Introduction To Words

Question 1

Morphemes

Answer 1

are the smallest unit of meaning in a language. A morpheme is either a FREE morpheme or a BOUND morpheme (but never both).

Can be derivational or inflectional

Question 2

Derivational Morpheme

Answer 2

the formation of words by adding prefixes and suffixes to existing words and bases

have some lexical meaning and can combine with a limited subgroup of free morphemes or with other derivational morphemes to create a “new” word or change the meaning of a word or change the form-class of a word.
example: Friend

Nouns
Friendship
Friendliness
Unfriendliness

Adjectives
friendly
unfriendly
friendless

Verb
befriend

Question 3

Inflectional Morpheme

Answer 3

used to create a variant form of a word in order to signal grammatical information without changing the meanings of words. Inflectional suffixes have grammatical meaning only and cannot precede a derivational suffix.

English has only eight inflectional suffixes:

noun plural {-s} – “He has three desserts.”
noun possessive {-s} – “This is Betty’s dessert.”
verb present tense {-s} – “Bill usually eats dessert.”
verb past tense {-ed} – “He baked the dessert yesterday.”
verb past participle {-en} – “He has always eaten dessert.”
verb present participle {-ing} – “He is eating the dessert now.”
adjective comparative {-er} – “His dessert is larger than mine.”
adjective superlative {-est} – “Her dessert is the largest.”

Question 4

Form Class Words

Answer 4

open-ended, not limited in the number of their members, as new words are being invented all the time. New inventions, observations, sciences, sports, ideas, etc. require us to constantly create new form-class words.

usually have lexical meaning, or a dictionary definition

can take inflection in order to create a variant form of the word and signal grammatical information without changing its meaning. For example, the word smell can become smelly, smelliest, or smelled.

can take derivations that will allow them to change forms, such as ideal to idealize or to idealistic or to ideally.

There are four sets of FORM-CLASS words described in this sub-section:

NOUNS

VERBS

ADJECTIVES

ADVERBS