Lecture II Structure and formation of English words

Consider decontextualization.
de – con – Prefix text – ual – ize – ation Suffix
Free morpheme Bound morpheme
Bound morphemes can be further classified into derivational and inflectional morphemes.
Derivational morphemes “derive” a new word (with both meaning and word class changed), when added to other morphemes. They can be prefixes or suffixes. -ly, -ish, im-, -ity, de-, -ize are all such derivational morphemes.
Compounding / composition
It is a word-formation process consisting of joining two or more bases to form a new unit, a compound word.
Noun compounds: (a) Subject and verb: headache, heartbeat, commanding officer, revolving door (b) Verb and object: pickpocket, birthcontrol, housekeeping, dressmaking (c) Verb and adverbial: swimming pool, diving board, drinking cup, typing paper
Derivation / affixation
Derivation or affixation is generally defined as a process of forming new words by the addition of a word element, such as a prefix, suffix or both, to an already existing word. Prefixes modify the lexical meaning of the base, but do not generally alter its word-class. Suffixes usually change the word-class of the base.
Adjective compounds: (a) Subject and verb: thunder-struck (houses), weather-beaten (rocks) (b) Verb and object: fault-finding, peaceloving, record-breaking (c) Verb and adverbial: hardworking, new-laid (eggs)
Verb compounds: (a) By back-formation (i.e. ‘reversal’ of derivation) e.g. house-keep (from house-keeping), mass produce (from mass-production) (b) By conversion: to honeymoon, to outline BACK
Morphemes can first be classified into two types in terms of their capacity of occuy occur alone, that is, those which may constitute words by themselves, are free morphemes. In contrast, those which can not constitute a word by itself, and must be attached to another element, are bound morphemes.
Lecture II Structure and formation of English words
Word structure
Words are composed of morphemes, the minimal meaningful units of language that are not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms.
Inflectional morphemes do not form new words with new lexical meanings when added to other words. Nor do they change the word-class of the words to which they are affixed. They express such meanings as plurality, tense, and the comparative or superlative degree. -s, -ing, -ed, and er are such inflectional morphemes.
Three points of attention First of all, English has many pairs of adjectives ending in -ic, and -ical, which bear a difference in meaning, e.g. historic (notable or memorable in history) – historical (pertaining to history), economic (of economics, connected with commerce and industry) – economical (not wasteful; careful in the spending of money, time, etc.)
Major living suffixes: -ama, -rama: circusama, panorama -crat: technocrat, democrat -ee: payee -eer: mountaineer, marketeer -er / -or: payer, legislator -ese: Johnsonese
(d) Subject and object: gaslight (e) Restrictive relation: evening school, table cloth (f) Appositive relation: peasant girl, pine tree Compound nouns can also be formed from phrasal verbs, e.g. sit-in, breakdown, setback.
As shown in the textbook, free morphemes are also called content morphemes while bound morphemes are also called grammatical morphemes.
According to Stephen Ullmann, words that are formed by one content / free morpheme only and cannot be analyzed into parts are called opaque words, e.g. axe, glove. Words that consist of more than one morphemes and can be segmented into parts are called transparent words, e.g. workable, blackboard.
The variant forms of a morpheme are called its allomorphs. More allomorphs include -ion/-tion/-sion/ation, im-/ir-/il-.
Word formation
Major processes Compounding / composition Derivation / affixation Conversion Minor processes Acronymy Clipping Blending Back-formation
A morpheme may take various forms. For example, the morpheme used to express indefiniteness in English has two forms – a and an. Consider (1): (1) an orange – a building
(d) Noun and adjective: watertight, fireproof, knee-deep (e) Coordinating relationship: bittersweet, Anglo-French (relations)
Adjective compounds may also be formed from: (a) phrasal verbs: made-up stories (b) adverbial phrases: keep a round-theclock watch on her (c) from proverbs and idiomatic expressions: Charles was of the lookbefore-you-leap sort (d) from an attributive clause: a machineindependent tool
-eteria: cafeteria -ia: academia -ism: Marxism -itis: arthritis -wise: clockwise -y: rainy
-able: readable -ish: foolish, childish -ize / -ise: symbolize, Westernise
Classification of suffixes: (a) Noun-forming: -hood, -ness, -ee (b) Verb-forming: -ify, -ize, -en (c) Adjective-forming: -ful, -less, -able, -al (d) Adverb-forming: -ly, -ward(s), -wise
Major living prefixes: ‘negative’: un-, non-, in-, dis-, a‘reversative’: de-, dis‘pejorative’: mis-, mal-, pseudo‘degree or size’: arch-, super-, out-, sub-, over-, under-, hyper-, ultra-, mini‘attitude’: co-, counter-, anti-, pro‘locative’: inter-, trans‘time and order’: fore-, pre-, post-, ex-, re‘number’: uni-/mono-, bi-/di-, multi-/poly-