Лексикология английского языка

Москва

Издательство «ФЛИНТА»
2018

3-е издание, стереотипное

2

ISBN 9785976508446

УДК  811.111’37(075.8)
ББК  81.432.13я73

УДК 811.111’37(075.8)
ББК 81.432.13я73

К29

К29

Катермина В.В.
Лексикология английского языка [Ýëåêòðîííûé ðåñóðñ] : 
ïрактикум  / В.В. Катермина. — 3-е изд., стер. — М. : 
ФЛИНТА, 2018. — 120 с.

ISBN 9785976508446

В практикум вошли упражнения для семинарских занятий по английской 
лексикологии. Материал подобран по разделам: морфология, семасиология, 
этимология, лексикография. Пособие призвано помочь студентам в практическом овладении основами лексикологии.
Для студентов филологических факультетов университетов и факультетов 
иностранных языков пединститутов.

© Катермина В.В., 2010
© Издательство «ФЛИНТА», 2010

CONTENTS

Preface . ............................................................................................................................ 4

1.
Morphology . ........................................................................................................... 5

1.1.
Morphemes . ................................................................................................... 5

1.2.
Morphological Processes . ........................................................................... 14

2.
Semasiology . ......................................................................................................... 24

2.1.
Meaning and Reference ............................................................................... 24

2.2.
Diction and Tone . ........................................................................................ 26

3.
Etymology . ............................................................................................................ 38

3.1.
Historical Development . ............................................................................. 38

3.2.
Loanwords . .................................................................................................. 43

4.
Lexicography ........................................................................................................ 57

4.1.
How To Use Dictionaries ............................................................................ 57

4.2.
A Brief History of English Lexicography ................................................... 64

5.
Reference Material .............................................................................................. 68

Glossary ....................................................................................................................... 108

Recommended Literature . .......................................................................................... 115

Р е ц е н з е н т ы:

др филол. наук, профессор кафедры английской филологии

Кубанского государственного университета Ю.К. Волошин;

др филол. наук, профессор кафедры современного русского языка

Кубанского государственного университета Л.А. Исаева

2

ISBN 9785976508446 (Флинта)
ISBN 9785020371675 (Наука)

УДК  811.111’37(075.8)
ББК  81.2Англ3

УДК 811.111’37(075.8)
ББК 81.2Англ3
К29

Катермина В.В.
К29
Лексикология английского языка: Практикум / В.В. Катермина. — М. : Флинта : Наука, 2010. — 120 с.

ISBN 9785976508446 (Флинта)
ISBN 9785020371675 (Наука)

В практикум вошли упражнения для семинарских занятий по английской
лексикологии. Материал подобран по разделам: морфология, семасиология,
этимология, лексикография. Пособие призвано помочь студентам в практическом овладении основами лексикологии.
Для студентов филологических факультетов университетов и факультетов
иностранных языков пединститутов.

© Катермина В.В., 2010
© Издательство «Флинта», 2010

CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................................... 4

1.
Morphology ....................................................................................................... 5

1.1.
Morphemes ................................................................................................ 5

1.2.
Morphological Processes ......................................................................... 14

2.
Semasiology ...................................................................................................... 24

2.1.
Meaning and Reference ............................................................................ 24

2.2.
Diction and Tone ...................................................................................... 26

3.
Etymology ........................................................................................................ 38

3.1.
Historical Development ........................................................................... 38

3.2.
Loanwords ............................................................................................... 43

4.
Lexicography ................................................................................................... 57

4.1.
How To Use Dictionaries ......................................................................... 57

4.2.
A Brief History of English Lexicography ................................................. 64

5.
Reference Material .......................................................................................... 68

Glossary ................................................................................................................. 108

Recommended Literature ........................................................................................ 115

Р е ц е н з е н т ы:

др филол. наук, профессор кафедры английской филологии
Кубанского государственного университета Ю.К. Волошин
др филол. наук, профессор кафедры современного русского языка
Кубанского государственного университета Л.А. Исаева

4

Preface

Vocabulary is the Everest of a language. There is no larger task than
to look for order among the hundreds of thousands of words which comprise the lexicon. There may be many greater tasks — working out a coherent grammatical system is certainly one — but nothing beats lexical
study for sheer quantity and range.
How big is the lexicon of English? How many words do any of us
know? And how do we calculate size, with such an amorphous phenomenon? Defining the basic unit to be counted turns out to be an unexpected difficulty, and the notion of lexeme is introduced.
Where does the vastness of the lexicon come from? There is an important balance between the stock of native words and the avalanche of
foreign borrowings into English over centuries. The use of prefixes, suffixes, compounding, and other processes of word-building turns out to
play a crucial role in English vocabulary growth.
The present book is a book of exercises in Modern English lexicology. It is written for the students of Universities, Foreign Languages and
Pedagogical Institutes who take English as their special subject. The
book is meant as the additional illustrative language material for seminars in lexicology.
The material is divided into more or less autonomous parts (morphology, semasiology, etymology, lexicography) each providing working definitions, tasks, and exercises.
Brief notes preceding the exercises are offered as a kind of guide to
the students and by no means claim at a thorough theoretical treatment
of a subject.

But There Are No Such Things as Words!

Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll
Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Remember the Jabberwocky’s song in Carol’s “Through the LookingGlass”? Pretty meaningless, huh? Still, it sounds “English” rather than,
say, French or German or Italian. That is why it is so amusing: it sounds
like perfect English yet we cannot understand it.
Actually, we understand quite a bit about the poem even though we
don’t understand it as a whole. For example, what do we know about
“toves”? Well, we know that there are more than one of them and that
those mentioned here are “slithy”, whatever that is. We know that
“slithy” describes the “toves” as either like a slithe or having slithes. We
know that these slithy toves “gyred” and “gimbled”, and even though we
don’t know what these actions are we know they are actions and something about when they took place. How do we know all this, not knowing what any of the boldface parts of the words mean?
The reason we know so much about the meaningless words in Carol’s poem is that some of the words and parts of words are, in fact, English. The English words are small, less prominent words, barely more
prominent in their pronunciation than the parts of words, the prefixes
and suffixes. These small words and parts of words (in plain type above)
are expressions that tell us nothing about the world, but only about the
grammatical categories of the English language; let’s call them morphemes, just to have a term for them.
The nonsense parts of the words in the Jabberwocky song above are
all noun, verb, and adjective stems, the main parts of words without pre

4

Preface

Vocabulary is the Everest of a language. There is no larger task than
to look for order among the hundreds of thousands of words which comprise the lexicon. There may be many greater tasks — working out a coherent grammatical system is certainly one — but nothing beats lexical
study for sheer quantity and range.
How big is the lexicon of English? How many words do any of us
know? And how do we calculate size, with such an amorphous phenomenon? Defining the basic unit to be counted turns out to be an unexpected difficulty, and the notion of lexeme is introduced.
Where does the vastness of the lexicon come from? There is an important balance between the stock of native words and the avalanche of
foreign borrowings into English over centuries. The use of prefixes, suffixes, compounding, and other processes of word-building turns out to
play a crucial role in English vocabulary growth.
The present book is a book of exercises in Modern English lexicology. It is written for the students of Universities, Foreign Languages and
Pedagogical Institutes who take English as their special subject. The
book is meant as the additional illustrative language material for seminars in lexicology.
The material is divided into more or less autonomous parts (morphology, semasiology, etymology, lexicography) each providing working definitions, tasks, and exercises.
Brief notes preceding the exercises are offered as a kind of guide to
the students and by no means claim at a thorough theoretical treatment
of a subject.

But There Are No Such Things as Words!

Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll
Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Remember the Jabberwocky’s song in Carol’s “Through the LookingGlass”? Pretty meaningless, huh? Still, it sounds “English” rather than,
say, French or German or Italian. That is why it is so amusing: it sounds
like perfect English yet we cannot understand it.
Actually, we understand quite a bit about the poem even though we
don’t understand it as a whole. For example, what do we know about
“toves”? Well, we know that there are more than one of them and that
those mentioned here are “slithy”, whatever that is. We know that
“slithy” describes the “toves” as either like a slithe or having slithes. We
know that these slithy toves “gyred” and “gimbled”, and even though we
don’t know what these actions are we know they are actions and something about when they took place. How do we know all this, not knowing what any of the boldface parts of the words mean?
The reason we know so much about the meaningless words in Carol’s poem is that some of the words and parts of words are, in fact, English. The English words are small, less prominent words, barely more
prominent in their pronunciation than the parts of words, the prefixes
and suffixes. These small words and parts of words (in plain type above)
are expressions that tell us nothing about the world, but only about the
grammatical categories of the English language; let’s call them morphemes, just to have a term for them.
The nonsense parts of the words in the Jabberwocky song above are
all noun, verb, and adjective stems, the main parts of words without pre

6

fixes or suffixes. Stems are also the linguistic things that refer to the
world we live in. Let’s call whole words and stems lexemes; they are
anything we use in speech that names or refers to things in the real
world. Morphemes will then be the words or parts of words that mark
the categories of grammar which are the crucial stuff of language. That
is why they control whether we sense a spoken or written utterance is
English or French or German.
No one has ever been able to define the word “word” despite gargantuan efforts to do so. The linguistic concept of word: an analytic bibliography by Alphonse Juilland and Alexandra Roceric is a 118-page bibliography of books and articles (unsuccessfully) attempting to define
‘word’ over the past 3 millennia. Why can no one define “word”? Maybe because words simply do not exist; rather, the sentences we speak are
composed of lexemes and morphemes and these two linguistic objects
differ too much to be subsumed under one concept.
The differences between these two linguistic elements are dramatic.
Here are the major ones.

Comparison of Lexemes and Morphemes

Let’s examine these differences. Lexemes, remember, are basically
noun, verb, and adjective stems or whole words: “violin”, “play”,
“small” are lexemes. They refer to things, actions, states, and qualities
in the real world. Suffixes like -ing, “-s”, “-ed”, prefixes like “re-”, “ex-”,
“un-”, particles like “the”, “not”, “so” and prepositions like “of”, “for”,
“to” are morphemes. They refer to grammatical categories like Progressive Aspect (“-ing”: “am going”), Plural Number (“-s”: “cars”), Past Tense
(-”ed”: “walked”), Negation (“un-, not”: “unwanted”), Definite (“the”:
“the cat”), Possession (“of”: “of my friend”).

Lexemes like “violin”, “play”, and “small” are subject to derivation,
a process which generates new words from others: “violin” > “violinist”, “play” > “play-er”, “small” > “small-ness”. Morphemes do not undergo derivation even if they are not affixes which mark derivations
themselves. We do not find words derived from “the”, “that”, “of”,
“for”, “it”.
Lexemes always comprise a sound plus a meaning but morphemes
may have either one but not the other. For example, if “-er” means
“someone who does something”, as in “runner”, “player”, “driver”, what
sound has that meaning in “(a) cook”, “(a) guide”, “(a) cut-up”? With
these verbs, all we have to do is use them in a noun position, e.g. “the
cook guided us through the kitchen”, and we know that the speaker is
using the noun, not the verb.
On the other hand, morphemes sometimes show up with sound but
not meaning. Take the adjectives that end on “-ic”, e.g. “histor-ic”,
meaning “having the property of history” from “history”. There are lots
of these derivations: “climat-ic”, “theatr-ic”, “semant-ic”. But look at
this series: “dram-at-ic”, “spasm-at-ic”, “enigm-at-ic”. The meaning of
these adjectives is the same as that of the “syntactic” class: “having the
properties of X”, where “X” is the meaning of the underlying word.
However, they contain an extra morpheme, “-at”. Why is that? Well, for
some reason known only to the ancient Greeks, who enjoyed the same
derivation, before adding “-ic” you had to insert a suffix “-at” if the stem
ended on an “m”. So, when English borrowed these words from Greece,
the rule came with it. The suffix “-at” probably had meaning in Greek
but it certainly has none in English, where it is simply required of all
words borrowed from Greek ending on “m” when the suffix “-ic” is applied. So not only do we find morpheme meanings without morphemes,
we find morphemes without morphemic meaning.
The sounds of lexemes are always predetermined and remain (more
or less) the same wherever they occur in a phrase. The sound of a morpheme on the other hand, especially prefixes and suffixes may vary
wildly. The future tense in Tagalog (or Philippino) is formed by adding
a prefix. For example, “bili” is the verb stem meaning “buy” and “bibili” means “will buy”. So, if “kuha” means “get”, “will get” should be
“bi-kuha”, right? Wrong. The future of “kuha” is “ku-kuha”. The verb

7
6

fixes or suffixes. Stems are also the linguistic things that refer to the
world we live in. Let’s call whole words and stems lexemes; they are
anything we use in speech that names or refers to things in the real
world. Morphemes will then be the words or parts of words that mark
the categories of grammar which are the crucial stuff of language. That
is why they control whether we sense a spoken or written utterance is
English or French or German.
No one has ever been able to define the word “word” despite gargantuan efforts to do so. The linguistic concept of word: an analytic bibliography by Alphonse Juilland and Alexandra Roceric is a 118-page bibliography of books and articles (unsuccessfully) attempting to define
‘word’ over the past 3 millennia. Why can no one define “word”? Maybe because words simply do not exist; rather, the sentences we speak are
composed of lexemes and morphemes and these two linguistic objects
differ too much to be subsumed under one concept.
The differences between these two linguistic elements are dramatic.
Here are the major ones.

Comparison of Lexemes and Morphemes

Let’s examine these differences. Lexemes, remember, are basically
noun, verb, and adjective stems or whole words: “violin”, “play”,
“small” are lexemes. They refer to things, actions, states, and qualities
in the real world. Suffixes like -ing, “-s”, “-ed”, prefixes like “re-”, “ex-”,
“un-”, particles like “the”, “not”, “so” and prepositions like “of”, “for”,
“to” are morphemes. They refer to grammatical categories like Progressive Aspect (“-ing”: “am going”), Plural Number (“-s”: “cars”), Past Tense
(-”ed”: “walked”), Negation (“un-, not”: “unwanted”), Definite (“the”:
“the cat”), Possession (“of”: “of my friend”).

Lexemes like “violin”, “play”, and “small” are subject to derivation,
a process which generates new words from others: “violin” > “violinist”, “play” > “play-er”, “small” > “small-ness”. Morphemes do not undergo derivation even if they are not affixes which mark derivations
themselves. We do not find words derived from “the”, “that”, “of”,
“for”, “it”.
Lexemes always comprise a sound plus a meaning but morphemes
may have either one but not the other. For example, if “-er” means
“someone who does something”, as in “runner”, “player”, “driver”, what
sound has that meaning in “(a) cook”, “(a) guide”, “(a) cut-up”? With
these verbs, all we have to do is use them in a noun position, e.g. “the
cook guided us through the kitchen”, and we know that the speaker is
using the noun, not the verb.
On the other hand, morphemes sometimes show up with sound but
not meaning. Take the adjectives that end on “-ic”, e.g. “histor-ic”,
meaning “having the property of history” from “history”. There are lots
of these derivations: “climat-ic”, “theatr-ic”, “semant-ic”. But look at
this series: “dram-at-ic”, “spasm-at-ic”, “enigm-at-ic”. The meaning of
these adjectives is the same as that of the “syntactic” class: “having the
properties of X”, where “X” is the meaning of the underlying word.
However, they contain an extra morpheme, “-at”. Why is that? Well, for
some reason known only to the ancient Greeks, who enjoyed the same
derivation, before adding “-ic” you had to insert a suffix “-at” if the stem
ended on an “m”. So, when English borrowed these words from Greece,
the rule came with it. The suffix “-at” probably had meaning in Greek
but it certainly has none in English, where it is simply required of all
words borrowed from Greek ending on “m” when the suffix “-ic” is applied. So not only do we find morpheme meanings without morphemes,
we find morphemes without morphemic meaning.
The sounds of lexemes are always predetermined and remain (more
or less) the same wherever they occur in a phrase. The sound of a morpheme on the other hand, especially prefixes and suffixes may vary
wildly. The future tense in Tagalog (or Philippino) is formed by adding
a prefix. For example, “bili” is the verb stem meaning “buy” and “bibili” means “will buy”. So, if “kuha” means “get”, “will get” should be
“bi-kuha”, right? Wrong. The future of “kuha” is “ku-kuha”. The verb

9
8

meaning “laugh” is “tawa”; “will laugh” is “ta-tawa”. Catch on? What
do you think the future of “sulat” “write” is? You are right if you
guessed “su-sulat”. Tagalog reduplicates the first syllable of the verb
stem to make a prefix. In other words, the sound of the prefix is not predetermined, but is determined by the sound of the stem. The morpheme
here is not a sound but a rule for creating sound. Only morphemes may
be rules for retrieving sound, never lexemes.

Tagalog Future Tense

An important difference between lexemes and morphemes is that the
former, but not the latter, belong to an open, unlimited class. That means
that there is no limit on the number of noun, verb, and adjective stems in
any language. New lexemes may be derived by compounding, affixation, and other rules; they may be borrowed from other languages or
simply made up. The number of morphemes, however, is limited to
around 200. Proto-Indo-European languages have fewer than 100. We
are currently being inundated by new lexemes describing the categories,
states and qualities of new technology. We never meet a new preposition
(of, for, by, with), pronoun (he, she, it), or article (a, the). The fact that the
number of morphemes and the categories they refer to is fixed suggests
that they determine the grammar of a language. That is why the Jabberwocky Song ‘sounds’ like English even though it is incomprehensible. It
is English with nonsense lexemes but real morphemes.
So, what is going on when we speak is a bit more subtle than stringing “words” together in phrases. Assuming that “on” is a word does not
distinguish between the lexeme “on” in “The oven is on” and the morpheme “on” in “on the table”. Why is this important? It helps us understand the important difference between grammar and vocabulary. The

meaning of “on” the morpheme, but not that of the lexeme may be expressed by a suffix in some languages (cf. Finnish and Hungarian, for
example). It helps us understand why children begin learning lexemes
around the age of one, about a year before they begin learning grammar,
represented by morphemes. They only begin picking up morphemes
around the age of two, when they begin using phrases. Finally, it helps
explain why chimpanzees can learn what seem to be lexemes but not
morphemes (morphemes represent grammar, the essential core of language). Morphemes convey the categories of grammar itself, so if we
want to understand language itself, we must understand first and foremost
morphemes. Lexemes are not going to tell us much about language.
Remember, the magic word is LINGUISTICS, a very new science,
indeed. Morphology is the study of words and their parts: morphemes
and lexemes. It examines the grammatical and semantic categories they
convey as well as the sounds and sound changes caused by combining
them. It also explores the relations of words in sentences.

What is morphology?
Morphology is the study of word structure. When linguists study
morphology, they are interested in the different categories of morphemes that make up words (including bound, free, derivational and
inflectional morphemes), as well as morphological processes for forming new words.

What are morphemes?
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful pieces of language that
make up words. Words may consist of one or more morphemes. For example, how many morphemes does the word “boys” contain? Right, two —
“boy” is one morpheme or meaningful chunk, and “s” is another (the “s”
here carries the grammatical meaning of plural). Other individual
sounds, such as the [b] in “boy,” however, are not morphemes because
they carry no individual meaning.

What are the different types of morphemes in English words?
In English, we can divide our morphemes along several dimensions.
One way to categorize them is in terms of bound and free classes.

9
8

meaning “laugh” is “tawa”; “will laugh” is “ta-tawa”. Catch on? What
do you think the future of “sulat” “write” is? You are right if you
guessed “su-sulat”. Tagalog reduplicates the first syllable of the verb
stem to make a prefix. In other words, the sound of the prefix is not predetermined, but is determined by the sound of the stem. The morpheme
here is not a sound but a rule for creating sound. Only morphemes may
be rules for retrieving sound, never lexemes.

Tagalog Future Tense

An important difference between lexemes and morphemes is that the
former, but not the latter, belong to an open, unlimited class. That means
that there is no limit on the number of noun, verb, and adjective stems in
any language. New lexemes may be derived by compounding, affixation, and other rules; they may be borrowed from other languages or
simply made up. The number of morphemes, however, is limited to
around 200. Proto-Indo-European languages have fewer than 100. We
are currently being inundated by new lexemes describing the categories,
states and qualities of new technology. We never meet a new preposition
(of, for, by, with), pronoun (he, she, it), or article (a, the). The fact that the
number of morphemes and the categories they refer to is fixed suggests
that they determine the grammar of a language. That is why the Jabberwocky Song ‘sounds’ like English even though it is incomprehensible. It
is English with nonsense lexemes but real morphemes.
So, what is going on when we speak is a bit more subtle than stringing “words” together in phrases. Assuming that “on” is a word does not
distinguish between the lexeme “on” in “The oven is on” and the morpheme “on” in “on the table”. Why is this important? It helps us understand the important difference between grammar and vocabulary. The

meaning of “on” the morpheme, but not that of the lexeme may be expressed by a suffix in some languages (cf. Finnish and Hungarian, for
example). It helps us understand why children begin learning lexemes
around the age of one, about a year before they begin learning grammar,
represented by morphemes. They only begin picking up morphemes
around the age of two, when they begin using phrases. Finally, it helps
explain why chimpanzees can learn what seem to be lexemes but not
morphemes (morphemes represent grammar, the essential core of language). Morphemes convey the categories of grammar itself, so if we
want to understand language itself, we must understand first and foremost
morphemes. Lexemes are not going to tell us much about language.
Remember, the magic word is LINGUISTICS, a very new science,
indeed. Morphology is the study of words and their parts: morphemes
and lexemes. It examines the grammatical and semantic categories they
convey as well as the sounds and sound changes caused by combining
them. It also explores the relations of words in sentences.

What is morphology?
Morphology is the study of word structure. When linguists study
morphology, they are interested in the different categories of morphemes that make up words (including bound, free, derivational and
inflectional morphemes), as well as morphological processes for forming new words.

What are morphemes?
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful pieces of language that
make up words. Words may consist of one or more morphemes. For example, how many morphemes does the word “boys” contain? Right, two —
“boy” is one morpheme or meaningful chunk, and “s” is another (the “s”
here carries the grammatical meaning of plural). Other individual
sounds, such as the [b] in “boy,” however, are not morphemes because
they carry no individual meaning.

What are the different types of morphemes in English words?
In English, we can divide our morphemes along several dimensions.
One way to categorize them is in terms of bound and free classes.

11
10

Bound morphemes are, as their name suggests, those that must be attached to a free morpheme. They cannot stand alone as a word. For example, “un-” is a bound morpheme. It does, in fact, have meaning
(roughly “not” or “reverse / opposite”). However, it usually does not
hang out by itself; it must be attached to free morphemes like “kind” or
“appealing” to form “unkind” or “unappealing”. The morphemes “-ity”
and “-ing” are also bound, needing to attach themselves to free morphemes such as “sincere” or “sing” to form “sincerity” or “singing”.
By now, you may have figured out that free morphemes are morphemes that can stand alone as words, thus giving them “free” status.
Words such as “kind”, “boy”, “ desk”, “the”, “to”, “clock”, “run”, are all
examples of free morphemes.

What else have you noticed about the differences between bound and
free morphemes?
Bound morphemes tend to be affixes (e.g. prefixes and suffixes),
attaching to the beginnings and ends of words. Free morphemes, on the
other hand, tend to be word roots, the strong building blocks conveying much of the core meanings of words. For example, what is the root
morpheme in “stylish”? Yes, it is “style”, and notice that this root is
also free; it can stand alone as a word. What about the suffix “-ish”? It
is a bound morpheme that must be attached to a free morpheme. (Note:
As Fromkin and Rodman point out, there are a few bound morphemes
in English that are roots, rather than affixes. For example, in the word
“inept”, one might identify “ept” as the root. But notice that this root
is usually bound rather than free. That is, few speakers tend to use
“ept” by itself.)
Bound morphemes that are prefixes or suffixes can be further divided into derivational and inflectional categories.

What are derivational and inflectional morphemes?
When affixes attach to words, they change the words in various
ways. Derivational affixes change the meaning or part of speech (grammatical category) of a word. For example, in the word “unkind”, the prefix “un-” is a derivational morpheme. Why? Because it changes the

meaning of the word. In this case, the meaning is changed to the opposite. Does it change the part of speech of the word? No, “kind” is an adjective and “unkind” is still an adjective. In the word “kindness”, what
about the suffix “-ness”? The suffix “-ness” is also derivational, and this
time it does change the part of speech of the word: “kind” is an adjective and “kindness” is a noun. Note that when you change part of
speech, you also change meaning; for example, the adjective “kind” has
a different meaning from the noun “kindness”.
Inflectional affixes are ones that do not change a word’s part of
speech or meaning (in a significant way) but rather add grammatical information about number (singular/plural), tense, person (first, second,
third), and any of a few other categories. For example, in the word
“obeyed”, can you identify any inflectional affixes? Yes, the suffix “-ed”
is inflectional; it adds grammatical information about past tense. Note
that it does not change the part of speech of the word (“obey” and “obeyed”
are both verbs), nor does it alter the core meaning of “obey”. In English,
we have very few inflectional affixes (a total of eight) and all of them
are suffixes. Thus, one would describe English as a weakly inflected
language. English used to have more grammatical inflections but these
have dropped out over time.

English Inflectional Affixes

11
10

Bound morphemes are, as their name suggests, those that must be attached to a free morpheme. They cannot stand alone as a word. For example, “un-” is a bound morpheme. It does, in fact, have meaning
(roughly “not” or “reverse / opposite”). However, it usually does not
hang out by itself; it must be attached to free morphemes like “kind” or
“appealing” to form “unkind” or “unappealing”. The morphemes “-ity”
and “-ing” are also bound, needing to attach themselves to free morphemes such as “sincere” or “sing” to form “sincerity” or “singing”.
By now, you may have figured out that free morphemes are morphemes that can stand alone as words, thus giving them “free” status.
Words such as “kind”, “boy”, “ desk”, “the”, “to”, “clock”, “run”, are all
examples of free morphemes.

What else have you noticed about the differences between bound and
free morphemes?
Bound morphemes tend to be affixes (e.g. prefixes and suffixes),
attaching to the beginnings and ends of words. Free morphemes, on the
other hand, tend to be word roots, the strong building blocks conveying much of the core meanings of words. For example, what is the root
morpheme in “stylish”? Yes, it is “style”, and notice that this root is
also free; it can stand alone as a word. What about the suffix “-ish”? It
is a bound morpheme that must be attached to a free morpheme. (Note:
As Fromkin and Rodman point out, there are a few bound morphemes
in English that are roots, rather than affixes. For example, in the word
“inept”, one might identify “ept” as the root. But notice that this root
is usually bound rather than free. That is, few speakers tend to use
“ept” by itself.)
Bound morphemes that are prefixes or suffixes can be further divided into derivational and inflectional categories.

What are derivational and inflectional morphemes?
When affixes attach to words, they change the words in various
ways. Derivational affixes change the meaning or part of speech (grammatical category) of a word. For example, in the word “unkind”, the prefix “un-” is a derivational morpheme. Why? Because it changes the

meaning of the word. In this case, the meaning is changed to the opposite. Does it change the part of speech of the word? No, “kind” is an adjective and “unkind” is still an adjective. In the word “kindness”, what
about the suffix “-ness”? The suffix “-ness” is also derivational, and this
time it does change the part of speech of the word: “kind” is an adjective and “kindness” is a noun. Note that when you change part of
speech, you also change meaning; for example, the adjective “kind” has
a different meaning from the noun “kindness”.
Inflectional affixes are ones that do not change a word’s part of
speech or meaning (in a significant way) but rather add grammatical information about number (singular/plural), tense, person (first, second,
third), and any of a few other categories. For example, in the word
“obeyed”, can you identify any inflectional affixes? Yes, the suffix “-ed”
is inflectional; it adds grammatical information about past tense. Note
that it does not change the part of speech of the word (“obey” and “obeyed”
are both verbs), nor does it alter the core meaning of “obey”. In English,
we have very few inflectional affixes (a total of eight) and all of them
are suffixes. Thus, one would describe English as a weakly inflected
language. English used to have more grammatical inflections but these
have dropped out over time.

English Inflectional Affixes

13
12

MORPHOLOGY EXERCISES

I.
Divide the following words into their morphemes. Indicate which
morphemes are inflectional and which are derivational.

Mistreatment, disactivation, psychology, airsickness, terrorized,
uncivilized, lukewarm.

II.
Identify the component morpheme(s) of each word. How many morphemes does each word contain?

a) student
h) unreliable
o) paper

b) stupidity
i)
trial
p) inversion

c) unfair
j)
disinfectant
q) magazine

d) excellent
k) unfairly
r)
ugly

e) sleeping
l)
husbands
s)
sandwich

f)
unemployed
m) island
t)
crinkly

g) deforms
n) classroom

III.
For the following words, identify all roots (base words).

a) dragged
f)
unassuming

b) deactivated
g) redness

c) impossible
h) racketeers

d) thumbtack
i)
cloudiness

e) hopefully
j)
exceptionally

IV.
Do a full morphological analysis of each of the following words. Steps:

1. Say how many morphemes are in the underlined word in each phrase, and rewrite the word with hyphens between the morphemes.

2. Identify each morpheme in the word as bound or free; root, prefix or suffix; and, if an affix, inflectional or derivational. For
inflectional morphemes, identify the category the affix marks
(tense, number, etc.), and whether or not the suffix appears in a
regular or irregular form.

3. For bound morphemes, give at least two other words in which
the same morpheme appears (same meaning; same or nearly
same form). An example is done for you.

Example: Several Americanisms 4: America-an-ism-s

America: free root

-an: bound derivational suffix; e.g., “Dominican”, “Republican”,
“Asian”

-ism: bound derivational suffix; e.g., “Communism”, “defeatism”

-s: bound inflectional suffix, regular plural; e.g., “walls”, “things”

1. An unfortunate error; 2. Exchanging pleasantries; 3. We
have misidentified the victim; 4. Children’s clothing; 5. They’re
previewing the slides; 6. Her two ex-husbands; 7. Which scenarios
is unlikelier? 8. He unmasks me every time! 9. The safest location;
10. The inspector’s parking place; 11. They are all reactionaries;
12. The play delighted us.

V.
Identify inflectional morphemes.

Having thus answered the only objection that can ever be
raised against me as a traveller, I here take a final leave of all my
courteous readers and return to enjoy my own speculations in my
little garden at Redriff; to apply those excellent lessons of virtue
which I learned among the Houyhnhnms; to instruct the Yahoos of
my own family, as far as I shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus, if possible, habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creature, to lament the
brutality to Houyhnhnms in my own country, but always treat their
persons with respect, for the sake of my noble master, his family,
his friends, and the whole Houyhnhnm race, whom these of ours
have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their
intellectuals came to degenerate.

VI. Read the following paragraph and then answer the questions below:

For all his boasting in that 1906 song, Jelly Roll Morton was
right. Folks then and now, it seems, can’t get enough of his music.
Half a century after his death, U.S. audiences are flocking to see
two red-hot musicals about the smooth-talking jazz player; and for
those who can’t make it, a four-volume CD set of Morton’s historic
1938 taping of words and music for the Library of Congress has

12

MORPHOLOGY EXERCISES

I.
Divide the following words into their morphemes. Indicate which
morphemes are inflectional and which are derivational.

Mistreatment, disactivation, psychology, airsickness, terrorized,
uncivilized, lukewarm.

II.
Identify the component morpheme(s) of each word. How many morphemes does each word contain?

a) student
h) unreliable
o) paper

b) stupidity
i)
trial
p) inversion

c) unfair
j)
disinfectant
q) magazine

d) excellent
k) unfairly
r)
ugly

e) sleeping
l)
husbands
s)
sandwich

f)
unemployed
m) island
t)
crinkly

g) deforms
n) classroom

III.
For the following words, identify all roots (base words).

a) dragged
f)
unassuming

b) deactivated
g) redness

c) impossible
h) racketeers

d) thumbtack
i)
cloudiness

e) hopefully
j)
exceptionally

IV.
Do a full morphological analysis of each of the following words. Steps:

1. Say how many morphemes are in the underlined word in each phrase, and rewrite the word with hyphens between the morphemes.

2. Identify each morpheme in the word as bound or free; root, prefix or suffix; and, if an affix, inflectional or derivational. For
inflectional morphemes, identify the category the affix marks
(tense, number, etc.), and whether or not the suffix appears in a
regular or irregular form.

3. For bound morphemes, give at least two other words in which
the same morpheme appears (same meaning; same or nearly
same form). An example is done for you.

Example: Several Americanisms 4: America-an-ism-s

America: free root

-an: bound derivational suffix; e.g., “Dominican”, “Republican”,
“Asian”

-ism: bound derivational suffix; e.g., “Communism”, “defeatism”

-s: bound inflectional suffix, regular plural; e.g., “walls”, “things”

1. An unfortunate error; 2. Exchanging pleasantries; 3. We
have misidentified the victim; 4. Children’s clothing; 5. They’re
previewing the slides; 6. Her two ex-husbands; 7. Which scenarios
is unlikelier? 8. He unmasks me every time! 9. The safest location;
10. The inspector’s parking place; 11. They are all reactionaries;
12. The play delighted us.

V.
Identify inflectional morphemes.

Having thus answered the only objection that can ever be
raised against me as a traveller, I here take a final leave of all my
courteous readers and return to enjoy my own speculations in my
little garden at Redriff; to apply those excellent lessons of virtue
which I learned among the Houyhnhnms; to instruct the Yahoos of
my own family, as far as I shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus, if possible, habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creature, to lament the
brutality to Houyhnhnms in my own country, but always treat their
persons with respect, for the sake of my noble master, his family,
his friends, and the whole Houyhnhnm race, whom these of ours
have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their
intellectuals came to degenerate.

VI. Read the following paragraph and then answer the questions below:

For all his boasting in that 1906 song, Jelly Roll Morton was
right. Folks then and now, it seems, can’t get enough of his music.
Half a century after his death, U.S. audiences are flocking to see
two red-hot musicals about the smooth-talking jazz player; and for
those who can’t make it, a four-volume CD set of Morton’s historic
1938 taping of words and music for the Library of Congress has

14

been released (Jelly Roll Morton: The Library of Congress Recordings;
Rounder Records; $15.98) and is selling nicely. Morton was not the creator of jazz he claimed to be, but such was his originality as a composer
and pianist that his influence has persisted down the years, vindicating
what he said back in 1938: “Whatever these guys play today, they’re
playing Jelly Roll” (from: Time, January 16, 1995).

(a)
List the plural nouns which occur in this extract, and arrange
them according to their respective plural allomorphs: /s/, /z/, /iz/.

(b)  List those nouns in the extract which have the meaning ‘one
who performs an action and state which of these are formed
according to a productive morphological rule.

(c)
Which types of inflectional morphemes can you find in the
extract? Give one example of each type, i.e. two nominal inflections, and four verbal inflections.

What are morphological processes?
The different ways in which morphemes combine to form new
words are known as morphological processes. There are several such
processes in English, two major ones being affixation and compounding. Affixation is the process of adding an affix or affixes to a word to
form a new word. Other words in English are formed through compounding, whereby two or more words are combined to form a new
word, such as “blackboard”, “spoonfeed”, “mother-in-law”, or “train
station”. Notice that compounds may be written as an uninterrupted
word (e.g. “blackboard”), as words separated by hyphens (e.g. “motherin-law”), or as separate words that seem to group together as a single
word unit (e.g. “train station”).

Are there other ways that new words enter the English language?
Besides affixation and compounding, new words can enter the English language through a variety of other processes, some of which are
outlined below.

Blending
Let’s take a closer look at these four means of adding to the lexical
base of English, beginning with blends. Blends are actually a common
type of speech error. When we search our mental lexicons for words, we
often come upon two words with the same meaning that are pronounced
similarly. Because human beings are so quick at speaking, sometimes we
have to use one of these words before we are finished choosing which
one to use.
The adverbs “mainly” and “mostly” are almost interchangeable:
their structure and meanings are very similar as are their pronunciations.
Someone wanting to say, say, “It was mainly/mostly his own doing”,
might find both these words simultaneously in his or her mental lexicon
while uttering this sentence. The sentence structure is mentally created
with one slot for one short word meaning “principally, predominantly”.
The speaker checks his or her mental lexicons and comes up with two
words of exactly the same length, beginning with the same sound, ending on the same suffix, and having the same meaning. Before they can
choose between the two, they have to say the word, so they stuff both of
them into the one syntactical slot: “It was mostly, ah, mostly his doing”.
This example actually happened as was recorded. (The speaker in this
case caught the error and corrected himself but this does not always happen.) Here are some more blends that occurred as actual speech errors.

English Speech Error Blends

There is a natural tendency caused by the nature of lexical selection
during speech to create blends but we also do it consciously. When English-speakers began driving their cars everywhere rather than taking the
train, someone came up with the idea of a hotel where they could park
their motor cars right by the door to their room. This hotel differed from

15
14

been released (Jelly Roll Morton: The Library of Congress Recordings;
Rounder Records; $15.98) and is selling nicely. Morton was not the creator of jazz he claimed to be, but such was his originality as a composer
and pianist that his influence has persisted down the years, vindicating
what he said back in 1938: “Whatever these guys play today, they’re
playing Jelly Roll” (from: Time, January 16, 1995).

(a)
List the plural nouns which occur in this extract, and arrange
them according to their respective plural allomorphs: /s/, /z/, /iz/.

(b)  List those nouns in the extract which have the meaning ‘one
who performs an action and state which of these are formed
according to a productive morphological rule.

(c)
Which types of inflectional morphemes can you find in the
extract? Give one example of each type, i.e. two nominal inflections, and four verbal inflections.

What are morphological processes?
The different ways in which morphemes combine to form new
words are known as morphological processes. There are several such
processes in English, two major ones being affixation and compounding. Affixation is the process of adding an affix or affixes to a word to
form a new word. Other words in English are formed through compounding, whereby two or more words are combined to form a new
word, such as “blackboard”, “spoonfeed”, “mother-in-law”, or “train
station”. Notice that compounds may be written as an uninterrupted
word (e.g. “blackboard”), as words separated by hyphens (e.g. “motherin-law”), or as separate words that seem to group together as a single
word unit (e.g. “train station”).

Are there other ways that new words enter the English language?
Besides affixation and compounding, new words can enter the English language through a variety of other processes, some of which are
outlined below.

Blending
Let’s take a closer look at these four means of adding to the lexical
base of English, beginning with blends. Blends are actually a common
type of speech error. When we search our mental lexicons for words, we
often come upon two words with the same meaning that are pronounced
similarly. Because human beings are so quick at speaking, sometimes we
have to use one of these words before we are finished choosing which
one to use.
The adverbs “mainly” and “mostly” are almost interchangeable:
their structure and meanings are very similar as are their pronunciations.
Someone wanting to say, say, “It was mainly/mostly his own doing”,
might find both these words simultaneously in his or her mental lexicon
while uttering this sentence. The sentence structure is mentally created
with one slot for one short word meaning “principally, predominantly”.
The speaker checks his or her mental lexicons and comes up with two
words of exactly the same length, beginning with the same sound, ending on the same suffix, and having the same meaning. Before they can
choose between the two, they have to say the word, so they stuff both of
them into the one syntactical slot: “It was mostly, ah, mostly his doing”.
This example actually happened as was recorded. (The speaker in this
case caught the error and corrected himself but this does not always happen.) Here are some more blends that occurred as actual speech errors.

English Speech Error Blends

There is a natural tendency caused by the nature of lexical selection
during speech to create blends but we also do it consciously. When English-speakers began driving their cars everywhere rather than taking the
train, someone came up with the idea of a hotel where they could park
their motor cars right by the door to their room. This hotel differed from

17
16

others in that it accommodated what were called then “motor cars”. To
distinguish this type of hotel from others, someone blended “motor” and
“hotel” together, giving us “motel”.

Clipping
Clipping is an even more wide-spread way of creating new stems.
The odd thing about clipping, however, is that the newly clipped word
usually continues to exist alongside the original, so “doc” and “doctor”
coexist, “phone” and “telephone” don’t seem to get in each other’s way.
The same applies to “TV” and “television”, “bio” and “biology”, “math”
and “mathematics”, and so on. Another interesting thing about clipping
is that we don’t seem to care much which end of a word we clip. We clip
the end of “rep(resentative)”, “prof(essor)”, “sub(marine)”, “prep(are)”,
and “phys(ical) ed(ucation)”, but the beginning of “(tele)phone”,
“(cara)van”, “(tele)scope”, “(ham)burger”. Sometimes we clip both ends!
Where do you think we get “(re)fridge(rator)” and “(in)flu(enza)”?
Sometimes clippings do replace their base form. “Cab(riolet)” seems
to have stuck, as has “(cara)van”. I doubt we go back to the full form of
“(aero)plane”, from the Greek compound meaning “gliding on air”. But
clipping is mostly the result of our effort to talk as fast as we think in a
society so complex that many simple ideas can only be expressed by
long words or phrases. Just as we often clip one activity to get on to another, we clip the words we speak.
We know that clippings are new words, or stems, because they undergo derivations. The clippings for “Chevrolet” and “Cadillac” immediately underwent diminutivization to become “Chevy” and “Caddy”,
just like “pup” becomes diminutive “puppy” because “pups” are small.
Of course, they all pluralize, too; “profs”, “fridges”, “burgers” present
no problems. So clippings are new stems from which other words may
be derived.

Back-formation
We know subconsciously that derivation rules exist. We know that
we add “-s” to form plurals, that we add “-er” to “mak” Agentive nouns
that means “someone who does something”, and that we add “-ing” to
achieve a variety of meanings. Some words accidentally end on these

sounds (letters) and occasionally the word has the meaning of the suffix
built in. For example, “pedlar” is an old English word that has nothing
to do with “peddles” or feet. It meant to sell things. However, because it
ended on the sound [êr] and referred to someone who does something,
English speakers have removed the final “ar” and begun using the verb
“peddle” to mean “sell things”. As a result, the spelling has changed from
“pedlar” to “peddler”.
Notice that this does not always happen. Butchers are people who do
things and the word “butcher” ends on “-er” but we do not say that
butchers “butch”. Still, this way of creating new stems is a fairly popular one. The verb “aviate” was back derived from “aviator”; the verb
didn’t exist in Latin, where we borrowed “aviator”. The verb “to craze”
was back derived from “crazy”; the verb originally meant only “to
crack” (hence our association with cracked heads and pots with insanity). We are also saying that people “laze about”, again, a back-formation
from “lazy”; the verb did not exist before the adjective. However, the
suffix “-y” is common on adjectives derived from verbs, as these examples illustrate: “leak-y, chew-y, billow-y”.

Abbreviation
As we add more and more concepts to our daily lives, our wordmaking processes cannot keep up with the require naming. We have to
name things and activities with phrases like “New York Police Department”, “North American Treaty Organization”, “Private Investigator”,
and “Department of Education”. If you are talking about one of these
entities, and have to use the term over and over, it can slow down the
conversation — after all, each of them refers to one easily comprehended concept. To keep the conversation moving along smoothly, we often
just pronounce the initials of the words in the phrase: PI, NYPD, COD,
DOD, PDQ, AM, TV.
Often, these pronunciations then become words themselves. It is
doubtful, for example, that anyone other than a few scholars knows what
“AM” or “SOS” stands for anymore. Yet we use them more and more
like a regular noun, as in “in the AM” or “He gave out a series of SOSs” [esoweses]. We also know that these abbreviations are base words, or
stems, because they are susceptible to derivation. The verb “to over

16

others in that it accommodated what were called then “motor cars”. To
distinguish this type of hotel from others, someone blended “motor” and
“hotel” together, giving us “motel”.

Clipping
Clipping is an even more wide-spread way of creating new stems.
The odd thing about clipping, however, is that the newly clipped word
usually continues to exist alongside the original, so “doc” and “doctor”
coexist, “phone” and “telephone” don’t seem to get in each other’s way.
The same applies to “TV” and “television”, “bio” and “biology”, “math”
and “mathematics”, and so on. Another interesting thing about clipping
is that we don’t seem to care much which end of a word we clip. We clip
the end of “rep(resentative)”, “prof(essor)”, “sub(marine)”, “prep(are)”,
and “phys(ical) ed(ucation)”, but the beginning of “(tele)phone”,
“(cara)van”, “(tele)scope”, “(ham)burger”. Sometimes we clip both ends!
Where do you think we get “(re)fridge(rator)” and “(in)flu(enza)”?
Sometimes clippings do replace their base form. “Cab(riolet)” seems
to have stuck, as has “(cara)van”. I doubt we go back to the full form of
“(aero)plane”, from the Greek compound meaning “gliding on air”. But
clipping is mostly the result of our effort to talk as fast as we think in a
society so complex that many simple ideas can only be expressed by
long words or phrases. Just as we often clip one activity to get on to another, we clip the words we speak.
We know that clippings are new words, or stems, because they undergo derivations. The clippings for “Chevrolet” and “Cadillac” immediately underwent diminutivization to become “Chevy” and “Caddy”,
just like “pup” becomes diminutive “puppy” because “pups” are small.
Of course, they all pluralize, too; “profs”, “fridges”, “burgers” present
no problems. So clippings are new stems from which other words may
be derived.

Back-formation
We know subconsciously that derivation rules exist. We know that
we add “-s” to form plurals, that we add “-er” to “mak” Agentive nouns
that means “someone who does something”, and that we add “-ing” to
achieve a variety of meanings. Some words accidentally end on these

sounds (letters) and occasionally the word has the meaning of the suffix
built in. For example, “pedlar” is an old English word that has nothing
to do with “peddles” or feet. It meant to sell things. However, because it
ended on the sound [êr] and referred to someone who does something,
English speakers have removed the final “ar” and begun using the verb
“peddle” to mean “sell things”. As a result, the spelling has changed from
“pedlar” to “peddler”.
Notice that this does not always happen. Butchers are people who do
things and the word “butcher” ends on “-er” but we do not say that
butchers “butch”. Still, this way of creating new stems is a fairly popular one. The verb “aviate” was back derived from “aviator”; the verb
didn’t exist in Latin, where we borrowed “aviator”. The verb “to craze”
was back derived from “crazy”; the verb originally meant only “to
crack” (hence our association with cracked heads and pots with insanity). We are also saying that people “laze about”, again, a back-formation
from “lazy”; the verb did not exist before the adjective. However, the
suffix “-y” is common on adjectives derived from verbs, as these examples illustrate: “leak-y, chew-y, billow-y”.

Abbreviation
As we add more and more concepts to our daily lives, our wordmaking processes cannot keep up with the require naming. We have to
name things and activities with phrases like “New York Police Department”, “North American Treaty Organization”, “Private Investigator”,
and “Department of Education”. If you are talking about one of these
entities, and have to use the term over and over, it can slow down the
conversation — after all, each of them refers to one easily comprehended concept. To keep the conversation moving along smoothly, we often
just pronounce the initials of the words in the phrase: PI, NYPD, COD,
DOD, PDQ, AM, TV.
Often, these pronunciations then become words themselves. It is
doubtful, for example, that anyone other than a few scholars knows what
“AM” or “SOS” stands for anymore. Yet we use them more and more
like a regular noun, as in “in the AM” or “He gave out a series of SOSs” [esoweses]. We also know that these abbreviations are base words, or
stems, because they are susceptible to derivation. The verb “to over

18

dose” has almost been replaced by the abbreviation “OD”. In speech, it
now has all the characteristics of normal verbs, taking all the verb suffixes: “John OD-ed” [odeed], “OD-ing is not my idea of fun”, “What
happens if she OD-s?” As with clipping, the original word usually stays;
however, sometimes the abbreviation becomes a word on its own with
its own distinct meaning (as with the case of ID and the infamous “P”).

Acronyms
Pronounceable abbreviations almost always replace their original
phrase. In fact, often the phrases are contrived just to produce a new,
pronounceable stem. This is true in the case of “laser”, reputed to be an
acronym of “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”.
Who knows why the inventors chose to call it a laser. (It has undergone
back-formation, by the way. Some people say “to lase”, “lasing”, “lasable”, etc.). Here are some more acronyms in English.

Origin of English Acronyms

Derived Words
In addition to the words a language inherits and those it borrows
from other languages, all languages have rules for creating new words
from old ones within the language itself. These rules are called derivation or word formation rules. New words may be formed by adding
prefixes, particles added to the beginning of words, or suffixes, particles added to the end. For example, the English suffix -er creates a noun
meaning “someone who does X” from a verb, where “X” is the meaning
of the verb the noun is created from. So, from the verb “run” we can create “runner” “someone who runs”, from “work” we can create “worker”
“someone who works” and so on.

The suffix “-ing” has many functions in English but one of them is
to create nouns from verbs meaning “the thing created by X-ing”:
“carve”: “a carving” “the thing carved”, “cut”: “a cutting” “the thing
cut” (flower or newspaper article), “painting” “the thing painted”, and
so forth. Of course, this suffix is more often used to create a noun meaning the action of the verb itself, as in running, cooking, drinking, acting.
Here is a list of the most common endings and prefixes used to derive
words in English.

Some English Derivational Affixes

As soon as a new stem (base word) enters the language, it is immediately subject to derivation. If we were to begin using “blick” tomor
19
18

dose” has almost been replaced by the abbreviation “OD”. In speech, it
now has all the characteristics of normal verbs, taking all the verb suffixes: “John OD-ed” [odeed], “OD-ing is not my idea of fun”, “What
happens if she OD-s?” As with clipping, the original word usually stays;
however, sometimes the abbreviation becomes a word on its own with
its own distinct meaning (as with the case of ID and the infamous “P”).

Acronyms
Pronounceable abbreviations almost always replace their original
phrase. In fact, often the phrases are contrived just to produce a new,
pronounceable stem. This is true in the case of “laser”, reputed to be an
acronym of “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”.
Who knows why the inventors chose to call it a laser. (It has undergone
back-formation, by the way. Some people say “to lase”, “lasing”, “lasable”, etc.). Here are some more acronyms in English.

Origin of English Acronyms

Derived Words
In addition to the words a language inherits and those it borrows
from other languages, all languages have rules for creating new words
from old ones within the language itself. These rules are called derivation or word formation rules. New words may be formed by adding
prefixes, particles added to the beginning of words, or suffixes, particles added to the end. For example, the English suffix -er creates a noun
meaning “someone who does X” from a verb, where “X” is the meaning
of the verb the noun is created from. So, from the verb “run” we can create “runner” “someone who runs”, from “work” we can create “worker”
“someone who works” and so on.

The suffix “-ing” has many functions in English but one of them is
to create nouns from verbs meaning “the thing created by X-ing”:
“carve”: “a carving” “the thing carved”, “cut”: “a cutting” “the thing
cut” (flower or newspaper article), “painting” “the thing painted”, and
so forth. Of course, this suffix is more often used to create a noun meaning the action of the verb itself, as in running, cooking, drinking, acting.
Here is a list of the most common endings and prefixes used to derive
words in English.

Some English Derivational Affixes

As soon as a new stem (base word) enters the language, it is immediately subject to derivation. If we were to begin using “blick” tomor
21
20

row as a verb meaning “to wrap in aluminum foil”, we would immediately have a constellation of words derivable from it: blicker, blicking
(with several meanings), blickable, blickability, unblickable and, maybe,
blickee.

WORD FORMATION EXERCISES

I.
Give the meaning of the highlighted suffix in the following words.
Be as specific as possible.

1. spectator
6. canine
11.
bronchitis

2. phobia
7. communism
12. pubescent

3. asteroid
8. antipathy
13. stadium

4. solarium
9. erudite
14. carcinoma

5. prognosis
10. unity
15. finalize

II. Inflectional and Derivational Suffixes

Determine what kind of suffix is highlighted in the words below.
Use the structure of the sentences to guide your decision. The item
number follows the word.

Inflectional Suffix

Noun-forming Derivational Suffix

Verb-forming Derivational Suffix

Adjective-forming Derivational Suffix

It was a dark and tempestuous (1) night. Suddenly, an explosion
(2) pierced (3) the silence (4). The maid’s (5) persistent (6) screams
(7) rang from the conservatory (8). The butler was running (9) up
the stairs, when he stumbled over the prostrate (10) body of his erstwhile employer (11), a reclusive (12) industrialist (13). Quickly, he
deduced that the man had been given (14) a fatal (15) dose of an anesthetic (16). A fragile (17) document (18) was missing from the gigantic (19) safe. He began to organize (20) a reconnaissance (21) to
search for the fugitive (22). After that, he planned to interrogate (23)
the miscreant (24).

III.
Use the prefixes and suffixes auto-, bio-, inter-, tele-, sub-, trans-,
-logy and the other clues given below, to build 12 words.

1. Something that moves, or is mobile, by itself:

2. “Graph” means recording or writing, so a word meaning “selfwriting” would be:

3. If “-matic” means working, then a mechanism that works by itself is:

4. Marine means to do with the sea. What can go under the sea?

5. A word meaning “across the sea” could be:

6. Portare is the Latin word “to carry”. Make a word that means
“carry across”:

7. Flights “between nations” are described as:

8. Writing from far away:

9. Do you have 20/20 vision? This word means “seeing from
far”:

10. A word meaning “life study”:

11.
A piece of writing about someone else’s life:

12. Can you guess a word “self-life-writing”?

IV.
English has two noun-building suffixes for qualities: -ness and -ity as
in aptness, brightness, calmness, openness, strangeness, and beauty, conformity, cruelty, difficulty, excessivity, regularity. These differences are often related to the origin of the word stems.

(a)
Can you see any regular pattern for the cases when -ness is
used and when -(i)ty?

(b)
The adjective odd has two derivational nouns, oddness and
oddity. Which one do you feel to be the normal derivation?
Why? What is the difference in meaning between oddness and
oddity? Consult a dictionary to check your answers.

V.
By means of which word-formation processes have the following lexemes been arrived at?

20

row as a verb meaning “to wrap in aluminum foil”, we would immediately have a constellation of words derivable from it: blicker, blicking
(with several meanings), blickable, blickability, unblickable and, maybe,
blickee.

WORD FORMATION EXERCISES

I.
Give the meaning of the highlighted suffix in the following words.
Be as specific as possible.

1. spectator
6. canine
11.
bronchitis

2. phobia
7. communism
12. pubescent

3. asteroid
8. antipathy
13. stadium

4. solarium
9. erudite
14. carcinoma

5. prognosis
10. unity
15. finalize

II. Inflectional and Derivational Suffixes

Determine what kind of suffix is highlighted in the words below.
Use the structure of the sentences to guide your decision. The item
number follows the word.

Inflectional Suffix

Noun-forming Derivational Suffix

Verb-forming Derivational Suffix

Adjective-forming Derivational Suffix

It was a dark and tempestuous (1) night. Suddenly, an explosion
(2) pierced (3) the silence (4). The maid’s (5) persistent (6) screams
(7) rang from the conservatory (8). The butler was running (9) up
the stairs, when he stumbled over the prostrate (10) body of his erstwhile employer (11), a reclusive (12) industrialist (13). Quickly, he
deduced that the man had been given (14) a fatal (15) dose of an anesthetic (16). A fragile (17) document (18) was missing from the gigantic (19) safe. He began to organize (20) a reconnaissance (21) to
search for the fugitive (22). After that, he planned to interrogate (23)
the miscreant (24).

III.
Use the prefixes and suffixes auto-, bio-, inter-, tele-, sub-, trans-,
-logy and the other clues given below, to build 12 words.

1. Something that moves, or is mobile, by itself:

2. “Graph” means recording or writing, so a word meaning “selfwriting” would be:

3. If “-matic” means working, then a mechanism that works by itself is:

4. Marine means to do with the sea. What can go under the sea?

5. A word meaning “across the sea” could be:

6. Portare is the Latin word “to carry”. Make a word that means
“carry across”:

7. Flights “between nations” are described as:

8. Writing from far away:

9. Do you have 20/20 vision? This word means “seeing from
far”:

10. A word meaning “life study”:

11.
A piece of writing about someone else’s life:

12. Can you guess a word “self-life-writing”?

IV.
English has two noun-building suffixes for qualities: -ness and -ity as
in aptness, brightness, calmness, openness, strangeness, and beauty, conformity, cruelty, difficulty, excessivity, regularity. These differences are often related to the origin of the word stems.

(a)
Can you see any regular pattern for the cases when -ness is
used and when -(i)ty?

(b)
The adjective odd has two derivational nouns, oddness and
oddity. Which one do you feel to be the normal derivation?
Why? What is the difference in meaning between oddness and
oddity? Consult a dictionary to check your answers.

V.
By means of which word-formation processes have the following lexemes been arrived at?