Morphological structure of English words. Lecture # 3

Language Units
Morphemes
Words
Word groups
Phraseological units

MORPHEME
morphe – “form”
- eme “the smallest unit”
Morphemes- are the smallest meaningful unit of form
cannot be segmented into smaller units
can occur in speech only as constituent parts of words
are divided into lexical morphemes and grammatical morphemes

Non-root morphemes (Derivational)
Inflectional morphemes (inflections)
endings
Affixational morpheme (affixes)
prefixes suffixes
functional derivational

Глокая куздра
штеко будланула бокра
и курдячит бокрёнка
(Л.Щерба)

STRUCTURAL TYPES OF WORDS
(Дубенец Э.М.)

Monomorphic (root) words
Consist of one-root morpheme
EX small, dog, make
SIMPLE
one root morpheme + (functional affix)
EX asked, seldom, cat, longer

POLYMORPHIC WORDS
Affixed ( derivatives) = one root morpheme + one or more derivational affixes or functional affix (inflexion)
EX. acceptable, outdo, dislikes, discouragement
Compound words = two or more root morphemes + functional affix (inflexion)
EX. eye+balls, wait- and- see
Compound-affixed words = two or more root morphemes + one or more derivational affixes + functional affix (inflexion)
EX. job – hoppers, autotimer

STRUCTURAL TYPES OF WORDS
(Зыкова И.В.)

MONORADICAL words
Radical-suffixal (one root morpheme + one or more suffixal morphemes)
Ex acceptable, acceptability
Radical-prefixal (one root morpheme + a prefixal mopheme
Ex unbutton
Prefixo-radical-suffixal (one root morpheme + prefixal and suffixal morphemes)
Ex disagreeable

POLYRADICAL words
Two or more roots without affixational morphemes
Ex book- stand, lamp-shade
Two roots or more + one or more affixational morphemes
Ex safety-pins, pen-holder

Morphemic analyses
Segmenting words into the constituent
morphemes -
the method of Immediate and
Ultimate Constituents

Procedure of morphemic analyses
Based on a binary principle when each
stage of the procedure involves two components the word
immediately breaks into- The Immediate Constituents (ICs)
Each IC at the next stage in its turn is broken into the
smallest meaningful elements incapable of further division –
The Ultimate Constituents (UCs)
Ex friendliness
Friendly- IC + - ness UC
Friend- UC + - ly UC
The word consists of 3 UCs

Derivatonal structure
is the nature, type and arrangement of the
immediate constituents (ICs) of the word.
Derivational base
Is the part of the word that determines its
individual lexical meaning
Derivational affixes
Are immediate constituents (ICs) of derived words

Derivational patterns (DP)
Is a regular meaningful arrangement, a structure that
imposes rules on the order and the nature of the derivational
bases and affixes that may be brought together.
DPs represent the derivational structure at different levels:
a) structural types. Patters of this level are structural
formulaswhich specify the class membership of Immediate
Constituents and the directions of motivation
V N
A + -sf N

According to structural formulas all words
may be classified into:
Suffixal derivatives blackness
Prefixal derivatives rewrite
Conversions a cut
Compound words music-lover

structural patterns specify the base
classes and individual affixes which refer derivatives
to specific parts of speech
EX The DP n + -ish A signals a set of
adjectives with the lexical meaning of resemblance
EX The DP a + -ish A signals a set of
adjectives meaning a small degree of quality

c) Structural –semantic patterns specify
semantic peculiarities of bases and individual
meanings of affixes
EX n + -ess N (a female animate being) - lioness
EX n+ -y A (resemblence) - birdy

‘not” \ “without” \ “opposite of’”
Nameless, disapprove, inattention
“exceeding” \ a great extent” or “a large amount of”
Oversleep, superclever, extra-soft
“similarity \ resemblance”
Flowerlike, babyish
“very small” \ “not enough”
Booklet, duckling, miniskirt