4.MORPHOLOGY2.docVIP

4．MORPHOLOGY 4.1 Morphology MORPHOLOGY is the branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed. For example, the verb “purify” in English consists of two orthographic parts: “pur(e)” and “-ify”, from which one can work out a rule: a new form of verb can be formed by adding ‘-ify’ to an adjective. This morphological rule accounts for the existence of a set of verbs with “-ify” ending, such as “amplify”, “simplify”, “falsify”. Morphology is generally divided into two fields: the study of INFLECTIONS (also called INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY), and of WORD-FORMATION (often referred to as LEXICAL or DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY). 4.1.1 Inflection INFLECTION is the manifestation of grammatical relationships through the addition of inflectional affixes, such as number, person, finiteness, aspect and case, which do not change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are attached. For instance, (a) number table/tables apple/apples car/cars person, finiteness and aspect talk/talks/talking/talked open/opens/opening/opened case boy/boy’s John/John’s University/university’s Each set in example 4-1 constitutes a single paradigm, that is, a set of grammatically conditioned forms all derived from a single root (See 4.3.2) or stem. 4.1.2 Word-formation WORD-FORMATION, in its restricted sense, refers to the processes of word variations signaling lexical relationships. It can be further subclassified into the compositional type (compound) and the derivational type (derivation). 4.1.2.1 Compound The term COMPOUND, covers a wide range of different relations between lexical words. For instance, Noun compounds day+break → daybreak (N+V) play+boy → playboy (V+N) hair+cut → haircut (N+V) call+girl → callgirl (V+N) wind+mill → wirtdmill (N+N) Verb compounds brain+wash → windmill (N+V) Adjective compounds man+eating → maneating (N+Ving) heart+felt → heartfelt (N+Ved) duty+free → dutyfree (N+Adj) Pr