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Derivation vs. Inflection
Derivation is the process of deriving a new word with new
meaning by adding
some bound-morpheme to a base
Inflection is a change in the form of a word by adding some
bound-morpheme tomark the grammatical aspect of the word such as
tense, number, etc.
Inflection does not result in a new word that you would
separately list in adictionaryInflectional morphemes
Serves grammatical function without adding new meaning to the
word
- s third-person singular
present
She waits at home
- ed past tense She waited at home
- ing progressive She is eating donuts
- en past participle She has eaten all the donuts
- s plural She is eating donuts
- s possessive Marys hair is short
- er comparative Mary is taller than John
- est superlative Mary is the tallest student in class
Morphology and Syntax
What is achieved by inflection in one language may be achieved
by word-order orthe use of function words in other languages
English Romnian
John likes Mary John o place pe Mary
Johns school is good Scoala lui John e buna
Word Coinage
Words are coined when we create new words by some process other
than
derivation (e.g. adding an affix to a stem)
Eponyms
Back-formation
Compounds Blends
Reduced words
Eponyms
Words coined from proper names
sandwich from Earl of Sandwich
jacuzzi from the inventor Candido Jacuzzi
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nicotine from Jean Nicot who brought tobacco plants from
Portugal to
France
paparazzo/paparazzi from the character Signor Paparazzo inLa
Dolce
Vita
Back-formations
Words that are created by mistakenly or deliberately removing
what look likeaffixes from another word
edit from editor
televise from television
monokini from bikiniCompounds
Words created by conjoining two or more words
e.g. girlfriend, watertight
Sometimes spelled with hyphens or spaces between component
words
e.g. daughter-in-law, White House
The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meaning
of its parts
e.g. hot dogBlends
Words that are created by conjoining two or more words but with
parts of thecomponent words deleted at the juncture
breakfast + lunch -> brunch
smoke + fog -> smog
info + commercial -> infomercial
Reduced words
Clipping
Clip a part of a word to reduce its length
Typically the beginning or the end
e.g. fax, prof, gym, bus, phone, etc. Acronyms
Concatenation of initials of multiple words
e.g. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration),
SARS(Severe acute respiratory syndrome), NBA (National
Basketball
Association), FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), etc.Rules
and exceptions
Many words are inflected following a regular rule
e.g. dog-dogs, push-pushed
Some words are exceptions: they do not follow the regular
rule
The irregularly inflected forms are called suppletions
e.g. child-children, eat-ate
Childrens errors or inflected forms of new words suggest that
speakers are aware
of the regular rules
e.g. goed, iPodsMorphological analysis
Isolate parts of words that are similar in form and meaning
Two morphemes can have the same phonetic form
e.g. [er] as in bigger vs. drinker
