Morphological processes shape how words change and form in language. They include inflectional morphology, which tweaks words for grammar, and derivational morphology, which creates new words. These processes are key to understanding how language builds and evolves.

Inflectional morphology covers things like tense and number, while derivational morphology uses affixes to change word meanings and classes. Analyzing word components helps us see how these processes work together to create complex words with nuanced meanings.

Morphological Processes

Inflectional vs derivational morphology

• Inflectional morphology modifies words to fit grammatical contexts without changing word class typically occurs at the end of words (plural -s, past tense -ed)
• Derivational morphology creates new lexemes from existing words often changes word class can occur at beginning middle or end (un-, -tion, -ize)
• Key differences:
  • Function grammatical vs lexical
  • Productivity inflectional more regular and predictable
  • Position inflectional typically occurs after derivational morphemes

Categories of inflectional morphology

• Tense marks time of action
  • Present unmarked or -s for third person singular (walks)
  • Past -ed for regular verbs (walked)
  • Future auxiliary 'will' or 'shall' (will walk)
• Number indicates quantity
  • Singular often unmarked (cat)
  • Plural usually -s or -es (cats)
• Case shows grammatical function
  • Nominative unmarked for nouns specific pronouns (I, he, she)
  • Accusative unmarked for nouns specific pronouns (me, him, her)
  • Genitive 's for nouns specific pronouns (my, his, her)
• Person distinguishes speaker listener and others
  • First second and third person markers
• Gender classifies nouns (in some languages)
  • Masculine feminine neuter
• Aspect expresses how action unfolds
  • Progressive -ing (walking)
  • Perfect auxiliary 'have' + past participle (have walked)

Role of derivational affixes

• Prefixes attach to beginning of word
  • un- adds negative meaning (happy → unhappy)
  • re- indicates repetition (do → redo)
  • pre- means before (historic → prehistoric)
• Suffixes attach to end of word
  • -tion forms nouns (educate → education)
  • -ize creates verbs (standard → standardize)
  • -able forms adjectives (read → readable)
• Infixes insert within word (rare in English)
  • -bloody- adds emphasis (abso-bloody-lutely)
• Circumfixes surround word
  • en-...-en changes meaning (light → enlighten)
• Derivational affixes:
  • Change word class verb to noun adjective to adverb
  • Modify meaning add negation intensification or specialization
  • Create new lexemes with related but distinct meanings

Analysis of word components

• Steps for analysis:

1. Identify root or base word
2. Separate derivational affixes from inflectional suffixes
3. Determine function of each morpheme

• Example "unhappiness":
  • Root happy (adjective)
  • Derivational prefix un- (negation)
  • Derivational suffix -ness (forms abstract noun)
  • No inflectional suffixes
• Resulting changes:
  • Meaning quality of not being happy
  • Function changed from adjective to abstract noun
• Practice with complex words:
  • "internationalization" (inter-nation-al-ize-ation)
  • "misunderstandings" (mis-under-stand-ing-s)
  • "rewritable" (re-write-able)
• Consider how each morpheme contributes to overall meaning and grammatical function