Word parts and their meaning

A reader asks about the terms prefix, root, and suffix, and wonders how to distinguish them in a word.

At the most basic level, words are made up of units of meaning called morphemes. A morpheme may be a recognizable word like tree, run, or button that cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts.

A morpheme can represent meaning without being a word. For example, the prefix un- expresses the idea of negation. The suffix -ness, used to turn adjectives into abstract nouns, is a morpheme. The root struct, seen in structure and construct, is a morpheme that embodies the meaning of “to build,” but it cannot stand alone as an English word.

A root is a word’s basic part and carries its fundamental meaning. In the word sadness, for example, the root is sad. Sometimes two roots combine to make one word, as in telephone, a combination of the morpheme tele, which relates to distance, and the morpheme phone, which relates to sound.

Prefixes and suffixes belong to a set of morphemes called affixes. An affix is an element added to the base form or stem of a word to modify its meaning.

Standard English makes use of two types of affix: prefixes and suffixes. A prefix is added at the beginning of a word. For example, the prefix re- is added to a root or a word to denote the idea of doing it again: return, renew, reconstruct.

A suffix is added at the end of a word.

Suffixes are of two kinds, derivational and inflectional. A derivational suffix changes the underlying meaning of the word; an inflectional suffix changes the tense of a verb or the number of a noun, or performs some other grammatical purpose.

Some common derivational suffixes are, -er, -al, -ful, and -ize. The suffix -er added to a verb creates a person or object that performs the action of the verb: teach/teacher, walk/walker, kill/killer, compute/computer; -al and -ful change nouns into adjectives: accident/accidental, forget/forgetful; -ize changes a noun into a verb: terror/terrorize.

Common inflectional suffixes are endings such as, –ed, -ly, -‘s, -s, -er, -ed, -es, -est, and -ing.

Derivational endings are added to a root. For example, the word reconstruction is made up of the root struct, two prefixes, re- and con-, and a suffix, tion. (Because struct ends in t and tion begins with t, one of the ts had to go.)

Inflectional endings are added to a stem, which is the entire word that the ending is being added to. In the words reconstructed and reconstructing, for example, the stem is reconstruct-.

What are word parts?Edit

First, try to answer these questions by filling in the blanks:

1. To ‘redo’ means: to do ____ (Answer)

2. The word which starts the same as ‘careful’, but means its opposite is: ____ (Answer)

3. If John is 2 metres tall and Harry is 1.8 metres tall, then John is tall__ than Harry. (Answer)

If you answered these questions right, then this shows that you already know a bit about word parts.

Knowing what they mean and how they work is a very powerful tool.

What types of word parts are there?Edit

PrefixesEdit

Look at these words:

rename, restart, redesign

1. Where does ‘re-‘ go in these words and what does it mean? (Answer)

A word part which always features at the front of a word is called a prefix (pronounced: PREE-fikz).

Place a possible prefix before these words and start to think about how it changes the meaning of the word (the first one has been done for you):

2. kind

(unkind)

The prefix is: un- (make sure you remember the dash after a prefix)

3. polite

(________)

The prefix is: (Answer)

4. fire

(_______)

The prefix is: (Answer)

5. come

(________)

The prefix is: (Answer)

6. mature

(_________)

The prefix is: (Answer)

SuffixesEdit

Now look at these words:

fearless, careless, hatless

1. Where does ‘-less’ go in these words and what does it mean? (Answer)

A word part which always features at the end of a word is called a suffix (pronounced: SUFF-ikz).

Test your suffix knowledge and continue thinking about how it changes the meaning of the word (the first one has been done for you):

2. If Alex is heavier than everyone, then he is the: heaviest

The suffix is: -est (make sure you remember to write the dash «-» before a suffix)

3. The process of attracting is called: ______

The suffix is: _____ (Answer)

4. If someone takes a lot of care, then they are described as: ________

The suffix is: _____ (Answer)

5. If someone is without fear, then they are: ________

The suffix is: _____ (Answer)

6. If someone is kind, they they usually show: ________

The suffix is: _____ (Answer)

RootsEdit

Finally, there are the main parts of words called roots.

Roots usually appear in the middle of words, but that’s NOT a good way to think about them.

Look at these examples to see why:

• -dict- is the root of: predict, dictate, and diction
  • In these examples, -dict- is at the front and end of words.

• -port- is the root of: imports, exported, and transportation
  • In these examples, -port- is in the middle of words.

(Notice how when we write a root, we put a dash «-» on both sides. Beware that some authors don’t and would just write ‘port’, though.)

Here are two key points to help you tell if a word part is a root:

POINT 1

First, notice how prefixes and suffixes can never stand on their own.

We don’t say: un-, re-, -ness, or -tion

On the other hand, roots might stand on their own.

We do say: kind, fear, and come.

We don’t say: dict

(We do say over- as ‘over’ and ‘-less’ as ‘less’, but this is an example of a prefix and suffix which have the same spelling as a root. Now you see a reason why we ALWAYS put the dashes with them.)

POINT 2

Second, notice how roots carry the main meaning of a word and are what we attach the prefixes and suffixes to.

Try to identify the roots in these words (the first one has been done for you):

1. For antimatter, the root is -matter-

2. For misfire, the root is: ______ (Answer)

3. For transport, export, and support, the root of all of them is: ______ (Answer)

4. For talk, talked, and talking, the root of all of them is: ______ (Answer)

5. For success, access, and recession, the root of all of them is: ______ (Answer)

So, remind yourself that the three types of parts of words are:

6. ______, ______, and ____ (Answer)

Watch out for rules!Edit

You may have been thinking about rules which tell you how prefixes, suffixes, and roots work.

Remember that English has no rules that work in ALL cases.

For instance, we get the plural of egg, tree, and hand by putting the suffix -s on the end:

eggs, trees, hands

But, we DON’T get the plural of goose that way (after all, it’s geese).

Here are 5 key points for you to remember about making and applying rules concerning word parts.

Make sure you think of other cases where they apply.

Rule 1: Use sense and not just spellingEdit

re- is a prefix that means ‘again’, right?

So, what about ‘red’, ‘reck’, and ‘really?’

Well, spelling doesn’t tell you everything!

You can look for clues in pronunciation.

For instance, we usually say re- as «REE»; but this isn’t foolproof either, because of how we say ‘really.’

Start thinking about things to do with the sense of a word such as whether or not you can replace re- with other prefixes (like how ‘redo’ could be changed to ‘undo’).

Is it like this for suffixes, too?

Absolutely. Just think about how -ing is a suffix, but how it clearly isn’t a suffix for the words ‘sing’ and ‘thing.’

Rule 2: You cannot add prefixes and suffixes to everythingEdit

For the root -do-, we can attach prefixes and get:

redo, undo, overdo

Think for a moment about some prefixes we can’t attach to it (and look in the answer key for some possible answers):

1. _________ (Answer)

Is it like this for suffixes, too?

Just consider the word ‘fun.’

If an activity is more fun than every other activity, do we say it is the ‘funnest’ activity? No.

Rule 3: You cannot take prefixes and suffixes off everythingEdit

Which one can you NOT take the prefix anti- off?

antimatter, anticipate, antisocial

1. __________ (Answer)

Which one can you NOT take the prefix re- off?

redesign, resend, receive

2. __________ (Answer)

So, we cannot always take prefixes off words and be left with words.

Suffixes are a bit more complicated, because there are two types; one which you can nearly always take off, and one which you nearly always can’t.

We will talk more about this later; but for now, just don’t assume that you can always take a suffix off a word.

(Okay, that’s three helpful rules learned. I hope you are remembering to think of your own examples or this stuff won’t stick!)

Rule 4: Word parts can have more than one meaningEdit

The ‘un-‘ in ‘unhappy’ has a different meaning to the un- in ‘undress’.

In the first case, ‘un-‘ means ‘not.’

In the second case, it just means ‘reversal.’

So, don’t make the mistake of believing that you will know the meaning of a word part after meeting it just once.

Rule 5: A word part can be spelled in more than one wayEdit

For prefixes, look at ‘in-‘, which means ‘not’, as in ‘injustice.’

1. What do we put before ‘possible’ to mean ‘not possible?’ (Answer)

For roots, look at ‘-vis-‘, which means ‘see’, as in ‘visual.’

Now consider that it can also be spelled ‘-vid-‘, as in ‘video.’

For suffixes, look at ‘-s’, which makes plurals, as in ‘eggs.’

2. But, what do we put at the end of ‘box’ to make it plural? (Answer)

So, remember that a word part can be spelled in more than one way.

Go over these five rules again before moving onto the next subsection.

In summary:

Be careful, because word parts CAN have multiple meanings, multiple spellings, and CAN’T be swapped, chopped off, or attached haphazardly.

The parts of speechEdit

Sentences are made up of different types of words and each type has its own job to do in the sentence.

We call these types ‘parts of speech.’

There are lots of different ones, but we will look at the four main types.

NounEdit

A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea.

A common noun names a general item (like ‘dog’ or ‘happiness’).

A proper noun names a particular item (a particular person, particular place, particular thing,…) and always begins with a capital letter (like ‘Josh’ or ‘London’).

Anna is going to Germany on Friday and will take her bicycle on the journey.

The common nouns in this sentence are:

1. __________ (Answer)

The proper nouns in this sentence are:

2. __________ (Answer)

Nouns have a singular form (like: egg, hand, goose) and a plural form (like: eggs, hands, geese).

Finally, a pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun (so we don’t have to repeat it).

Examples include: she, he, they, it

When she goes to Germany, she will take her bike, because it has excellent cycling roads.

The pronouns in this sentence are:

3. __________ (Answer)

AdjectiveEdit

An adjective is a word that describes a noun.

When it is cold and snowy, wear thick, black clothes.

The adjectives in this sentence are:

1. __________ (Answer)

Adjectives can be modified to make comparisons:

The comparative (pronounced: kom-PAH-ruh-tiv) of:

• tall is taller
• red is redder
• fun is more fun
• difficult is more difficult

The superlative (pronounced: soo-PURR-luh-tiv) of:

• tall is tallest
• red is reddest
• fun is most fun
• difficult is most difficult

VerbEdit

A verb is a doing or action word.

Jack always runs to school while Anna eats her breakfast.

1. What are the verbs in this sentence? (Answer)

Verbs are quite complicated.

What is most important to us is learning the FORMS of a verb, because this is where suffixes feature.

As an example, the forms of ‘initiate’ are: initiate, initiates, initiated, initiating

We will look further into this in lesson 2.

AdverbEdit

An adverb is a word that that modifies a verb, adjective, or even another adverb.

An adverb answers how, when, where, or to what extent.

I always do my work extremely carefully.

The adverbs in this sentence are:

1. __________ (Answer)

Notice how they often end in the suffix ‘-ly’.

Here are some more examples of adverbs: daily, completely, almost, often, never, soon, cleverly

Lesson 1 QuizEdit

If there was anything you didn’t understand, read it once more, because here’s a quiz (that you should try to get perfect before lesson 2):

1. What are the three main types of word parts?

2. What is the common root of ‘audio’, ‘audible’, and ‘audience’, and what do you think it means?

3. Deconstruct the word ‘prefixes’ into its word parts.

4. Which prefix can be found in the opposite to ‘increase?’

5. ‘non-believer’ features the prefix ‘non-‘ but keeps the dash. Are there examples where id doesn’t?

6. Does ‘over-‘ just mean ‘physically above’, as in ‘overhang’?

7. How else can you spell the suffix ‘-y’ (as in mess -> messy)?

8. What are the four main types of parts of speech?

9. Think of examples of adverbs that don’t end in ‘-ly.’

10. Think of three words that have more than one type of part of speech.

(Answers)

Answer KeyEdit

What are word parts? (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. again

2. careless

3. er (making the word ‘taller’)

What types of word parts are there? (Answers)Edit

Prefixes (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. At the front and it means ‘again’.

2. (Already done as an example)

3. impolite; the prefix is: im-

4. misfire; the prefix is: mis-

5. overcome; the prefix is: over-

6. premature; the prefix is: pre-

Suffixes (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. At the end.

2. (Already done as an example)

3. attraction; the suffix is: -tion

4. careful; the suffix is: -ful

5. fearless; the suffix is: -less

6. kindness; the suffix is: -ness

Roots (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. (Already done as an example)

2. -fire-

3. -port-

4. -talk-

5. -cess-

6. prefix, suffix, and root

Watch out for rules! (Answers)Edit

Rule 2: You cannot add prefixes and suffixes to everything (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. subdo, interdo, predo

Rule 3: You cannot take prefixes and suffixes off everything (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. anticipate

2. receive

Rule 5: A word part can be spelled in more than one way (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. im-, as in ‘impossible’

2. -es, as in ‘boxes’

The parts of speech (Answers)Edit

Noun (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. bicycle, journey

2. Anna, Germany, Friday

3. she, it

Adjective (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. cold, snowy, thick, black

Adverb (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. extremely, carefully

Lesson 1 Quiz (Answers)Edit

(Go back to questions)

1. prefix, root, suffix

2. -audi-, it means ‘hearing’ or ‘listening’

3. ‘pre-‘ is the prefix; ‘-fix-‘ is the root; ‘-es’ is the suffix

4. ‘de-‘ is the suffix, as in ‘decrease’

5. ‘nonprofit’ (if your example was different, check a dictionary)

6. No. It may also mean ‘excess’, as in ‘overambitious’, or ‘outer’, as in ‘overcoat.’

7. ‘-ey’, as in ‘clayey.’

8. noun, verb, adjective, adverb

9. often, soon

10. ‘abstract’ can be a noun or adjective. ‘fool’ can be a noun or verb. ‘set’ can be a noun, adjective, or verb.

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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A part of speech is a term used in traditional grammar for one of the nine main categories into which words are classified according to their functions in sentences, such as nouns or verbs. Also known as word classes, these are the building blocks of grammar.

Every sentence you write or speak in English includes words that fall into some of the nine parts of speech. These include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections. (Some sources include only eight parts of speech and leave interjections in their own category.)

Learning the names of the parts of speech probably won’t make you witty, healthy, wealthy, or wise. In fact, learning just the names of the parts of speech won’t even make you a better writer. However, you will gain a basic understanding of sentence structure and the English language by familiarizing yourself with these labels.

Open and Closed Word Classes

The parts of speech are commonly divided into open classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and closed classes (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections). The idea is that open classes can be altered and added to as language develops and closed classes are pretty much set in stone. For example, new nouns are created every day, but conjunctions never change.

In contemporary linguistics, the label part of speech has generally been discarded in favor of the term word class or syntactic category. These terms make words easier to qualify objectively based on word construction rather than context. Within word classes, there is the lexical or open class and the function or closed class.

Read about each part of speech below and get started practicing identifying each.

Noun

Nouns are a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on a myriad of roles in a sentence, from the subject of it all to the object of an action. They are capitalized when they’re the official name of something or someone, called proper nouns in these cases. Examples: pirate, Caribbean, ship, freedom, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pronoun

Pronouns stand in for nouns in a sentence. They are more generic versions of nouns that refer only to people. Examples:​ I, you, he, she, it, ours, them, who, which, anybody, ourselves.

Verb

Verbs are action words that tell what happens in a sentence. They can also show a sentence subject’s state of being (is, was). Verbs change form based on tense (present, past) and count distinction (singular or plural). Examples: sing, dance, believes, seemed, finish, eat, drink, be, became

Adjective

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They specify which one, how much, what kind, and more. Adjectives allow readers and listeners to use their senses to imagine something more clearly. Examples: hot, lazy, funny, unique, bright, beautiful, poor, smooth.

Adverb

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They specify when, where, how, and why something happened and to what extent or how often. Examples: softly, lazily, often, only, hopefully, softly, sometimes.

Preposition

Prepositions show spacial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and the other words in a sentence. They come at the start of a prepositional phrase, which contains a preposition and its object. Examples: up, over, against, by, for, into, close to, out of, apart from.

Conjunction

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. There are coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions. Examples: and, but, or, so, yet, with.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners function like adjectives by modifying nouns, but they are different than adjectives in that they are necessary for a sentence to have proper syntax. Articles and determiners specify and identify nouns, and there are indefinite and definite articles. Examples: articles: a, an, the; determiners: these, that, those, enough, much, few, which, what.

Some traditional grammars have treated articles as a distinct part of speech. Modern grammars, however, more often include articles in the category of determiners, which identify or quantify a noun. Even though they modify nouns like adjectives, articles are different in that they are essential to the proper syntax of a sentence, just as determiners are necessary to convey the meaning of a sentence, while adjectives are optional.

Interjection

Interjections are expressions that can stand on their own or be contained within sentences. These words and phrases often carry strong emotions and convey reactions. Examples: ah, whoops, ouch, yabba dabba do!

How to Determine the Part of Speech

Only interjections (Hooray!) have a habit of standing alone; every other part of speech must be contained within a sentence and some are even required in sentences (nouns and verbs). Other parts of speech come in many varieties and may appear just about anywhere in a sentence.

To know for sure what part of speech a word falls into, look not only at the word itself but also at its meaning, position, and use in a sentence.

For example, in the first sentence below, work functions as a noun; in the second sentence, a verb; and in the third sentence, an adjective:

• Bosco showed up for work two hours late.
  • The noun work is the thing Bosco shows up for.
• He will have to work until midnight.
  • The verb work is the action he must perform.
• His work permit expires next month.
  • The attributive noun [or converted adjective] work modifies the noun permit.

Learning the names and uses of the basic parts of speech is just one way to understand how sentences are constructed.

Dissecting Basic Sentences

To form a basic complete sentence, you only need two elements: a noun (or pronoun standing in for a noun) and a verb. The noun acts as a subject and the verb, by telling what action the subject is taking, acts as the predicate. 

• Birds fly.

In the short sentence above, birds is the noun and fly is the verb. The sentence makes sense and gets the point across.

You can have a sentence with just one word without breaking any sentence formation rules. The short sentence below is complete because it’s a command to an understood «you».

• Go!

Here, the pronoun, standing in for a noun, is implied and acts as the subject. The sentence is really saying, «(You) go!»

Constructing More Complex Sentences

Use more parts of speech to add additional information about what’s happening in a sentence to make it more complex. Take the first sentence from above, for example, and incorporate more information about how and why birds fly.

• Birds fly when migrating before winter.

Birds and fly remain the noun and the verb, but now there is more description. 

When is an adverb that modifies the verb fly. The word before is a little tricky because it can be either a conjunction, preposition, or adverb depending on the context. In this case, it’s a preposition because it’s followed by a noun. This preposition begins an adverbial phrase of time (before winter) that answers the question of when the birds migrate. Before is not a conjunction because it does not connect two clauses.

1. Morphology

Words, their parts and their classes

2. Morphology – an internal branch

Morphology is the branch of linguistics that
studies the structure of words.
Words are structured both in terms of form and
in terms of meaning. The first type of structuring
has relevance for syntax, the second for
semantics and lexicology.
Morphology is a separate level of linguistic
patterning comprising two subsystems which
may share some of the means of encoding
(exponents): grammatical (inflectional) and
lexical (derivational) morphology .

3. WORD

Orthographic – babysitter vs. jack-of-all-trades
Phonological – [hiz] – he is, he has, his (pause
and stress)
Semantic – travel agency; try out
Morphosyntactic – work, works, worked,
working
Grammatical – round (n, adj, adv, prep, v)
Word vs. Lexeme

4. Morphemes (general)

Morphemes occur in speech only as
constituent parts of words, not independently,
although a word may consist of a single
morpheme. There is a fundamental functional
distinction between a morpheme and a word.
Monomorphemic words (simple) are
distinguished from polymorphemic or
complex words.

5. Morpheme

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of
language. (lexical and grammatical meaning)
A morpheme must have a meaning, and it is the smallest
unit of meaning (the smallest sound-meaning union
which cannot be further analyzed into smaller meaningful
units).

6. Morphemes — properties

The properties which uniquely differentiate
morphemes from other linguistic units are
these:
A morpheme is the smallest unit associated
with a meaning (independent, e.g. -man or
contributory e. g. -ly in largely).
Do all these words car, care, carpet, cardigan,
caress, cargo, caramel contain the morpheme
car? How do we identify morphemes?

7. Morphemes — properties

Morphemes are recyclable units. One of the
most important properties of the morpheme is
that it can be used again and again to form
many new words (lexical and related if derivational
morphemes and morphosyntactic/grammatical and
unrelated, if inflectional).
In examples cardigan and caramel is car a
morpheme? One way of finding out would be to
test whether the remaining material can be
used in other words, i.e. whether it is (an)other
morpheme(s).

8. Morphemes — properties

-digan and -amel do not meet our first definition of
a morpheme, they are not contributors of
independent meanings, nor are they recyclable in
the way in which the morphemes care+ful,
un+care+ing, care+give+er are.
Recyclability can be deceptive, as it is in the case
of carrot, carpet, caress, cargo.
Though all morphemes can be used over and over
in different combinations, non-morphemic parts of
words may accidentally look like familiar
morphemes.

9. Morphemes — properties

The test of what makes a sequence of sounds a
morpheme is based on the segment’s ability to convey
independent meaning, or add to the meaning of a
word. In some cases, a combination of tests is
required. If we try to parse the word happy, we can
easily isolate happ- and -y as morphemes. The latter
adds to the meaning of words by turning them into
adjectives. But what about happ? — e.g. mishap,
happen, hapless, unhappiness. The recyclability of
hap(p)- in the language today confirms its status as a
morpheme, even without the etymological information.

10. Morpheme ≠ Syllable

Morphemes must not be confused with syllables. A
morpheme may be represented by any number of
syllables, though typically only one or two,
sometimes three or four.
Syllables have nothing to do with meaning, they
are units of pronunciation. In most dictionaries,
dots are used to indicate where one may split the
word into syllables. A syllable is the smallest
independently pronounceable unit into which a
word can be divided.
Morphemes may be less than a syllable in length.
Cars is one syllable, but two morphemes.

11. Morpheme ≠ Syllable

Some of the longest morphemes tend to be
names of places or rivers or Native
American
nations,
like
Mississippi,
Potawatomi, Cincinnati. In the indigenous
languages of America from which these
names were borrowed, the words were
polymorphemic, but the information is
completely lost to most native speakers of
English.

12. Morphemes (summary of properties)

The four essential properties of all morphemes:
1) they are packaged with a meaning;
2) they are constantly recycled;
3) they may be represented by any number
of syllables;
4) morphemes may have phonetically
different shapes in different contexts

13. Morpheme

The word lady can be divided into two syllables (la.dy),
but it consists of just one morpheme, because a syllable
has nothing to do with meaning.
The word disagreeable can be divided into five
syllables (dis.a.gree.a.ble), but it consists of only three
morphemes (dis+agree+able).
The word books contains only one syllable, but it
consists of two morphemes (book+s) (Notice: the
morpheme –s has a grammatical meaning [Plural])

14. The internal structure of words

Lexical or Grammatical
Words can have an internal structure, i.e. they are
decomposable into smaller meaningful parts. These
smallest meaningful units we call morphemes.
read+er
re+read
en+able
dark+en
Mary+’s
print+ed
cat+s
go+es
Genitive case
Past tense
Plural marker
3rd singular
Present-tense
grammatical/inflectional morpheme

15. Morpheme, Morph, Allomorph

books /-s/
pigs /-z/
boxes /-iz/
two different spelling forms and
three different phonological forms,
but these different forms represent
the same grammatical meaning
[Plural])
A morph is a physical form representing a certain morpheme in a
language.
Sometimes different morphs may represent the same morpheme; i.e.,
a morpheme may take different forms. If so, they are called
allomorphs of that morpheme.

16. Complementary Distribution

Allomorphs are morphs in complementary distribution (receive vs.
reception) or in free variation (-ity vs. -ness, e.g. uniformity vs.
happiness). They are never found in identical contexts, or in
overlapping distribution. The choice of allomorph used in a given
context is normally based on the properties of the neighboring
sounds, the lexical item itself or morphological conditions.
Example: The third person singular verb suffix and the plural
nominal suffix –s in English
PLURAL
morpheme
[s]
[z]
[iz]
morph
morph
morph

17. Allomorphy

Allomorphy affects both free and bound
morphemes. A great part of allomorphy is
phonologically conditioned, but there are
also cases of lexically and morphologically
(grammatically) conditioned allomorphy. In
derivational affixation, the choice of a
specific affix among numerous potential
choices is an instance of lexically
conditioned allomorphy: happy – ity, -ation, hood, -ment = happiness

18. Allomorphy

Allomorphy affects both roots and affixes:
receive but reception (root allomorphy)
dwarf but dwarves (root allomorphy)
buses [iz] but nooks [s] (phonetically
conditioned allomorphy of an inflectional affix
{pl})

19. An analogy: Chameleon

20. Chameleon

The skin color is
determined by the color
of the nearby
environment.
Two different skin colors
cannot occur in the
same environment.
Although a chameleon’s
skin color may change, the
essence remains
unchanged. It is not grass
when its skin color is green.

21. Complementary Distribution

morpheme
negative morpheme inmorph1: im
impossible
[imp—]
bilabial
nasal
bilabial
stop
morph2: in
morph3: in
indecent
[ind—]
alveolar
nasal
alveolar
stop
incomplete
[iŋk—]
velar
nasal
velar
stop

22. Conditioning factors for allomorphy

Phonological conditioning — the three phonetic variants of
plural morpheme in English — /s/, /z/ and /iz/
Lexical – In lexical conditioning, the choice of allomorph
depends on the particular word the morpheme is attached to.
A typical example of this is the /n/ (-en, orthographically) used
to mark the plural form of the noun ox.
Morphological/Grammatical – the choice of allomorph may be
grammatically conditioned, i.e. it may be dependent on the
existence of an established grammatical class: a. walk walked
vs. b. weep wept/ sweep swept vs. c. shake shook/take took
Suppletion: allomorphs of a morpheme are phonologically
unrelated: go/went; be/am/is/ was; good/better; one/first

23. Classification of Morphemes

Morphemes can be classified in various ways.
free
or
bound
root
or
affix
inflectional
or
derivational
prefix or suffix or infix or circumfix or superfix
or interfix
positional
NB! interfix (linking morpheme with no
meaning) ≠ infix (a meaningful morpheme)

24. Free and Bound Morphemes

We can divide reader into read and –er.
However, we cannot split read into smaller
morphemes. This means that the word read is
itself a single morpheme.
A morpheme which can stand alone as a word is
called a free morpheme. By contrast, -er has to
combine with other morphemes. So it is a bound
morpheme.

25.

Root, stem, base & affix
nature + al = natural
Affixes: bound morphemes which
attach to roots or stems.
un + nature + al = unnatural
Stem: a root plus affixes
Root: the basic morpheme
which provides the central
meaning in a word
Complex Word
simple word
nature
unnatural
naturalistic
natural naturalist naturalism

26.

Base
Linguists sometimes use the word
“Base” to mean any root or stem to
which an affix is attached. In this
example, nature, natural, and
unnaturally would all be considered
bases.
nature + al = natural
un + nature + al = unnatural
un + nature + al + ly = unnaturally

27. bound root morphemes

All mophemes are bound or free. Affixes are bound
morphemes. Root morphemes, can be bound or free.
-ceive:
receive;
perceive;
conceive;
deceive
-mit:
permit;
commit;
transmit;
admit;
remit;
submit
ceive was once a word in Latin ‘to take’, but in Modern
English, it is no longer a word, so it is not a free morpheme.
Root
Affix
Free
dog, cat, run,
school…
Bound
(per)ceive, (re)mit,
(homo)geneous,…
(friend)ship, re(do),
(sad)ly…

28. Example of bound root

Latin root viv-/vit- meaning “life” or “to live”.
revive
vitamin
vital
vivacious
vivid
re-vive: to live again, to bring back to life
vit-amin: life medicine
vit-al: full of life
viv-acious: full of life
viv-id: having the quality of life

29.

Portmanteau morpheme = single indivisible morpheme
realising more than one feature. (The term is applied when the
features are realised by separate morphemes in the same
language, and less frequently in other languages.): were
(BE+past), she (3rd person+singular+feminine+subject). Known
as fusional.
Clitics: a mongrel or a crossbreed between an affix and a word.
They are phonologically so short they can’t be pronounced
alone, they need to be joined to other words. Like words, their
position is determined partly by syntactic rules. They are
sometimes short forms of larger words:
(a) I’m, he’s, you’ve, puis-je les lui donner? j‘y vais
(b) Hasn’t she gone? (Contrast with parallel question
with non-clitic not.)
(c) [the man in the kitchens]’s wife (the possessive clitic)

30. Clitic vs. affix

Clitic
Affix
Freedom of position
Free to attach to
different elements
Fixed positions in word
structure
Selectivity
Non-selective
Highly selective
Allomorphic variation
Very few allomorphs,
always phonologically
conditioned
Great number of
allomorphs (lexically,
morphologically and
phonologically
conditioned)
Meaning predictability
Uniform, invariable
meaning
Semantic
idiosyncrasies
Prosodic
Prosodically less
integrated
Fully integrated
prosodically. May
change stress pattern
in base

31. What can be in a word?

Natural ordering of elements in a word:
proclitic + inlexional prefix + derivational
prefix + root + derivational suffix + inflectional
suffix + enclitic

32.

PREFIX – a morpheme attached in front of a
base/stem, e.g. unhappy
SUFFIX — a morpheme attached in front of a
base/stem, e.g. unhappiness
CIRCUMFIX – if a prefix and a suffix act
together to realise one morpheme and do not
occur separately, e.g. in German gefilmt,
gefragt.
INFIX – it is an affix added in the word, for
example, after the first consonant, as in
Tagalog, sulat ‘write’, sumulat ‘wrote’, sinulat
‘was written’.

33.

INTERFIX – a kind if affix-like element which is
placed between the two elements of a
compound, e.g. in German: Jahr-es-zeit,
Geburt-s-tag. Interfixes do not have meaning
contribution synchronically.
SUPRAFIX – realised by different stress in a
word: e.g. ‘discount, dis’count; ‘import-im’port,
‘insult-in’sult…
ZERO MORPHS – There is no transparent
morph to mark a regular grammatical
distinction, e.g. deer-deer, fish-fish, sheepsheep…

34.

ANALYTICAL MARKER – a combination of a
free standing function word and a grammatical
suffix which jointly realize a single value of a
grammatical category, e.g.
progressive in English – be + V-ing

35. Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes

Affixes can be divided into inflectional morphemes and
derivational morphemes.
Inflection
Helps to ‘wrap’
lexical words for various
grammatical functions
Derivation
Helps to make new
lexical words

36. Inflectional Morphemes

Inflectional morphemes do not change grammatical
category of the base to which they are attached. They
do not change the meaning of the base. They only
carry relevant grammatical information, e.g. plural.
Thus, book and books are both nouns referring to the
same kind of entity.
The number of inflectional affixes is small and fixed.
NO new ones have been added since 1500.

37. Examples of Inflectional Affixes

Suffix
Stem
Function
Example
-s
N
plural
book-s
-s
V
3rd singular
present tense
sleep-s
-ed
V
past tense
walk-ed
-ing
V
progressive
walk-ing
-er
Adj
comparative
tall-er
-est
Adj
superlative
tall-est

38. Derivational Morphemes

Derivational morphemes form new words
either by changing the meaning of the base to which they
are attached
kind ~ unkind;
obey ~ disobey
accurate ~ inaccurate;
act ~ react
cigar ~ cigarette;
book ~ booklet
or by changing the grammatical category (part of speech) of
the base
kind ~ kindly;
act ~ active ~ activity
able ~ enable;
damp ~ dampen
care ~ careful;
dark ~ darkness

39. Examples of Derivational Affixes

Prefix
Grammatical
category of
base
Grammatical
category of
output
Example
Suffix
Grammatical
category of
base
Grammatical
category of
output
Example
in-
Adj
Adj
inaccurate
-hood
N
N
child-hood
un-
Adj
Adj
unkind
-ship
N
N
leader-ship
un-
V
V
untie
-fy
N
V
beauti-fy
dis-
V
V
dis-like
-ic
N
Adj
poet-ic
dis-
Adj
Adj
dishonest
-less
N
Adj
power-less
re-
V
V
rewrite
-ful
N
Adj
care-ful
ex-
N
N
ex-wife
-al
V
N
refus-al
en-
N
V
encourage
-er
V
N
read-er

40. Sum: Inflection and Derivation

Derivational morphemes are used to create new lexical items (lexemes).
Inflectional morphemes only contribute to the inflectional paradigm of
the lexemes, which lists all the word-forms or the morphosyntactic
words of the lexeme.
Free
morpheme
free root
bound root
Bound
inflectional affixes
affixes
derivational affixes

41.

Lexical
i)creation of a new lexeme;
ii)encoded specific conceptual
meaning;
iii)not syntactically relevant;
iv)recursive;
v)complex constraints on
productivity;
vi)frequently semantically opaque
results;
vii)changes in part of speech
membership;
viii)highly creative – allows nonce
formations and occasionalisms;
ix)numerous concurrent patterns;
x)replaceable – can be
periphrastically expressed.
Grammatical
i)creation of new morphosyntactic
word forms;
ii)encodes features of grammatical
categories (abstract conceptual
oppositions);
iii)highly syntactically relevant;
iv)non-recursive;
v)fully productive;
vi)fully predictable meaning;
vii)appears outside all derivation;
viii)doesn’t change part of speech
membership;
ix)one pattern per meaning;
x)abstract meaning contribution;
xi)obligatory.

42. Parts of speech – criteria (mostly language specific)

1) Notional/semantic – doll vs. destruction; lie
vs. jump;
2) Morphological marking and susceptibility to
grammatical categories – painting: was
painting, the painting, paintings, painting
men(amb.);
3) Distribution – next round, came round, round
book, round the corner, rounded the corner
4) Syntactic function – To know is to have
power. I want to know. The things to know.Be
in the know

43. Parts of speech in English

Open
Closed
Noun
Pronoun
Verb
Preposition
Adjective
Conjunction
Adverb
Article
Particle (not; to)
Interjection
Numeral (cardinal vs. ordinal)

44. Grammatical categories

Grammatical categories are abstract relational,
conceptual categories which function as
skeletons for linguistic reasoning. E.g. Tense –
relation between a communicative act and SoA
talked about; Definiteness – discourse
familiarity with a referent.
Different sets of grammatical categories apply
to different lexical classes (parts of speech).

45. Grammatical categories

A great deal of morphologic, syntactic and semantic
categories are ordered in hierarchic arrangements. The
principles for the hierarchic arrangements of morphologic,
syntactic and semantic categories
are seen to be
universal, whereas the categories themselves, subcategories,
their members and their hierarchic arrangements are more or
less language specific. The principles for the hierarchic
arrangements
of morphologic, syntactic and semantic
categories
are subject to empirical investigation.
The
hierarchic arrangement of categories is responsible for the
fact that grammatical rules usually refer to subclasses of
paradigms (the cross-sections between parts of speech,
grammatical categories and exponence).

46. Grammatical exponence

Agglutination
Inflexion
Fusion
Isolation
Analytical/discontinuous marking
Root and vowel pattern
Vowel harmony
Ablaut

47. Agglutination

— a process in linguistic morphology in which
complex words are formed by stringing together
morphemes, with clear inetmorphemic
boundaries, each with a single grammatical or
semantic meaning. Languages that use
agglutination widely are called agglutinative
languages, e.g. Turkish the word evlerinizden,
or «from your houses,» consists of the
morphemes, ev-ler-iniz-den with the
meanings house-plural-your-from.

48. Inflexion

the process of adding affixes to or changing the
shape of a base to give it a different syntactic
Function without changing its form class as in
forming served from serve, sings from sing, or harder
from hard. Inflexions usually combine multiple
meanings – s: 3rd p., sg., pr.t., s.a., indic., nonmodal, etc. Languages that add inflectional
morphemes to words are sometimes
called inflectional languages, which is a synonym
for inflected languages.

49. Isolation

– using separate monosemantic morphemes
for the encoding of grammatical categories. An
isolating language is a language in which
almost every word consists of a single
morpheme. E.g. Vietnamese
khi tôi dên nhà
ban tôi, chúng tôi bát dâu
làm bài.
when I come house friend I
lesson
Plural I begin do

50. Root and vowel pattern

— non-concatenative morphology of the AfroAsiatic languages (described in terms of
apophony). The alternation patterns in many of
these languages is quite extensive involving
patterns of insertion of harmonized vowels in
consonantal roots. The alternations below are
of Modern Standard Arabic, based on the
root k–t–b «write”:

51.

kataba «he wrote»(a — a — a)
kutiba «it was written»(u — i — a)
yaktubu «he writes»(ya — ∅ — u — u)
yuktiba «it is written»(yu — ∅ — i – a)
kuttaab «writers»(u — aa)
maktuub «written»(ma — ∅ — uu)
kitaabah «(act of) writing»(i — aa — ah)
kitaab «book»(i — aa), etc.

52. Vowel harmony

— a type of conditioned progressive
phonological assimilation which takes place
when vowels come to share certain features
with contrastive vowels elsewhere in a word or
phrase (Crystal 1992: 168) in the encoding of
grammatical meanings. A front vowel in the first
syllable of a word would require the presence
of a front vowel in the second syllable. E.g.
Turkish – adam – adamlar (man-men) vs. anne
– annelers (mother – mothers).

53. Ablaut

— (vowel gradation, root vowel mutation) – a
system of unconditioned root apophony (vowel
change) signalling different grammatical
meanings, e.g. English – sing –sang – sung.

54. Grammatical categories of variable lexical classes in English

Nouns
Pronouns Verbs
Adjectives
Number
Number
Tense
Degrees of comparison
Case
Case
Aspect
Definiteness
(discourse
level)
Gender
Correlation
Person
Voice
Mood
Modality
Assertion
Adverbs

55. References

Brinton, L. and Brinton, D. (2010) The Linguistic
Structure of Modern English.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin
Publishing House.
Dirven, R. and Verspoor, M. (2004) Cognitive
Explorations of Language and Linguistics.
John Benjamins.
McGregor, W. (2015) Linguistics: An
Introduction. Continuum.