Morphology and Syntax

Morphemes and its types

Morphemes
The definition of a morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.” Units
of grammatical function include forms used to indicate past tense or plural, for example.
In the sentence The police reopened the investigation, the word reopened consists of three
morphemes. One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re-
(meaning “again”) and a minimal unit of grammatical function is -ed (indicating past tense).
The word tourists also contains three morphemes. There is one minimal unit of meaning tour,
another minimal unit of meaning -ist (marking “person who does something”), and a minimal
unit of grammatical function -s (indicating plural).

Types of Morphemes
1.Free and bound Morphemes
There are free morphemes, that is, morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words,
for example, open and tour. There are also bound morphemes, which are those forms that
cannot normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form, exemplified as re-, -
ist, -ed, -s. The free morphemes can generally be identified as the set of separate English
word forms such as basic nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. When they are used with bound
morphemes attached, the basic word forms are technically known as stems. For example:
undressed carelessness
un- dress -ed care -less -ness
prefix stem suffix stem suffix suffix
(bound) (free) (bound) (free) (bound) (bound)
We should note that this type of description is a partial simplification of the morphological
facts of English. There are a number of English words in which the element treated as the
stem is not, in fact, a free morpheme. In words such as receive, reduce and repeat, we can
identify the bound morpheme re- at the beginning, but the elements -ceive, -duce and -peat
are not separate word forms and hence cannot be free morphemes. These types of forms are
sometimes described as “bound stems” to keep them distinct from “free stems” such as dress
and care.

2. Lexical and Functional Morphemes

What we have described as free morphemes fall into two categories. The first category is that
set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that we think of as the words that carry the
“content” of the messages we convey. These free morphemes are called lexical morphemes
and some examples are: girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow, sincere, open, look, follow,
break. We can add new lexical morphemes to the language rather easily, so they are treated as
an “open” class of words.
Other types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes. Examples are and, but,
when, because, on, near, above, in, the, that, it, them. This set consists largely of the
functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns.
Because we almost never add new functional morphemes to the language, they are described
as a “closed” class of words.

3. Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes

“A derivational morpheme is so called because when it is added to a word, it creates a new
word, by changing either the meaning or the grammatical class of the original word”. For
example, by adding “ir-” to the adjective “regular”, the meaning of “irregular” becomes
opposite, by adding “-ize” to the adjective “modern”, a verb “modernize” is formed and by
adding “-ish” to the noun “fool”, an adjective “foolish” is created, to name just a few.
Inflectional morphemes are “bound morphemes which are for the most part purely
grammatical markers and signify such concepts as tense, number, case and so on”. For
example, “-ed” in “worked”, indicating the past tense of the verb, “-ing” in “studying”,
signifying the present participle of the verb, “-s” in “books”, expressing the plurality of the
countable noun, or “-er” in “shorter” and “-est” in “longest”, marking the comparative or
superlative degree of an adjective, all these are all inflectional morphemes.
English has only eight inflectional morphemes (or “inflections”), illustrated in the following
sentences.
Jim's two sisters are really different.
One likes to have fun and is always laughing.
The other liked to read as a child and has always taken things seriously.
One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quieter than a mouse.
In the first sentence, both inflections (-’s, -s) are attached to nouns, one marking possessive
and the other marking plural. Note that -’s here is a possessive inflection and different from
the -’s used as an abbreviation for is or has (e.g. she’s singing, it’s happened again). There are
four inflections attached to verbs: -s (3rd person singular), -ing (present participle), -ed (past
tense) and -en (past participle). There are two inflections attached to adjectives: -er
(comparative) and -est (superlative). In English, all the inflectional morphemes are suffixes.
Noun + -’s, -s
Verb + -s, -ing, -ed, -en
Adjective + -er, -est
There is some variation in the form of these inflectional morphemes. For example, the
possessive sometimes appears as -s’ (those boys’ bags) and the past participle as -ed (they
have finished).
 Word Formation Process
1.Etymology
The study of the origin and history of a word is known as its etymology, a term which, like
many of our technical words, comes to us through Latin, but has its origins in Greek (e´tymon
“original form” + logia “study of”), and is not to be confused with entomology, also from
Greek (e´ntomon “insect”). When we look closely at the etymologies of less technical words,
we soon discover that there are many different ways in which new words can enter the
language. We should keep in mind that these processes have been at work in the language for
some time and a lot of words in daily use today were, at one time, considered barbaric
misuses of the language. It is difficult now to understand the views expressed in the early
nineteenth century over the “tasteless innovation” of a word like handbook, or the horror
expressed by a London newspaper in 1909 over the use of the newly coined word aviation.
Yet many new words can cause similar outcries as they come into use today. Rather than act
as if the language is being debased, we might prefer to view the constant evolution of new
words and new uses of old words as a reassuring sign of vitality and creativeness in the way a
language is shaped by the needs of its users.
For example, the word heat comes from the Middle English word hete, which in turn came
from the German word hitze, meaning hot. The word cat is another common English word
that has a Germanic etymology. It comes from the old word catt, the Middle Dutch word katte
and the Old German word kazza.

2. Coinage
One of the least common processes of word formation in English is coinage, that is, the
invention of totally new terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names for
commercial products that become general terms (usually without capital letters) for any
version of that product. Older examples are aspirin, nylon, vaseline and zipper; more recent
examples are granola, kleenex, teflon and xerox. It may be that there is an obscure technical
origin (e.g. te(tra)-fl(uor)-on) for some of these invented terms, but after their first coinage,
they tend to become everyday words in the language.
The most salient contemporary example of coinage is the word google. Originally a
misspelling for the word googol (= the number 1 followed by 100 zeros), in the creation of
the word Googleplex, which later became the name of a company (Google), the term google
(without a capital letter) has become a widely used expression meaning “to use the internet to
find information.” New products and concepts (ebay) and new activities (“Have you tried
ebaying it?”) are the usual sources of coinage.
New words based on the name of a person or a place are called eponyms. When we talked
about a hoover (or even a spangler), we were using an eponym. Other common eponyms are
sandwich (from the eighteenth-century Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on having his
bread and meat together while gambling) and jeans (from the Italian city of Genoa where the
type of cloth was first made). Some eponyms are technical terms, based on the names of
those who first discovered or invented things, such as fahrenheit (from the German, Gabriel
Fahrenheit), volt (from the Italian, Alessandro Volta) and watt (from the Scottish inventor,
James Watt).

3. Borrowing
As Bill Bryson observed in the quotation presented earlier, one of the most common sources
of new words in English is the process simply labelled borrowing, that is, the taking over of
words from other languages. (Technically, it’s more than just borrowing because English
doesn’t give them back.) Throughout its history, the English language has adopted a vast
number of words from other languages, including croissant (French), dope (Dutch), lilac
(Persian), piano (Italian), pretzel (German), sofa (Arabic), tattoo (Tahitian), tycoon
(Japanese), yogurt (Turkish) and zebra (Bantu).
Other languages, of course, borrow terms from English, as in the Japanese use of suupaa or
suupaamaaketto (“supermarket”) and taipuraitaa (“typewriter”), Hungarians talking about
sport, klub and futbal, or the French discussing problems of le stress, over a glass of le
whisky, during le weekend. In some cases, the borrowed words may be used with quite
different meanings, as in the contemporary German use of the English words partner and look
in the phrase im Partnerlook to describe two people who are together and are wearing similar
clothing. There is no equivalent use of this expression in English.
A special type of borrowing is described as loan-translation or calque (/kælk/). In this
process, there is a direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language.
Interesting examples are the French term gratte-ciel, which literally translates as “scrape-
sky,” the Dutch wolkenkrabber (“cloud scratcher”) or the German Wolkenkratzer (“cloud
scraper”), all of which were calques for the English skyscraper. The English word superman
is thought to be a loan-translation of the German U¨ bermensch, and the term loan-word itself
is believed to have come from the German Lehnwort. The English expression moment of
truth is believed to be a calque from the Spanish phrase el momento de la verdad, though not
restricted to the original use as the final thrust of the sword to end a bullfight. Nowadays,
some Spanish speakers eat perros calientes (literally “dogs hot”) or hot dogs. The American
concept of “boyfriend” was a borrowing, with sound modification, into Japanese as
boyifurendo, but as a calque into Chinese as “male friend” or nan pengyu.

4. Compounding
There is a joining of two separate words to produce a single form. Thus, Lehn and Wort are
combined to produce Lehnwort in German. This combining process, technically known as
compounding, is very common in languages such as German and English, but much less
common in languages such as French and Spanish. Common English compounds are
bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket and waterbed.
All these examples are nouns, but we can also create compound adjectives (good-looking,
low-paid) and compounds of adjective (fast) plus noun (food) as in a fast-food restaurant or a
full-time job.
This very productive source of new terms has been well documented in English and German,
but can also be found in totally unrelated languages, such as Hmong (spoken in South East
Asia), which combines hwj(“pot”) and kais (“spout”) to produce hwjkais (“kettle”). Recent
creations are paj (“flower”) plus kws (“corn”) for pajkws (“pop-corn”) and hnab (“bag”) +
rau (“put”) + ntawv (“paper” or “book”) for hnabraun-tawv (“schoolbag”).

5. Blending
The combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term is also present in the
process called blending. However, blending is typically accomplished by taking only the
beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word. In some parts of the USA,
there’s a product that is used like gasoline, but is made from alcohol, so the “blended” word
for referring to this product is gasohol. To talk about the combined effects of smoke and fog,
we can use the word smog. In places where they have a lot of this stuff, they can jokingly
make a distinction between smog, smaze (smoke + haze) and smurk (smoke + murk). In
Hawai’i, near the active volcano, they have problems with vog. Some other commonly used
examples of blending are bit (binary/digit), brunch (breakfast/lunch), motel (motor/hotel) and
telecast (television/broadcast).
The activity of fund-raising on television that feels like a marathon is typically called a
telethon, while infotainment (information/entertainment) and simulcast
(simultaneous/broadcast) are other new blends from life with television. To describe the
mixing of languages, some people talk about Franglais (French/Anglais) and Spanglish
(Spanish/English). In a few blends, we combine the beginnings of bothwords, as in terms
from information technology, such as telex (teleprinter/exchange) or modem
(modulator/demodulator).

6. Clipping
The element of reduction that is noticeable in blending is even more apparent in the process
described as clipping. This occurs when a word of more than one syllable (facsimile) is
reduced to a shorter form (fax), usually beginning in casual speech. The term gasoline is still
used, but most people talk about gas, using the clipped form. Other common examples are ad
(advertisement), bra (brassiere), cab (cabriolet), condo (condominium), fan (fanatic), flu
(influenza), perm (permanent wave), phone, plane and pub (public house). English speakers
also like to clip each other’s names, as in Al, Ed, Liz, Mike, Ron, Sam, Sue and Tom.
There must be something about educational environments that encourages clipping because
so many words get reduced, as in chem, exam, gym, lab, math, phys-ed, polys-ci, prof and
typo.
A particular type of reduction, favoured in Australian and British English, produces forms
technically known as hypocorisms. In this process, a longer word is reduced to a single
syllable, then -y or -ie is added to the end. This is the process that results in movie (“moving
pictures”) and telly (“television”). It has also produced Aussie (“Australian”), barbie
(“barbecue”), bookie (“bookmaker”), brekky (“breakfast”) and hankie (“handkerchief”). You
can probably guess what Chrissy pressies are.
7. Backformation
A very specialized type of reduction process is known as backformation. Typically, a word of
one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (usually a verb). A good
example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into use and
then the verb televise was created from it. Other examples of words created by this process
are: donate (from “donation”), emote (from “emotion”), enthuse (from “enthusiasm”), liaise
(from “liaison”) and babysit (from “babysitter”). Indeed, when we use the verb backform
(Did you know that “opt” was backformed from “option”?), we are using a backformation.
One very regular source of backformed verbs in English is based on the common pattern
worker – work. The assumption seems to have been that if there is a noun ending in -er (or
something close in sound), then we can create a verb for what that noun -er does. Hence, an
editor will edit, a sculptor will sculpt and burglars, peddlers and swindlers will burgle, peddle
and swindle.

8. Conversion
A change in the function of a word, as for example when a noun comes to be used as a verb
(without any reduction), is generally known as conversion. Other labels for this very common
process are “category change” and “functional shift.” A number of nouns such as bottle,
butter, chair and vacation have come to be used, through conversion, as verbs: We bottled the
home-brew last night; Have you buttered the toast?; Someone has to chair the meeting;
They’re vacationing in Florida. These conversions are readily accepted, but some examples,
such as the noun impact being used as a verb, seem to impact some people’s sensibilities
rather negatively.
The conversion process is particularly productive in Modern English, with new uses
occurring frequently. The conversion can involve verbs becoming nouns, with guess, must
and spy as the sources of a guess, a must and a spy. Phrasal verbs (to print out, to take over)
also become nouns (a printout, a takeover). One complex verb combination (want to be) has
become a new noun, as in He isn’t in the group, he’s just a wannabe.
Verbs (see through, stand up) also become adjectives, as in see-through material or a stand-up
comedian. Or adjectives, as in a dirty floor, an empty room, some crazy ideas and those nasty
people, can become the verbs to dirty and to empty, or the nouns a crazy and the nasty.

9. Acronyms
Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. These can be
forms such as CD (“compact disk”) or VCR (“video cassette recorder”) where the
pronunciation consists of saying each separate letter. More typically, acronyms are
pronounced as new single words, as in NATO, NASA or UNESCO. These examples have
kept their capital letters, but many acronyms simply become everyday terms such as laser
(“light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”), radar (“radio detecting and
ranging”), scuba (“self-contained underwater breathing apparatus”) and zip (“zone
improvement plan”) code. You might even hear talk of a snafu, which is reputed to have its
origins in “situation normal, all fouled up,” though there is some dispute about the
appropriate f-word in there.
Names for organizations are often designed to have their acronym represent an appropriate
term, as in “mothers against drunk driving” (MADD) and “women against rape” (WAR).
Some new acronyms come into general use so quickly that many speakers do not think of
their component meanings. Innovations such as the ATM (“automatic teller machine”) and
the required PIN (“personal identification number”) are regularly used with one of their
elements repeated, as in I sometimes forget my PIN number when I go to the ATM machine.

10. Derivation
Derivation, in descriptive linguistics and traditional grammar, the formation of a word by
changing the form of the base or by adding affixes to it (e.g., “hope” to “hopeful”). It is a
major source of new words in a language. It is accomplished by means of a large number of
small “bits” of the English language which are not usually given separate listings in
dictionaries. These small “bits” are generally described as affixes. Some familiar examples
are the elements un-, mis-, pre-, -ful, -less, -ish, -ism and -ness which appear in words like
unhappy, misrepresent, prejudge, joyful, careless, boyish, terrorism and sadness.
Prefixes and Suffixes
Looking more closely at the preceding group of words, we can see that some affixes have to
be added to the beginning of the word (e.g. un-, mis-). These are called prefixes. Other affixes
have to be added to the end of the word (e.g. -less, -ish) and are called suffixes. All English
words formed by this derivational process have either prefixes or suffixes, or both. Thus,
mislead has a prefix, disrespectful has both a prefix and a suffix, and foolishness has two
suffixes.
Infixes
There is a third type of affix, not normally used in English, but found in some other
languages. This is called an infix and, as the term suggests, it is an affix that is incorporated
inside another word. It is possible to see the general principle at work in certain expressions,
occasionally used in fortuitous or aggravating circumstances by emotionally aroused English
speakers: Hallebloodylujah!, Absogoddamlutely! And Unfuckinbelievable!. In the film Wish
You Were Here, the main character expresses her aggravation (at another character who keeps
trying to contact her) by screaming Tell him I’ve gone to Singabloodypore!. The expletive
may even have an infixed element, as in godtripledammit!.
 The Parts of Speech
A part of speech is a group of words categorized by their function in a sentence, and there are
eight of these different families. Nouns - consist of people, places, things, and ideas. They
may be either concrete or abstract. Pronouns - take the place of nouns. Verbs - action words.

1.Nouns are words used to refer to people (boy), objects (backpack), creatures (dog), places
(school), qualities (roughness), phenomena (earthquake) and abstract ideas (love) as if they
were all “things.”

2. Articles are words (a, an, the) used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying those
“things” (You can have a banana or an apple) or identifying them as already known (I’ll take
the apple).

3. Adjectives are words used, typically with nouns, to provide more information about the
things referred to (happy people, large objects, a strange experience).

4. Verbs are words used to refer to various kinds of actions (go, talk) and states (be, have)
involving people and things in events (Jessica is ill and has a sore throat so she can’t talk or
go anywhere).

5. Adverbs are words used, typically with verbs, to provide more information about
actions, states and events (slowly, yesterday). Some adverbs (really, very) are also used with
adjectives to modify information about things (Really large objects move slowly. I had a very
strange experience yesterday).

6. Prepositions are words (at, in, on, near, with, without) used with nouns in phrases
providing information about time (at five o’clock, in the morning), place (on the table, near
the window) and other connections (with a knife, without a thought) involving actions and
things.

7. Pronouns are words (she, herself, they, it, you) used in place of noun phrases, typically
referring to people and things already known (She talks to herself. They said it belonged to
you).

8. Conjunctions are words (and, but, because, when) used to make connections and
indicate relationships between events (Chantel’s husband was so sweet and he helped her a
lot because she couldn’t do much when she was pregnant).
Basic definitions of this type are useful for identifying most forms in a language such as
English, but they are not completely reliable. A different approach might focus on some other
properties of the parts of speech. For example, a noun can be defined as a form that comes
after an article (a, the) and can take inflections for possessive (-’s) and plural (-s). Of course,
not all nouns (e.g. information, mud) have all these characteristics.
 Affixation
Affixation is a linguistic process where a morpheme (a unit of meaning) is added to a word to
form a new word or modify its meaning. This can include:
- Prefixes (added to the beginning of a word)
- Suffixes (added to the end of a word)
- Infixes (inserted within a word)
Affixation can change the word's grammatical function, meaning, or both. Examples include
"unhappy" (prefix "un-") and "happiness" (suffix "-ness").

1.Word Formation Rules

Let’s look more carefully at words derived by affixation. Prefixes and suffixes usually have
special requirements for the sorts of bases they can attach to. Some of these requirements
concern the phonology (sounds) of their bases, and others concern the semantics (meaning) of
their bases – we will return to these shortly – but the most basic requirements are often the
syntactic part of speech or category of their bases. For example, the suffix -ness attaches to
nouns, as the examples in (3a) show, but not to verbs or adjectives (3b–c):3 (3) a. -ness on
adjectives: redness, happiness, wholeness, commonness, niceness
b. -ness on nouns: *chairness, *ideaness, *giraffeness
c. -ness on verbs: *runness, *wiggleness, *yawnness
The prefix un- attaches to adjectives (where it means ‘not’) and to verbs (where it means
‘reverse action’), but not to nouns:
(4) a. un- on adjectives: unhappy, uncommon, unkind, unserious
b. un- on verbs: untie, untwist, undress, unsnap
c. un- on nouns: *unchair, *unidea, *ungiraffe
We might begin to build some of the rules that native speakers of English use for making
words with -ness or un- by stating their categorial requirements:
(5) Rule for -ness (first version): Attach -ness to an adjective.
Rule for un- (first version): Attach un- to an adjective or to a verb.
Of course, if we want to be as precise as possible about what native speakers know about
forming words with these affixes, we should also indicate what category of word results from
using these affixes, and what the resulting word means. So a more complete version of our -
ness and un- rules might look like (6):
(6) Rule for -ness (second version): -ness attaches to adjectives ‘X’ and produces nouns
meaning ‘the quality of X’.
 Rule for un- (second version): un- attaches to adjectives meaning ‘X’ and produces
adjectives meaning ‘not X’; un- attaches to verbs meaning ‘X’ and produces verbs meaning
‘reverse the action X’.
We have just constructed what morphologists call a word formation rule, a rule which makes
explicit all the categorial, semantic, and phonological information that native speakers know
about the kind of base that an affix attaches to and about the kind of word it creates. We
might now state the full word formation rules for negative un- as in (7):
(7) Rule for negative un- (final version): un- attaches to adjectives,
preferably those with neutral or positive connotations, and
creates negative adjectives. It has no phonological restrictions.
Now let’s look at two more affixes. In English we can form new verbs by using the suffixes -
ize or -ify. Both of these suffixes attach to either nouns or adjectives, resulting in verbs:
(8) -ize on adjectives: civilize, idealize, finalize, romanticize, tranquillize
-ize on nouns: unionize, crystallize, hospitalize, caramelize, animalize
-ify on adjectives: purify, glorify, uglify, moistify, diversify
-ify on nouns: mummify, speechify, classify, brutify, scarify,
Bourgeoisify
We might state the word formation rules for -ize and -ify as in (9):
(9) Rule for -ize (first version): -ize attaches to adjectives or nouns that mean ‘X’ and
produces verbs that mean ‘make/put into X’.
Rule for -ify (first version): -ify attaches to adjectives or nouns that mean ‘X’ and produces
verbs that mean ‘make/put into X’.
But again, we can be a bit more precise about these rules. Although -izeand -ify have almost
identical requirements for the category of base they attach to and produce words with roughly
the same meaning, they have somewhat different requirements on the phonological form of
the stem they attach to. As the examples in (8) show, -ize prefers words with two or more
syllables where the final syllable doesn’t bear primary stress (e.g., TRANquil, HOSpital). The
suffix -ify, on the other hand, prefers monosyllabic bases (pure, brute, scar), although it also
attaches to bases that end in a -y (mummy, ugly) or bases whose final syllables are stressed
(diVERSE, bour-GEOIS). Since we want to be as precise as possible about our word
formation rules for these suffixes, we will state their phonological restrictions along with
their categorial needs:
(10) Rule for -ize (final version): -ize attaches to adjectives or nouns of two or more
syllables where the final syllable does not bear primary stress. For a base ‘X’ it produces
verbs that mean ‘make/ put into X’.
2. Word Structure
When you divide up a complex word into its morphemes, as in (11), it’s easy to get the
impression that words are put together like the beads that make up a necklace – one after the
other in a line:
(11) unhappiness un - happy - ness
But morphologists believe that words are more like onions than like necklaces: onions are
made up of layers from innermost to outermost. Consider a word like unhappiness. We can
break this down into its component morphemes un - happy - ness, but given what we learned
above about the properties of the prefix un- and the suffix -ness we know something more
about the way in which this word is constructed beyond just its constituent parts. We know
that un- must first go on the base happy. Happy is an adjective, and un- attaches to adjectives
but does not change their category. The suffix -ness attaches only to adjectives and makes
them into nouns. So if un- attaches first to happy and -ness attaches next, the requirements of
both affixes are met. But if we were to do it the other way around, -ness would have first
created a noun, and then un- would be unable to attach. We could represent the order of
attachment as if words really were onions, with the base in the innermost layer, and each affix
in its own succeeding layer.
But linguists, not generally being particularly artistic, prefer to show these relationships as
‘trees’ that look like this:

Similarly, we might represent the structure of a word like repurify as in (13):

In order to draw this structure, we must first know that the prefix re-attaches to verbs (for
example, reheat, rewash, or redo) but not to adjectives (*repure, *rehappy) or to nouns
(*rechair, *retruth). Once we know this, we can say that the adjective pure must first be made
into a verb by suffixing -ify, and only then can re- attach to it.

3. Categories of Affixes
•Personal affixes: These are affixes that create ‘people nouns’ either from verbs or from
nouns. Among the personal affixes in English are the suffix -er which forms agent nouns (the
‘doer’ of the action) like writer or runner and the suffix -ee which forms patient nouns (the
person the action is done to).
•Negative and Privative affixes: Negative affixes add the meaning ‘not’ to their base;
examples in English are the prefixes un-, in-, and non (unhappy, inattentive, non-functional).
Privative affixes mean something like ‘without X’; in English, the suffix -less (shoeless,
hopeless) is a privative suffix, and the prefix de- has a privative flavour as well (for example,
words like debug or debone mean something like ‘cause to be without bugs/bones’).
•Prepositional and Relational affixes: Prepositional and relational affixes often convey
notions of space and/or time. Examples in English might be prefixes like over- and out-
(overfill, overcoat, outrun, outhouse).
•Quantitative affixes: These are affixes that have something to do with amount. In English
we have affixes like -ful (handful, helpful) and multi- (multifaceted). Another example might
be the prefix re- that means ‘repeated’ action (reread), which we can consider quantitative if
we conceive of a repeated action as being done more than once.
•Evaluative affixes: Evaluative affixes consist of diminutives, affixes that signal a smaller
version of the base (for example in English -let as in booklet or droplet) and augmentatives,
affixes that signal a bigger version of the base. The closest we come to augmentative affixes
in English are prefixes like mega- (megastore, megabite). The Native American language
Tuscarora (Iroquoian family) has an augmentative suffix -ʔoʔy that can be added to nouns to
mean ‘a big X’; for example takó:--ʔoʔy means ‘a big cat’ (Williams 1976: 233). Diminutives
and augmentatives frequently bear other nuances of meaning. For example, diminutives often
convey affection, or endearment. Augmentatives sometimes have pejorative overtones.
Note that some semantically contentful affixes change syntactic category as well; for
example, the suffixes -er and -ee change verbs to nouns, and the prefix de- changes nouns to
verbs. But semantically contentful affixes need not change syntactic category. The suffixes -
hood and -dom, for example, do not (childhood, kingdom), and by and large prefixes in
English do not change syntactic category.

4. Affixes: beyond Prefixes and Suffixes

Infixes
Infixes are affixes that are inserted right into a root or base. In Tagalog, a Malayo-Polynesian
language spoken in the Philippines, it is possible to form intransitive verbs meaning ‘become
X’ from adjectives by inserting the morpheme -um- after the first consonant of the adjective
root. Example (2) shows how the words can be broken down:
(2) g-um-anda become beautiful
h-um-irap become difficult
Another example of infixation can be found in Karok (a nearly extinct Hokan language,
formerly spoken in northern California). In Karok, a form of verb called the intensive is
created by infixing the morpheme -eg- after the first consonant or cluster of consonants in the
root, as in (3):
(3) Karok (Garrett 2001: 269)
Base verb Intensive
la:y- ‘to pass’ l-eg-a:y
ɬkyorkʷ- ‘to watch’ ɬky-eg-orkʷ
koʔmoy- ‘to hear’ k-eg-oʔmoy
trahk- ‘to fetch water’ tr-eg-ahk
Both examples of infixation that we’ve seen so far have had the infix right after the first
consonant or consonant cluster of the base, but sometimes infixes can come near the end of
the base as well. As the examples in (4) illustrate, in Hua, a Trans-New Guinea language, the
negative infix -‘a- comes before the last syllable of the verb root:
(4) Hua (Haiman 1980: 195)
zgavo ‘embrace’ zga-‘a-vo ‘not embrace’
harupo ‘slip’ haru-‘a-po ‘not slip’
rvato- ‘be nigh’ rva-‘a-to ‘not be nigh’

Circumfixes
Another type of affix that occurs in languages is the circumfix. A circumfix consists of two
parts – a prefix and a suffix that together create a new lexeme from a base. We don’t consider
the prefix and suffix to be separate, because neither by itself creates that type of lexeme, or
perhaps anything at all. This kind of affixation is a form of parasynthesis, a phenomenon in
which a particular morphological category is signaled by the simultaneous presence of two
morphemes.
One example of a circumfix can be found in Dutch, although Booij (2002: 119) says that it’s
no longer productive. In Dutch, to form a collective noun from a count noun, the morpheme
ge- is affixed before the base and -te after the base:
(5) berg ‘mountain’ ge-berg-te ‘mountain chain’
vogel ‘bird’ ge-vogel-te ‘flock of birds’
Neither geberg nor bergte alone forms a word – it’s only the presence of both parts that
signals the collective meaning. Another example can be found in Tagalog (Malayo-
Polynesian), where adding ka before and an after a noun base X makes a noun meaning
‘group of X’:
(6) Tagalog (Schachter and Otanes 1972: 101)
Intsik ‘Chinese person’ ka-intsik-an ‘the Chinese’
pulo ‘island’ ka-pulu-an ‘archipelago’
Tagalog ‘Tagalog person’ ka-tagalog-an ‘the Tagalogs’
 Inflection
Inflection refers to word formation that does not change category and does not create new
lexemes, but rather changes the form of lexemes so that they fit into different grammatical
contexts. Grammatical meaning can include information about number (singular vs. plural),
person (first, second, third), tense (past, present, future), and other distinctions as well.

1.Types of Inflection
1. Number
Perhaps the most familiar inflectional category for speakers of English is number. In English,
nouns can be marked as singular or plural:
(1) Singular cat, mouse, ox, child
Plural cats, mice, oxen, children
Although the vast majority of nouns pluralize in English by adding -s (or in terms of sounds,
one of the variants [s], [z], or [ǝz]), some nouns form their plurals irregularly. We will return
to the issue of regular versus irregular inflections shortly. In English, it is required to mark the
plural on nouns in a context in which more than one of that noun is being dis-cussed (I have
six beagles). This is not the case in all languages.
Some languages distinguish a third category of number in addition to singular and plural. For
example, in the Eskimo-Aleut language Yup’ik, nouns inflect not only for singular and plural,
but also for what is called dual. This is a number-marking that means ‘two’:
(2) Yup’ik (Mithun 1999: 79)
qayaq ‘kayak’ paluqtaq ‘beaver’
qayak ‘two kayaks ’ paluqtak ‘two beavers’
qayat ‘three or more kayaks’ paluqtat ‘three or more beavers’
2. Person