Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes Produce Important Effects on Language Production

Diana Fernanda Dávila Arbeláez

June 03, 2016

Morphology

Professor Juan David Chilito García

Essay:

 Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes Produce Important Effects on Language Production

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DERIVATIONAL AND INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES PRODUCE IMPORTANT EFFECTS ON LANGUAGE PRODUCTION

               Morphology is the study of word formation, of the structure of words.  Some words can be divided into parts which still have meaning, many words have meaning by themselves. But some words have meaning only when used with other words, some of the parts into which words can be divided can stand alone as words. But others cannot, these word-parts that can occur only in combination must be combined in the correct way, languages create new words systematically and linguistics infer from this observation that the meaningful parts into which words can be divided e.g. Boldest can be divided into Bold+est are called the morphemes of the language and these Morphemes are defined as the smallest meaningful unit of a language (Lim Kiat Boey, 1975:37). In addition, words that have meaning by themselves boy, food, and door are called lexical morphemes. Those words that function to specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and another words like at, in, on, -ed, are called grammatical morphemes. In a like manner, those morphemes that can stand alone as words are called free morphemes e.g., boy, food, in, on. The morphemes that occur only in combination are called bound morphemes e.g., -ed, -s, -ing. There are two types of morphemes; free morphemes and bound morphemes. "Free morphemes" can stand alone with a specific meaning, for example, eat, date, weak. "Bound morphemes" cannot stand alone with meaning. Morphemes are comprised of two separate classes called (a) bases (or roots) and (b) affixes. Taking these into account, an affix is a Bound grammatical morphemes and can be further divided into two types: inflectional and derivational morphemes.

                   An affix is a word element -a prefix, suffix, or infix that can be attached to a base or root to form a new word or a new form of a word. Affixes are bound morphemes. An affix is added to the root of a word to change its meaning. An affix added to the front of a word is known as a prefix. One added to the back is known as a suffix. Some examples of affixes are; incapable, the affix is the prefix in, ex-President, the affix is the prefix ex, laughing, and the affix is the suffix ing.  Besides, a suffix is an important part of language found at the end of many words. Suffixes can be the key to figuring out the meaning of a complex word. For instance, consider the word 'boys.' It may seem like a very simple word, but it can actually be broken down into two parts. There is the main word, or root word 'boy'; then there is the suffix, or ending part '-s.' The root word 'boy' provides the main meaning of the word, and the suffix '-s' modifies the meaning of the root word by making it plural. It's important to note that a suffix always comes at the end of a word. And a prefix is a letter or group of letters attached to the beginning of a word that partly indicates its meaning. Common prefixes include anti- against, co- with, mis- wrong, bad, and trans- across. The word prefix contains the prefix pre- (which means "before") and the root word fix (which means "to fasten or place"). Thus the word prefix means "to place before. For example; pre – before, mis - bad(ly), sub – under, inter – between, semi – half. To sum up, The following prefixes of 'im', 'ir', 'il', 'in' and 'un' can be added to the beginning of words to make them into a negative. im + possible = impossible and ir + responsible = irresponsible.

                 A derivational morpheme is an affix that is added to a word to create a new word or a new form of a word. Derivational morphemes can change the grammatical category or part of speech of a word. For example, adding -ful to beauty changes the word from a noun to an adjective beautiful. The form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme is called a derived word or a derivative. Derivation is concerned with the way morphemes are connected to existing lexical forms as affixes. We distinguish affixes in two principal types:  The first ones are Prefixes, these are attached at the beginning of a lexical item or base morpheme – ex: un-, pre-, post-, dis, im-, etc. The Second ones are Suffixes that are attached at the end of a lexical item ex: -age, -ing, -ful, -able, -ness, -hood, -ly, etc. Furthermore, most derivational morphemes change the part of speech, for example, -ance changes the verb resemble into the noun resemblance. Note that the 'e' is deleted at the end of the verb resemble when the suffix is added. The majority of derivational morphemes that do not change the part of speech are prefixes, for example, adding un- changes the meaning of the adjective happy but it is still an adjective unhappy.  To conclude, a derivational morphemes can also transform a word, for example, Nouns Friendship, Unfriendliness, Adjectives like unfriendly friendless and Verb like befriend, the derivational morpheme -er is used to transform the verb bake into the noun baker. The morpheme -ly changes the adjective quick into the adverb quickly. Adjectives can be changed such as happy into nouns such as happiness by using the derivational morpheme -ness. Other common suffixes include -ism, -tion, -able, -ment and -al. Derivational morphemes can also be prefixes, such as un-, in-, pre- and a-.