MORPHOLOGY: Word Structure
and Word Formation
ENGL 219 Week 2
Dr William FENG
06/04/25
RECAP
English belongs to Germanic branch of Indo-
European family.
Old English—Middle English—Modern English
450-1066 1066-1500 1500-Now
“Etymology”! Is the study of word origins.
Organization of the lecture
1. Word structure
Lecture 2
2. Word formation
3. Word meaning
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Learning objectives
• To know the basic concepts of word structure
and word formation
• To be able to analyze words in terms of their
internal structure and formation process
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WHY STUDY WORD STRUCTURE?
The best way to learn words is to break them
into parts and understand the roles of their
combination.
• antidisestablishmentarianism
anti+dis+establish+ment+ari+an+ism
DO YOU KNOW THE MEANING OF...
Read my lips: no taxes!!
1. Bushlips: hallow political promi
se
2. Moonlighter: a person who has
a second job
3. Digerati: digital + literati
4. Yahoo: a brutal animal
5. Safari: a journey to explore wild
life in Africa
• morphe (Greek – form,shape) + ology (science of)
• Morphology (the science of word forms)
The study of the internal structure of words, and the
rules by which words are formed
變形記
1. WORD STRUCTURE
• Morpheme （詞素） : the smallest meaningful
units, which may be words or parts of words
e.g. cat, child, with
cat+s, sleep+ing, arm+chair+s
Allomorph (Allo-, Greek word, "other", allocate)
Different form of morphemes that have the same meaning
e.g. ir-, il-, im-, in- = not
-en, -ø = to make to become …
to brighten our mind
to brownø the garlic
＋ ＋
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• Free morpheme:
those that can occur alone as individual words (e.g.
cat, boy)
• Bound morpheme:
those that occur only with another morpheme (e.g. -
ing)
– Derivational ( 派生 ): lexical process that forms new words
– Inflectional( 屈折 ): grammatical process to produce an alte
rnative grammatical forms
De-, away, remove, de-ice, decompose
beauty-beautify; do-undo rive, life, revive, survive
like-likes-liked flect: to bend
in: (en) bring into the condition, enable
Derivational Morpheme
Derivational morphemes are LEXICAL, that is, they
create new words whose meanings are related to
the old one.
E.g.
kind - unkind; obey - disobey; accurate -
inaccurate; act - react; act – active - activity;
able - enable; damp - dampen; care - careful;
t- V
a. ____________ N
+ -ance ___ acquittance
e- N + -ous ___
b. ____________ A virtuous
N + -ify ___
c. ____________ V glorify
N +-y ___A
d. ____________ healthy
N + -ity ___
e. ____________ N enmity
A +-en ___
f. ____________ V whiten
virtue moral health wife aquit enemy
print minimal white free read glory
A +-dom ___
g. ____________ N freedom
V +-able ___
h. ____________ A readable
A ___
i. a- + ____________ A amoral
N ___
j. ex- + ____________ N exwife
A ___
k. sub- + ____________ A subminimal
V ___
l. re- + ____________ V reprint
moral wife
print minimal free read
Inflectional Morpheme
• Inflectional Morphemes serve GRAMMATICAL
purposes, for example, number and tense.
• Exercise: give all inflections of the following
words
– Child
– Eat
– Forget
– High
2. ANALYZING WORD STRUCTURE
• Root morpheme( 詞根） and affix （詞綴）
• Root: a base morpheme. e.g. fact
• Affix: a morpheme that comes at the
beginning (prefix) or the ending (suffix) of a
root morpheme. E.g. factual
• Stem( 詞幹 ): a root morpheme and one or
more affixes. e.g. factual +ity
In-factuality
factuality stem
factual stem
fact root
Word Formation
Word
Prefix Stem
Stem Suffix
Prefix Bound
Root
in ef fect ual
Basic requriement
• To be able to analyze a word
Word
• Decomposition
• Entitlements Prefix Stem
Stem Suffix
Prefix Root
De com pos(e) ition
Can affixes stand alone?
• Note: An affix usually is a morpheme
that cannot stand alone.
• Examples: -ful, -ly, -ity, -ness. A few
exceptions are able, and less.
A Short List of Prefixes:
PREFIX MEANING EXAMPLES
de- from, down, away reverse, decode, decrease
opposite
dis- not, opposite, reverse, away disagree, disappear
ex- out of, away from, former exhale, explosion
il- not illegal, illogical
im- not, without impossible, improper
in- not, without inaction, invisible
mis- bad, wrong mislead, misplace
non- not nonfiction, nonsense
pre- before prefix, prehistory
pro- for, forward, before program, profess,
re- again, back react, reappear
un- against, not, opposite undo, unequal, unusual
A Short List of Suffixes:
SUFFIX MEANING EXAMPLES
-able able to, having the quality of comfortable, portable
-al relating to annual, comical
-er comparative bigger, stronger
-est superlative strongest, tiniest
-ful full of beautiful, grateful
-ible forming an adjective reversible, terrible
-ily forming an adverb eerily, happily, lazily
-less without, not affected by friendless, tireless
-ly forming an adjective clearly, hourly
-ness denoting a state or condition kindness, wilderness
-y full of, denoting a condition, or a glory, messy, victory,
diminutive
3. WORD FORMATION
• Inflection
• Compounds
• Derivation
• Clipping
• Blends
• Backformation
• Acronyms
• Coinage
• Cliticization
3.1 Compounds
Compounding is the combination of two already e
xisting words.
In terms of form, compounds are written in three ways:
1) closed, such as bedtime
2) hyphenated, such as above-mentioned
3) open, such as reading material
Semantically, compounds can often be identified as “
having a meaning which may be related to but can not
simply be inferred from the meaning of its parts.
A darkroom is not just a room that is dark, rather a room
used for photographic processing.
keyboard, eyeball, turtleneck
These are called exocentric componds
On the other hand, if the meaning is the subto
tal of the parts, it is called endocentric comp
onds
TASK
• Think of one compound that is:
• 1. Noun. passport, saucepan, superpower
• 2. Verb. tiptoe,overdo,download
• 3. Adjective widespread, part-time, open-minded
closed
form open
hyphenated
compounds
endocentric
meaning
exocentric
3.2 Blending
Blending is a process of word formation by w
hich a word is created by combining parts of
other words. Words formed in this way are ca
lled blends.
Merlion
motel: moter+hotel
carbecue: car + barbecue
medicare: medical + care
Eurasian: Europe + Asian
sitcom: situation + comedy
Some of the blends are especially effective
in certain contexts:
e.g A longtime Nixon backer, he assum
es a dawk stance on the problem.
dawk: dove + hawk
介於鷹派和鴿派之間的人物
Can you think of more examples?
smoke+fog=smog
Chinese+English=Chinglish
web+seminar=webinar
3.3 Backformation ： reversal of
the usual way of word formation.
Backformation is a process of word fo
rmation by which a word is formed by
deleting the supposed affixes
a: peddle: from
peddler
b: burgle: from
burglar
c: beg: from
beggar
d: orate: from
orator
e: edit: from editor
3. 4 Clip word (to cut, film clip)
(1) to clip the back part of a word
a: ad: advertisement
b: exam: examination
c: mod: modern
d: pro: professional
e: demo: demonstration
f: exp.: exposition
g: memo: memorandum
h: lib: liberation
2) to clip both the front and the back
parts of a word
a: flu: influenza
b: Tec: detective
c: fridge: refrigerator
3.5 Acronyms Nym: name (Greek)
Acro: height/end, acrophobia
Acronyms are words formed by the initial
letters of words and pronounced as words:
FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation
CD: Compact Disc
DJ: Disc Jockey
Can you think of more Acronyms?
6. Coinage (Neologism)
• words created from scratch.
– Robot
– Xerox
7. Conversion
• Conversion is a process that assigns an already
existing word to a new grammatical category,
e.g. from verb to noun, from noun to verb.
• Noun from Verb: run, drink, drive, report, call
• Verb from Noun: ink (a contract), ship, nail
• Basic Requirement
• To understand how a word is formed. In test, y
ou will need to name the formation process.
• (1) ladyfinger exocentric compounding
• (2) medicare blending
• (3) Burgle backformation
• (4) Kodak coinage
Summary
Free Morpheme
Morpheme Derivational
Bound Morpheme
Inflectional
Root Stem
Word structure Prefix
Framework Affix Derivational
Suffix
Inflectional
Compounding
Blending
Word formation
Backformation
Clipping
…….
Lexical Semantics: Meaning of Words
• “Semantics”: Greek word for “sign”, the study
of meaning (of signs) 語義學 .
• What is a sign?
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