Derivational Morphology

Besides inflexions there is one further aspect of modern English word structure: derivational morphology. This branch of morphology aims to describe the formal relationships between lexical items and the ways in which new lexical items may be created from the stock of those existing. These relationships or processes are of three kinds: affixation (both prefixation and suffixation), compounding and conversion.

Affixation involves the addition of a bound morpheme to a root morpheme. In English, suffixation usually changes the class of a word, while prefixation nearly always maintains it. The following are examples of affixation: internal–ize (creating a verb from an adjective), quick–ness (making a noun from an adjective), walk–er (making a noun from a verb), friend–ly (making an adjective from a noun), slow–ly (making an adverb from an adjective), anti–coagulant (which remains a noun). Here also a morpheme may have a number of allomorphs, but not such complex patterns arise as with some inflexional morphemes. For example, the ‘negative’ prefix has the phonologically conditioned allomorphs [im-], [in-], [iŋ -] ([im-] before root initial bilabial consonants, [iŋ -] before initial velar consonants, and [in-] elsewhere), and the morphologically conditioned allomorph un-, which has a similar range of phonological variants, i. e. [ʌ m-] before bilabials, [ʌ n-] before velars, and [ʌ n-] before other sounds, e. g. unpleasant, unkind, untouched.

The process of compounding involves the combination of more than one root, e. g. star–gaze, witch–hunt, stop–light, waste–paper–basket, baby–sit. In writing, these roots are either joined together or attached by means of a hyphen. The relations between the parts of a compound may be of various kinds; illustrated here are: noun + verb, noun + noun, verb + noun, adjective + noun + noun, noun + verb. And the resultant meanings are attained in a variety of ways; the examples have the following meaning relations: ‘gaze at stars’, ‘hunt for a witch’, ‘light to indicate stopping’, ‘basket for containing paper that is waste’, ‘sit in and care for a baby while its parents are out’. Like other roots, compound roots may be subject to inflexion or further derivation by means of affixation, e. g. stargazer, babysitter, stoplights.

Conversion involves no addition of new material to a lexical item but merely a change in word class. For example, the lexical item net may be both a noun and a verb; it seems likely that the object ‘net’, and so the noun, was the initial form and that the verb has been derived from it, i. e. by conversion. Similarly the lexical item catch is both verb and noun, but it seems likely that the verb is the primary form and the noun derived by conversion. Further examples are: skin (verb derived from noun), push (noun derived from verb), invoice (verb derived from noun), win (noun derived from verb). It is not always beyond doubt what the process of conversion is, e. g. in the case of plan which is both noun and verb.

This last type of process raises an interesting question of derivational morphology: are we dealing here with a synchronic or with diachronic (i. e. historical) matter? How these words came to be added to the language is a matter of history, and thus of little consequence to a description of how the language system operates at the present time, but there are two ways in which derivational morphology is of relevance to a synchronic study of the modern language. Firstly, it is clear that some words are related to others in form, differing only in the addition of some morpheme, and these relations are the proper study of synchronic linguistics. Secondly, many of the derivational processes that have brought new words into the language in the past are still productive, i. e. they continue to be used in creating new words at the present time. For example, the prefix anti- is still being added freely to all kinds of roots, as anti-Common Market, anti-pornography. […]