Word structure consists in

Structure of English Words

1. The morpheme as the important component of word structure.

2. Types of morphemes. Allomorphs.

3. Types of affixes.

4. Immediate
   Constituents Analysis.

The word is the fundamental unit of language
having a form and content. Words have an internal structure
consisting of smaller units organized with respect to each other in a
particular way. The
most important component of word structure is the morpheme
– the smallest unit of language that carries information about
meaning or function. The word builder, for example, consists of 2
morphemes: build (with the meaning of “construct”) and -er (which
indicates that the entire word functions as a noun with the meaning
“one who builds”). Similarly, the word houses is made up of the
morphemes house (with the meaning of “dwelling”) and -s (with the
meaning of “more than one”).

A word may consist of one, two or more morphemes:

if, and, live;

driv-er, history-ic,
ethnic-al-ly;

act, act-ive, act-iv-ate, re-act-iv-ate.

A morpheme
is neither a meaning nor a stretch of sound, but a meaning and a
stretch of sound joined together. Morphemes are the smallest
indivisible two-facet language units. They are always used as parts
of words.

A
morpheme that can be a word by itself is called a free
morpheme whereas
a morpheme that must be attached to another element is said to
be a
bound
morpheme. The
morpheme boy,
for
example, is free, since it
can be used as a word on its own; plural -s, on the other hand, is
bound.
Thus, structurally morphemes fall into free morphemes and bound
morphemes. A free morpheme coincides with the stem or a word-form.
A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word
(bound morphemes often signify borrowings). Affixes
are bound morphemes,
for they always make part of a word.

Morphemes
do not always have an invariant form. Morphemes in
various texts can have different phonemic shapes. All the
representatives
of the given morpheme are called allomorphs
(from
Greek
allos
«other»)
of that morpheme. The morpheme used to express
indefiniteness in English, for instance, has two forms —a
before
a
word
that begins with a consonant and an
before
a word that begins with a vowel (an
orange, an accent, a car).
The
variant forms of a morpheme are its
allomorphs.

Another example of
allomorphic variation is found in the pronunciation
of the plural morpheme -s
in
the following words: cats,
dogs,
judges. Whereas
the plural is /s/ in the first case, it is /z/ in the second,
and /iz/ in the third. Selection of the proper allomorph is dependent
on phonological facts.

Other
examples of patterns in which a morpheme’s form changes when
it combines with another element are easy to find in English. The
final segment in assert,
for
instance, is [t] when this morpheme stands alone as a separate word
but [ ] when it combines with the morpheme
-ion
in
the word assertion.
Similar
alternations are found in words
such as permit
/permiss-ive, include /inclus-ive, electric /electricity,
impress/impress-ion.

Thus, an
allomorph
is
a positional variant of that or this morpheme occurring
in a specific environment

In order to
represent the morphological structure of words, it is necessary
to identify each of the component morphemes. Words
that can have two or more parts: a core called a root
and
one or more
parts added to it. The parts are called affixes
—
«something fixed or attached to something else.» The root
is the morpheme that expresses the
lexical meaning of the word, for example: teach
— teacher —
teaching.
Affixes
are morphemes that modify the meaning of the root. An affix added
before the root is called a prefix;
an affix added
after the root is called a suffix.
A
word may have one or more affixes
of either kind, or several of both kinds:

Prefix	Root	Suffix (es)	Example
un-	Work	-able	unworkable
	govern	-ment	government
	Fright	-en; -ing	frightening
re-	Play		replay
	Kind	-ness	kindness

Complex words
typically consist of a root morpheme and one or more
affixes. A root constitutes the core of the word and carries the
major
component of its meaning. To find the root, you have to remove any
affix there may be, for example, the root -morph-,
meaning
«form»,
remains after we remove the affixes a-
and
-ous
from
amorphous.
Roots
have more specific and definite meaning than prefixes
or suffixes, for example Latin root -aqua-
means
«water» (aquarium),
-cent- means
«hundred» (centennial),
Greek
-neo-
means
«new» (neologism),
etc.

Roots
belong to a lexical category, such as noun (N), verb (V), adjective
(A), or preposition (P). Nouns typically refer to concrete and
abstract things (door,
intelligence); verbs
tend to denote actions (stop,
read);
adjectives
usually name properties (kind,
blue); and
prepositions encode
spatial relations (in,
near). Unlike
roots, affixes do not belong to
a lexical category and are always bound morphemes. For example, the
affix -er
is
a bound morpheme that combines with a verb such as teach,
giving
a noun with the meaning «one who teaches».

A base
is the
form to which an affix is added.
In many cases, the base is also the root. In books,
for
example, the element to which the affix
-s
is
added corresponds to the word’s root. In other cases, however,
the base can be larger than a root. This happens in words such
as blackened,
in
which the past tense affix -ed
is
added to the verbal base blacken
—
a unit consisting of the root morpheme black
and
the suffix -en.
Black is
not only the root for the entire word but also
the base for -en.
The
unit blacken,
on
the other hand, is simply the base
for -ed.

One should
distinguish between suffixes and inflections
in English. Suffixes
can form a new part of speech, e.g.: beauty — beauti/ful/.
They can
also change the meaning of the root, e.g.: black — blackish.
Inflections
are morphemes used to change grammar forms of the word, e.g.:
work — works’ — worked—working.
English is not a highly inflected language
(other point of
view).

Depending on the morphemes used
in the word there are four structural types of words in
English:

1. simple
   (root) words consist of one root morpheme and an inflexion
   (boy,
   warm, law, tables, tenth);

2. derived
   words consist of one root morpheme, one or several affixes
   and an inflexion (unmanageable,
   lawful);

3. compound
   words consist of two or more root morphemes and an
   inflexion (boyfriend,
   outlaw);

4. compound-derived words
   consist of two or more root morphemes,
   one or more affixes and an inflexion (left-handed,
   warm-hearted,
   blue-eyed).

In conformity
with structural types of words we distinguish two main types
of word-formation: word-derivation (encouragement,
irresistible, worker)
and
word-composition (blackboard,
daydream, weekend).

Within these types further
distinction may be made between the ways of forming words:

Схема
(p. 41)

The
basic ways of forming words in word-derivation are affixation
(feminist,
pseudonym) and
conversion (water
— to water, to run —
a
run,
slim — to slim).

Immediate Constituents Analysis

The theory of
Immediate Constituents (I.C.) was originally set forth by
L. Bloomfield as an
attempt to determine the ways in which lexical units
are related to one another.
This kind of analysis is used in lexicology
mainly to
discover the derivational structure of lexical units.

Immediate
constituents are any
of the two meaningful parts of a word.
The main constituents are an affix and a stem. For example, L.
Bloomfield
analyzed the word ungentlemanly.
It
consists of a negative prefix
un—
+ an adjective stem. First
we separate a free and a bound forms:
un—
+ gentlemanly and
gentleman
+ -ly. Then
we break the word gentleman:
gentle + man. At
any level we obtain only two ICs, one of which
is a stem, and, as a result, we get the formula: un
+ (gentle + man)
+ ly.

The
adjective eatable
consists
of two ICs eat
+ able and
may be described
as a suffixal
derivative,
the adjective uneatable
however
possesses
a different structure: the two ICs are un
+ eatable which
shows
that
this adjective is a prefixal
derivative
though the unit has both a prefix and a suffix.

S. S.
Khidekel describes numerous cases when identical morphemic structure
of different words may be insufficient proof of their identical
pattern of word formation structure,
which can be revealed only by I.C.
analysis. Thus, comparing snow-covered
and
blue-eyed
we observe
that both words contain two root
morphemes and one derivational morpheme. I.C. analysis shows that
whereas snow-covered may
be considered
a compound
consisting of two stems snow
+ covered, blue-eyed
is a
suffixal
derivative
as the underlying structure is different: (blue
+ eye) + ed.

Thus I.C. analysis is used in
lexicological investigations to discover the word-formation
structure.

KEY TERMS:

Morpheme – the smallest bit of language that has
its own meaning, either a word or a part of a word,

free – not in a fixed position or not joined to anything vs bound
tied with,

allomorph ,

root (of a word) – is its most basic form, to which other parts,
such as affixes, can be added,

affix – a letter or group of letters which are added to the
beginning or end of a word to make a new word.

Антрушина Г.Б., Афанасьева О.В., Морозова
Н.Н. Лексикология английского языка. –
М.: Дрофа, 1999 – стр. 78-79.

Дубенец Э.М.
Modern English Lexicology. Theory and Practice. – М.
Глосса-Пресс,
2002 – стр. 5-6; 19-20; 21-22.

Елисеева В.В. Лексикология английского
языка

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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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Word structure in modern english 
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Technically, a word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value.

Typically a word will consist of a root or stem and zero or more affixes.

Words can be combined to create phrases, clauses, and sentences.

A word consisting of two or more stems joined together is called a compound.

It is quite hard to define what exactly a ‘word’ is, because

what is classified as words in different language are different

determining word boundaries in speech is very complex (e.g. short words are often run together and long words are often broken up)

If a word is a unit of language that consists of one or more morphemes, then we need to know what a morpheme is.

A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning

E.g

rude

un-true

smooth-ly

dis-organize-d

A word can consists of:

one morpheme (simple)

cat

travel

appear

more than one morpheme (complex)

cat-s

travel-ed

dis-appeare-d

There are 6 main types of morphemes:

free

bound

lexical

grammatical

inflectional

derivational

Free morphemes can constitute a word on their own:

Thakuru

will

a

Bound morphemes must appear with one or more morphemes to form a word:

Thakuru’s

help–ed

en–able

Words often consist of a free morpheme with one or more bound morphemes attached to it:

en-danger-ed

In this sort of word, the free morpheme is called the root or stem, and the bound morphemes are affixes

An affix attached to the front of a word is called a prefix

An affix attached to the back of a word is called a suffix

lexical morphemes have lexical (semantic) meanings:

help

impressive

race

Grammatical morphemes provide grammatical information:

help-ed

under

en–danger

Lexical morphemes tend to be free morphemes:

Hiyala

jump

afternoon

Grammatical morphemes may be either free or bound:

Hiyala’s

jump-ed

afternoon-s

Inflectional & Derivational Morphemes 

Bound grammatical morphemes seem to come in (at least) two types:

Inflectional

derivational

The precise difference between inflectional and derivational morphemes is hard to define

But the most obvious difference is:

derivational morphemes build new words by changing the meaning and/or syntactic category of the word

inflectional morphemes permit a word to agree with other words in its context by providing grammatical information

1. LECTURE 4 WORD STRUCTURE AND WORD FORMATION www.philology.bsu.by/кафедры/кафедра английского языкознания/учебные материалы/кафедра английского языкознания/папки преп

LEXICOLOGY COURSE
LECTURE 4
WORD STRUCTURE AND
WORD FORMATION
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2. The questions under consideration

1. Morpheme. Allomorph
2. Word Structure
3. Immediate Constituents Analysis
4. Affixation
5. Conversion
6. Word-Composition
6.1. Properties of compounds
7. Other Types of Word Formation

3. Word-formation (definition)

Word-formation is the branch of
lexicology that studies
the derivative structure of existing words
and
the patterns on which a language builds
new words.
It is a certain principle of classification of
lexicon and
one of the main ways of enriching the
vocabulary.

4. Word-formation is studied

synchronically
Scholars investigate
the existing system
of the types of wordformation
Diachronically
Scholars investigate
the history of wordformation

5. 1. Morpheme. Allomorph

The smallest unit of language that carries
information about meaning or function is
the morpheme.
(Greek morphe «form»
+ -eme «the smallest distinctive unit»)

6. Examples of morphemes

BUILD+ER
build (with the meaning of «construct»)
-er (which indicates that the entire word
functions as a noun with the meaning
«one who builds»).
HOUSE+S
house (with the meaning of «dwelling»)
-s (with the meaning «more than one»)

7. simple words vs complex words

and
boy — boy-s
hunt — hunt-er —hunt-er-s
act act-ive — act-iv-ate ––re-act-iv-ate
Simple words cannot be divided into
smaller parts. Complex words contain
two or more morphemes.

8. morphemes are two-facet language units

A morpheme is a meaning and a stretch
of sound joined together.
It is the minimum meaningful language
unit.

9. Structure of morphemes

free morpheme
(can be a word by
itself,
coincides with the
stem or a word-form)
bound morpheme
(must be attached to
another element,
only can be a part of
a word )

10. allomorphs (from Greek allos «other»)

allomorphs (from Greek allos
«other»)
All the representatives of the given
morpheme are called allomorphs of that
morpheme.
An allomorph is a positional variant of
that or this morpheme occurring in a
specific environment.

11. Examples of allomorphs

an orange, an accent, a car
cats, dogs, judges (the plural morpheme –
s)
assert /assert-ion, permit/permiss-ive,
include/inclus-ive, electric/electric-ity,
impress/impress-ion

12. 2. Word Structure

Words that can be divided have two or
more parts:
a root
affixes (a prefix, a suffix )
inflection

13. Word Structure

A root constitutes the core of the word
and carries the major component of its
meaning. It has more specific and
definite meaning
Affixes are morphemes that modify the
meaning of the root. An affix added
before the root is called a prefix (unending); an affix added after the root is
called a suffix (kind-ness).

14. Examples of word structure

un-work-able
govern-ment
fright-en-ing
re-play
A word may have one or more affixes of
either kind, or several of both kinds.

15. A base

A base is the form to which an affix is
added. In many cases, the base is also the
root. In other cases, however, the base
can be larger than a root.
Blackened
Blacken (verbal base) +ed
Blacken
Black (not only the root for the entire word
but also the base for) +en

16. suffixes vs inflections

Suffixes can form a new part of speech,
e.g.: beauty — beautiful. They can also
change the meaning of the root, e.g.:
black — blackish.
Inflections are morphemes used to
change grammar forms of the word, e.g.:
work — works — worked—working.
English is not a highly inflected language.

17. Four structural types of words in English

simple (root) words consist of one root
morpheme and an inflexion (boy, warm, law,
tables, tenth);
derived words consist of one root
morpheme, one or several affixes and an
inflexion (unmanageable, lawful);
compound words consist of two or more root
morphemes and an inflexion (boyfriend,
outlaw);
compound-derived words consist of two or
more root morphemes, one or more affixes
and an inflexion (left-handed, warm-hearted,
blue-eyed).

18. Two main types of word-formation

word-derivation
(encouragement,
irresistible, worker)
Subdivided into
Affixation
Conversion
Derivational
Composition
word-composition
(blackboard,
daydream, weekend)
Subdivided into
• Derivational
Composition

19. 3. Immediate Constituents Analysis (L. Bloomfield)

Why is it used? (to discover the
derivational structure of lexical units).
How? First we separate a free and a
bound forms. At any level we obtain only
two ICs.

20. Ungentlemanly

1.un— + gentlemanly
2. gentleman + -ly
3. gentle + man
4. as a result, un + (gentle + man) + ly

21. eatable uneatable

eatable
The adjective eatable
consists of two ICs
eat + able and may
be described as a
suffixal derivative
uneatable
the adjective
uneatable is a
prefixal derivative
(the two ICs are un +
eatable)

22. 4. Affixation is a basic means of forming words

suffixation
• is characteristic of
noun and adjective
formation
• does not only modify
the lexical meaning
of the stem,
• but transfers the
word to another part
of speech care (n) /
care — less (adj).
prefixation
• is typical of verb
formation
modifies the lexical
meaning of stems
• joins the part of
speech the
unprefixed word
belongs to, e.g. usual
/un — usual.

23. classification of suffixes

their origin
meaning
part of speech they form
productivity

24. according to their origin:

Romanic (e.g. -age, -ment, -tion),
Native (-er, -dom, -ship),
Greek (-ism, -ize), etc

25. according to their meaning :

-er denotes the agent of the action,
-ess denotes feminine gender,
-ence/ance has abstract meaning,
-age, -dom — collectivity

26. according to their part of speech they form :

noun suffixes -er, -ness, -ment;
adjective-forming suffixes -ish, -ful, -less,
-y;
verb-suffixes -en, -fy,

27. according to their productivity :

What is productivity? It is the relative
freedom with which they can combine
with bases of the appropriate category
productive suffixes are -er, -ly, -ness, ie, -let,
non-productive (-dom, -th)
semi-productive (-eer, -ward).

28. Classification of Prefixes

their origin
meaning
productivity

29. according to their origin:

Native, e.g. un-;
Romanic, e.g. in-;
Greek, e.g. sym-;

30. according to meaning

negative prefixes in-, un-, поп-, a-, dis-;
prefixes of time and order ex-, neo-, after, fore-, post-, proto-;
prefix of repetition re-;
size and degree: hyper-, mega-, mini-,
super-, sur-, ultra-, vice-, etc

31. according to productivity

What is productivity? It is the ability to
make new words:
e.g. un- is highly productive.

32. 5. Conversion (definition)

It is a kind of word formation.
The process of making new parts of
speech without the addition of an affix.
It is a productive way of forming words
in English.
It is sometimes called zero derivation.

33. Examples of coversion

He was knocked out in the first round.
Round the number off to the nearest
tenth.
The neighbors gathered round our
barbecue.
The moon was bright and round.
People came from all the country round.

34. Conversion

Prof. Smirnitsky A. I. in his works on the
English language treats conversion as a
morphological way of forming words.
Other linguists (H. Marchand, V.N.
Yartseva, Yu.A. Zhluktenko, A.Y.
Zagoruiko, I.V. Arnold) treat conversion
as a combined morphological and
syntactic way of word-building, as a new
word appears not in isolation but in a
definite environment of other words.

35. The three most common types of conversion

verbs derived from nouns (to butter, to
ship),
nouns derived from verbs (a survey, a
call),
verbs derived from adjectives (to empty).

36. Less common types of conversion

nouns from:
adjectives (a bitter, the poor, a final),
from phrases, e.g. a down-and-out,
verbs from prepositions (up the price, out
e.g. diplomats were outed from the
country; Truth will out. — Истина станет
известной)

37. Verbs converted from nouns

instrumental use of the object, e.g.
screw — to screw, eye — to eye;
action characteristic of the object, e.g.
ape — to ape;
acquisition: fish — to fish;
deprivation of the object, e.g. dust — to
dust

38. Nouns converted from verbs

instance of an action, e.g. to move — a
move;
word — agent of an action, e.g. to bore
— a bore;
place of an action, e.g. to walk — a
walk;
result of the action, e.g. to cut — a cut

39. 6.Word-Composition

Word-composition is the combination of
two or more existing words to create a
new word
e.g. campsite (N+N), bluebird (A+N),
whitewash (A+V), in-laws (P+N), jumpsuit
(V+N).

40. Word-Composition

In most compounds the rightmost
morpheme determines the category of
the entire word,
e.g. greenhouse is a noun because its
rightmost component is a noun,
spoonfeed is a verb because feed also
belongs to this category, and
nationwide is an adjective just as wide is.

41. 6.1. Properties of compounds

How can compounds in English be
written? — Differently:
as single words,
with an intervening hyphen,
as separate words.

42. endocentric compounds

If a compound denotes a subtype of the
concept denoted by its head it is called
endocentric.
Thus, cat food is a type of food, sky blue is a
type of blue
airplane, steamboat, policeman, bathtowel

43. exocentric compounds

If the meaning of the compound does not
follow from the meanings of its parts it is
said to be exocentric
e.g. redneck is a person and not a type of
neck;
walkman is a type of portable radio.

44. Classification of compounds according to the principle

1) of the parts of speech compound words
represent:
nouns: night-gown, waterfall, looking-glass;
verbs: to honeymoon, to outgrow;
adjectives: peace-loving, hard-working,
pennywise;
adverbs: downstairs, lip-deep;
prepositions: within, into, onto;
numerals: thirty-seven;

45. Classification of compounds according to the principle

2.of the means of composition used to link the
two ICs together:
neutral — formed by joining together two
stems without connecting elements
(juxtaposition), e.g. scarecrow, goldfish,
crybaby;
morphological — components are joined by a
linking element, i.e. vowels ‘o’ and ‘i’ or the
consonant ‘s’, e.g. videophone, tragicomic,
handicraft, craftsman, microchip;
syntactical — the components are joined by
means of form-word stems, e.g. man-of-war,
forget-me-not, bread-and-butter, face-to-face;

46. 7. Other Types of Word Formation

back-formation or disaffixation (baby-sitter —
to baby-sit). Back-formation is a process that
creates a new word by removing a real or
supposed affix from another word in the
language.
sound interchange (speak — speech, blood —
bleed), and sound imitation (walkie-talkie, brag
rags, to giggle);
distinctive change (‘conduct — to con ‘duct,
‘increase — to in crease, ‘subject — to subject);

47. Other Types of Word Formation

blending: these are words that are created
from parts of two already existing items,
usually the first part of one and the final
part of the other:
brunch from breakfast and lunch,
smog from smoke and fog
clipping is a process that shortens a
polysyllabic word by deleting one or
more syllables: prof for professor, burger
for hamburger.

48. Other Types of Word Formation

acronymy: NATO, NASA, WAC, UNESCO.
Acronyms are formed by taking the initial
letters of the words in a phrase and
pronouncing them as a word. (names of
organizations and in terminology).
NASA stands for National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, NA TO —
North Atlantic Treaty Organization

49. Other Types of Word Formation

onomatopoeia, i.e. formations of words
from sounds that resemble those
associated with the object or action to be
named, or that seem suggestive of its
qualities.
e.g. hiss, buzz, meow, cock-a-doodle-doo,
and cuckoo