Chapter 3 Lexical & Grammatical Morphology Lane 333

Lexicon & Grammar ‘actors’: grammatical word form of the LEXEME ACTOR Consider morphemes in ‘act-or-s’ Each morpheme functions differently ‘-s’ reflects the category of NUMBER (plural) ‘-or’ changes verb into noun (performer of the action)

Inflectional Morphology Inflection (grammatical morphology): the process that builds word-forms of countless lexemes & it builds up paradigms of lexemes never change the category of the word they are attached to (-s, -ing, -ed) don’t change the meaning they are only bound morphemes grammatical morphemes follow lexical morphemes & come only after the stem

Inflectional suffixes of English -s 3rd per.sg. present waits -ed past tense waited -ing progressive waiting -en past participle eaten -s plural chairs -’s possessive girl’s -er comparative faster -est superlative fastest

Derivational morphology Derivation (Lexical morphology): the process of building up new words by adding morphemes (derivational) that change the meaning, or part of speech of a word may change the category of the word they are attached to (-ful in ‘beatiful’, -ish in ‘warmish’) change the meaning either bound or free produce lexemes

Exercise 3.3 Which morphemes are lexical & which are grammatical? sparkler benighted detective tympani speeding straightest platypus partly threaded oxen disharmony ghastlier horsebox embolden two-handed servant

Exercise 3.5 Can you segment these words? linguist utilize arrogant alacrity terrify location mechanic democrat

Bound Lexical morphemes the bits left over are ‘Bound Lexical morphemes’; e.g ‘lingu’ they don’t belong to any lexical category hard to specify their precise dictionary meaning ‘bovine’ : ‘bov’ bound lexical morpheme (to do with cattle)

Bound Lexical morphemes Almost all bound lexical morphemes are of Greek, or Latin origin used to create words for special purposes (scientific, technological) Cranberry morphemes: have no other function but to distinguish different types of whatever is indicated by some other morpheme in the word; e.g. (raspberry, cranberry, bilberry) no meaning except type of berry