Ex.

1. root - man, street, act, black, green, see – lexical nucleus of the word, unchangeable part of the word,
doesn’t have affixes. It is a main morphemic vehicle of a given idea in a given language at a given stage
of its development. A root may be also regarded as the ultimate constituent element which remains
after the removal of all functional and derivational affixes and does not admit any further analysis. Root-
word

2. affix - unhappy, hopeless, reading - bound by form/structure, non-root by their position

3. free - friend, friendless, friendly, actor, waitress – morphemes represented by content words and
function words, A form is said to be free if it may stand alone without changing its meaning

4. bound, prefix, derivational - disappear, encourage, mistaken – affixes (even though bound can be
represented by stems), occur only as constituent part of the word - it is always bound to something else,
stands before the root, used to form new words

5. bound , infix – stand – stands in the root/stem, far less common than prefixes and suffixes, can’t
stand alone and only used as a part of the word

6. bound, suffix, inflectional -bigger, biggest – stands after the root/stem, is used only to create new
forms of existing words, not meanings

7. bound, suffix, derivational - worker, princess – is used to create new words, new meanings

8. semi-bound - half-done, sportsman, herself - occur alone, however they can also function in a
morphemic sequence as affixes; they resemble bound morphemes in that they are repeated elements in
several words; can act as both morphemes and affixes

9. bound root (completive/ combining form) - tele- “far” - scope “seeing” (tele/scope), -graph- “write”
(tele/graph), aero- “air” (aerospace); -mania, -phile. -philia, -phobia, biblio-, multi-, neo – Latin or Greek
morphemes in Modern languages, which cannot be used as free words

10. splinter – was broken from the main word intro morpheme, can’t be used as free word

11. bound, affix - dis-, -ish – used only as part of the word to create new words and new meanings

12. bound, completive – tele – foreign morphemic words, used only as part of the words

13. bound, blocked (unique) root - Friday, cranberry – affixes (prefix Fri-, cran-)

14. grammatical, free, function word – the, with, and – articles, conjunctions and prepositions

15. grammar, bound, inflection – catS – ending for the Plural of this noun (-ed for the Past Indefinite of
regular verbs, -ing for the Present Participle, -er for the Comparative degree of adjectives.)

16. lexico-grammatical – give up, look for, be out – phrasal verbs (combinations of a verb and
adverb/preposition)

little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other
words within a sentence

Inflection is used to denote number of objects in English

Lexico-grammatical morphemes have double nature: like lexical morphemes they: (1) are not relative;
(2) determine the meaning of the word; like grammatical morphemes they are bound;
A productive affix is a derivational affix that is currently used in the derivation of new words. The prefix
non- is a productive affix, as demonstrated in the following new coinage: the only non-upended chair in
the ransacked room, or anti dis

It is worthy of note that an affix may lose its productivity and then become productive again in the
process of word-formation. The native noun-forming suffixes –dom and – ship ceased to be productive
centuries ago

By non-productive affixes we mean affixes which are not able to form new words in the period in
question. Non-productive affixes are recognized as separate morphemes and possess clear-cut semantic
characteristics. Some non-productive English suffixes are: Noun-forming suffixes -th, -hood, -ship

Ex. 3

Allomorph – any of the Impossible, irregular, cans, dogs, boxes, bets and beds
variant forms of a
morpheme
Root – The element that Build,building,building/ run,runner/act actor action
carries the main component
of meaning in a word and
provides the basis from
which a word is derived by
adding affixes or inflectional
endings or by phonetic
change.
Stem – the part of a word Boy’s, trees, reads
which remains unchanged in Wait waits waiting/ bear unbearable/ impossible unreliable
all forms of its paradigm
(The main part of a word to
which affixes are added.)
Bound base – a base that Reject (ject is a bound base because it cannot stand free as a word, re –
cannot stand free as a word. prefix), prospecting, producer, decerption, introducing, promote
It has to have a prefix or
suffix to make it into a word
Affix - a linguistic element -ment in establishment is a derivational affix; -s in drowns is an
added to a word to produce inflectional affix.
an inflected or derived form
Semi-affix – the half of smth half-broken, half-eaten, semi-circle
Superfix - a suprasegmental Record and record, conduct and conduct
feature having an
identifiable meaning or
grammatical function, as the
stress pattern that
distinguishes the noun
Native prefix Unexpected, unhappy (acking of, without, deprived of, removal, and
reversal of the action)
Mislead, misspell (wrongly, improperly)
Native suffix -ness: coldness, loneliness,
-ing: feeling, singing, reading
-dom: freedom, wisdom, kingdom,
-ish: English, reddish, childish
-ly: lonely, lovely, ugly
 -en: wooden, silken, golden
Borrowed prefix Surname, postscript
Borrowed suffix Entertainment, solution
Productive affix Disappoint, rethink
Semi-productive affix Freedom, bemoan
Non-productive affix Childhood, friendship
Lexico-semantic group of Geologic and geological, learned and learnt
affixes

1. What are the functions of root morphemes?

Root morphemes gives the word its principle meaning, gives the opportunity to find out where the word
comes from allows to derive other words.

2. What are the functions of suffixes?

Suffixes can create new words, new word forms (plurality), are often used to change the word class of a
word (also used to differentiate between lexico-grammatical classes by rendering some very general
lexico-grammatical meaning).

3. What are the functions of prefixes?

Prefixes modify the meaning of the words. It can make a word negative, show

repetition, or indicate opinion. It is only with verbs and statives that a prefix may

serve to distinguish one part of speech from another (earth - noun, unearth - verb).

4. What is the best way to classify prefixes? Why?

The best way to classify prefixes is to make a distinction between

native and foreign (borrowed) prefixes

according to the lexico-grammatical character of the base prefixes are usually prefixes denoting relation
of an action

5. Comment on polysemic and synonymic correlations between affixes.

Many commonly used derivational affixes are polysemantic in Modern English. The

various changes that the English language has undergone in the course of time have

led to chance coincidence in form of two or more derivational affixes. As a

consequence, and this is characteristic of Modern English, many homonymic

derivational affixes can be found among those forming both different parts of speech

and different semantic groupings within the same part of speech.

The noun-suffix-er is used to coin words denoting 1) persons following some special

trade or profession, e.g. baker, driver, hunter 2)a device, tool, implement, e.g. blotter,

atomiser, boiler, eraser, transmitter, trailer.

6. Comment on the homonymy in affixes?

bluish, greenish, and girlish, boyish. If we probe deeper into the matter, however, we

shall inevitably arrive at the conclusion that we are dealing with two different

homonymous suffixes: one in bluish, the other in girlish. The reasons are as follows:

the suffix -ish, in bluish, reddish, etc. only modifies the lexical meaning of the adjective-base it is affixed
to without changing the part of speech. The suffix -ish2 in

bookish, girlish, womanish, etc. is added to a noun-base to form an adjective. Besides,

the suffixes -ishl and -ish2 differ considerably in the denotational meaning so that no

semantic connection may be traced between them

7. What are the functions of inflections?

Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and thus relevant only for the formation

of word-forms without changing the meanings of words.

8. What are the functions of completives?

often used in naming branches of study: geology; lexicology, philology, phonology.

possible for a combining form (completives) to be homonymous to words

- to create an extra meaning of word: get through, drink up

9. What is the difference between affixes and splinters?

Splinters are originally (mostly) non-morphemic portions of a word that have been split

off with meaning and used in the formation of new words with a new meaning. Affixes lose

their meaning, so they just add to the stem or root of the word without the semantic

content.

10. What is the difference between lexical and grammatical morphemes?

Words that have meaning by themselves - boy, food, door -are called lexical

morphemes. They determine the meaning of the word. Whereas words that function to

specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and another (prepositions,

11.

12.