unit of semantic content or grammatical function which word are made up of. By definition, a morpheme cannot be decomposed into smaller units which are cither meaningful by themselves or mark a grammatical function like singular or plural number in the noun.

List two other word which contain cach morpheme represented below :

[2.4].    a. –er as in (play-er, call-er), -ness as in (kind-ness, good-ness), -ette as in (kitchen-ette, cigar-ette)

b. ex as in (ex-wife,ex-minister), pre as in (pre-war, pre-school), mis as in (mis-kick,mis-jugde).

The form –er is attached to verbs to derive nouns with the general meaning, -ness is added to an adjective,it produces a noun meaning, -ette to a noun derrives a new noun which has the meaning, -ex and pre- derive nouns from nouns while mis- derive verbs from verbs.

2.2.1 Analysing Word

We have used the criterion of meaning to identify morphemes, where the meaning of a morpheme has been somewhat obscure, you have been encouraged to consult a good etymological dictionary.

Consider the following words : [2.5]

Helicopter                   pteropus                      diptera

Bible                            bibliography    bibliophile

Helicopter is a kind of non-fixed flying aircraft, pteropus are tropical bats, diptera are two winged flies, the words bible,bibliography and bibliophile have to do with books. But it is unlikely that anoyone lacking a profound knowledge of English etymology is aware that word bible is not just the name of  a scripture book.

2.2.2 Morphemes, Morps and Allomorph

At one time, establishing mechanical procedures for the identification of morphemes was considered a realistic goal by structural lingusts (cf.Harris, 1951). But it did not take long before most linguist realised that it was impossible  to develop a set of discovery procedures that would lead aitomatically to a correct morphological analysis.

Definition : the morpheme is the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure. A morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language, it is recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes). Different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are grouped together and they are called allomorphs.

2.2.3 Grammatical Conditioning, Lexical Conditioning and Suppletion

Distribution of allomorphs is usually subject to phonological conditioning,sometimes phonological factors play no role in the selection of allomorphs. Instead the choice of allomorph may be grammatically conditioned, i.e. it may be dependent on the presence of a particular grammatical element.

In other cases, the choice of the allomoprh may be lexically conditioned, i.e. use of a particular allomorph may be obligatory if a certain word is present. We can see this in the realisation of plural in English. There exist a few morphemes whose allomorphs show no phonetic similarity, example by the forms good/better which both represent the lexeme GOOD despite the fact that they do not have even a single sound in common, where allomoprhs of a morpheme aer phonetically unrelated we speak of suppletion.

2.2.4    Underlying Representations

Above we have distinguished between, on the one hand, regular, rulegoverned phonological alternation, this is standard in generative phonology. Merely listing allomorphs does not allow us to distinguish between eccentric alternations like good/better and regular alternations like that shown by the negative prefix in- or by the regular plural –s plurall suffix. A rule of suppletion or lexical conditioning only applies if a form is expressly marked as being subject to it. Similarly, a grammatically conditioned rule will only be triggered if the appropriate grammatical conditioning factor is present.

To bring out the distinction between regular phonological alternation, which is phonitecally motivated and other kinds of morphological alternation that lack a phonetic basis, linguists posit a single underlying representation or base form from which the various allomorphs of a moprheme are derived by applying one or more phonoligical rules. The stages which a form goes through when it is being converted from an underlying representation to a phonetic representation sonstitute a derivation. The term morphophonemic and morphophonolgy are used to refer conditioned allomorphs of morphemes.

The study of word structure is called morphology. Understanding word structure helps us:

  • improve spelling
  • expand vocabulary

In studying word structure, we start by looking at a few key concepts first:

  • root words
  • prefixes
  • suffixes

Root words are words, or parts of words, that can usually stand alone. The following are all root words:

  • elbow
  • fast
  • nudge

Most root words can be changed in various ways by adding additional elements to them:

  • elbows
  • faster
  • nudged

Each of the examples above has been altered by adding an element at the end. The elements at the end, namely -s, -er, and -ed, cannot stand alone. These elements are called suffixes.

Sometimes, elements are added to the beginning of a word:

  • exposeunderexpose
  • appeardisappear
  • takeovertake
  • eventnon-event

The elements added to the beginnings of the words above cannot stand alone, and are called prefixes.

Sometimes, when we add a prefix or suffix to a word, we create a new word. This process is called derivation.

  • appearappearance

The two words above are definitely two different words — the first is a verb, the second a noun. Their meanings and uses in sentences are different. In a dictionary, we would have to look them up separately, even though they have a common root word.

Sometimes, when we add a suffix, we don’t create a new word at all. This process is called inflection.

  • catcats

In the above example, we really have just one word — the first is singular, the second plural. In a dictionary, we might look for cat, but we wouldn’t look for a separate entry for cats.

When words are built from a common root word, or a common ancestor in history (often a Latin word), we call the group of words a word family.

  • grammar, grammatical, grammatically, ungrammatical, ungrammatically

The terms above are all built from a common root word, grammar. This word family includes a noun, adjectives, and adverbs.

The terms below are built from a common ancestor, the Latin word spectare, meaning ‘to look’:

  • inspect, spectacle, spectacular, inspection

This word family includes verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

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Abstract

The assumption that languages contain words is taken for granted by most people. Even illiterate speakers know that there are words in their language. True, sometimes there are differences of opinion as to what units are to be treated as words. For instance, English speakers might not agree whether all right is one word or two and as a result disputes may arise as to whether alright is the correct way of writing all right. But, by and large, people can easily recognise a word of their language when they see or hear one. And normally their judgements as to what is or is not a word do coincide. English speakers agree, for example, that the form splody in the sentence The splody cat sat on the mat is not an English word — but all the other forms are.

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  1. Francis Katamba

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© 1993 Francis Katamba

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Katamba, F. (1993). Introduction to Word-Structure.

In: Morphology. Modern Linguistics Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22851-5_2

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The
modern approach to word studies is based on distinguishing between
the external
and
the
internal
structures
of the word.

By
external
structure of the word
we
mean its morphological
structure.

For example, in the word post-impressionists
the
following morphemes can be distinguished: the prefixes post-,
im-,
the
root press,
the
noun-forming suffixes —ion,
ist,
and the grammatical suffix of plurality -s.
All these morphemes constitute the external structure of the word
post-impressionists.

The
internal
structure of the word,
or
its meaning,
is
commonly referred to as the word’s semantic
structure.
This
is the word’s main aspect. Words can serve the purposes of human
communication solely due to their meanings.

The
area of lexicology specializing in the semantic studies of the word
is called semantics.

Another
structural aspect of the word is its unity.
The word possesses both external (or formal) unity and semantic
unity. Formal unity of the word is sometimes interpreted as
indivisibility. The example of post-impressionists
has
already shown that the word is not indivisible. Yet, its component
morphemes are permanently linked together in opposition to
word-groups, both free and with fixed contexts, whose components
possess a certain structural freedom, e.g. bright
light, to take for granted.

The
formal unity of the word can best be illustrated by comparing a word
and a word-group comprising identical constituents. The difference
between a
blackbird
and
a black bird
is
explained by their relationship with the grammatical system of the
language. The word blackbird,
which
is characterized by unity, possesses a single grammatical framing:
blackbird/s.
The
first constituent black
is
not subject to any grammatical changes. In the word-group a black
bird
each
constituent can acquire grammatical forms of its own: the
blackest birds I’ve ever seen.
Other
words can be inserted between the components: a
black night bird
.

The
same example may be used to illustrate what we mean by semantic
unity.

In
the word-group a black
bird
each
of the meaningful words conveys a separate concept: bird
a
kind of living creature; black
a
colour.

The
word blackbird
conveys
only one concept: the type of bird. This is one of the main features
of any word: it always conveys one concept, no matter how many
component morphemes it may have in its external structure.

A
further structural feature of the word is its susceptibility
to
grammatical employment. In speech most words can be used in different
grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realized.

All
that we have said about the word can be summed up as follows.

The
word
is
a speech unit used for the purposes of human communication,
materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning,
susceptible to grammatical employment and characterized by formal and
semantic unity.

  1. The main problems of lexicology

Two
of these have been already underlined. The
problem of word-building
is
associated with prevailing morphological word-structures and with
processes of making new words. Semantics
is
the study of meaning. Modern approaches to this problem are
characterized by two different levels of study: syntagmatic
and
paradigmatic.

On
the syntagmatic
level,
the
semantic structure of the word is analysed in its linear
relationships with neighbouring words in connected speech. In other
words, the semantic characteristics of the word are observed,
described and studied on the basis of its typical contexts.

On
the paradigmatic
level,
the
word is studied in its relationships with other words in the
vocabulary system. So, a word may be studied in comparison with other
words of similar meaning. E.g. work
n –
labour
n.

Work
работа,
труд; 1
the
job that a person does especially in order to earn money. This word
has many meanings (in
Oxford Dictionary – 14),

many synonyms and idioms [`idiemz]: creative
work
творческая
деятельность; public
work
общественные
работы;
his life`s work
дело
его жизни; dirty
work
(difficult,
unpleasant)
1
чёрная работа; 2
грязное
дело, подлость.
Nice
work!
Отлично!
Здорово!
Saying
(поговорка):
All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
(мешай
дело с бездельем, проживёшь век с
весельем)

it is not healthy to spend all your time working; you need to relax
too.

Labour:
work”
и “labour” не взаимозаменимы; labour
– 1
work,
especially physical work: manual
labour,

a
labour camp

исправительно-трудовой
лагерь; 2
people
who work: a
shortage of labour; cheap labour; skilled labour

квалифицированные
рабочие, Labour
Party; labour relations; a labour of

Sisyphus;
Sisyphean
labour
[,sisi‘fi:en]
сизифов труд; тяжёлый и бесплодный труд
– of a task impossible to complete. From the Greek myth in which
Sisyphus was punished for the bad things he had done in his life with
the never-ending task of rolling a large stone to the top of a hill,
from which it always rolled down again.

Other
words of similar meaning (e.g. to
refuse v – to reject v
),
of
opposite meaning (e.g. busy
adj – idle adj; to accept v – to reject v
),
of
different stylistic characteristics (e.g. man
n – chap n – bloke n – guy n
).
Man

chap
(coll.)

парень, малый; a
good chap


славный малый; old
chap –
старина;
chap
BrE,
informal,
becoming old-fashioned – used to talk about a man in a friendly
way: He
isn`t such a bad chap really.
Bloke
(coll.)
тип,
парень: He
seemed like a nice bloke
.
Guy
coll.
US –
малый;
tough
guy
железный
малый; wise
guy
умник;
guys
(informal,
especially US)
a
group of people of either sex: Come
on, you guys
!

Consequently,
the main problems of paradigmatic studies are synonymy,
antonymy, functional styles.

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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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