An Introduction to English Morphology
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction 1
Recommendations
for reading 3
2 Words,
sentences and dictionaries 4
2.1 Words as
meaningful building-blocks of language 4
2.2 Words as
types and words as tokens 5
2.3 Words with
predictable meanings 6
2.4 Non-words
with unpredictable meanings 9
2.5 Conclusion:
words versus lexical items 12
Exercises 13
Recommendations
for reading 14
3 A word and its
parts: roots, affixes and their shapes 16
3.1 Taking words
apart 16
3.2 Kinds of
morpheme: bound versus free 18
3.3 Kinds of
morpheme: root, affix, combining form 20
3.4 Morphemes
and their allomorphs 21
3.5 Identifying
morphemes independently of meaning 23
3.6 Conclusion:
ways of classifying word-parts 26
Exercises 27
Recommendations
for reading 27
4 A word and its
forms: inflection 28
4.1 Words and
grammar: lexemes, word forms and
grammatical
words 28
4.2 Regular and
irregular inflection 31
4.3 Forms of
nouns 34
4.4 Forms of
pronouns and determiners 38
4.5 Forms of verbs
39
4.6 Forms of
adjectives 40
4.7 Conclusion
and summary 42
Exercises 42
Recommendations
for reading 43
5 A word and its
relatives: derivation 44
5.1
Relationships between lexemes 44
5.2 Word classes
and conversion 45
5.3 Adverbs
derived from adjectives 48
5.4 Nouns
derived from nouns 49
5.5 Nouns
derived from members of other word classes 50
5.6 Adjectives
derived from adjectives 52
5.7 Adjectives
derived from members of other word classes 53
5.8 Verbs
derived from verbs 54
5.9 Verbs
derived from member of other word classes 55
5.10 Conclusion:
generality and idiosyncrasy 56
Exercises 57
Recommendations
for reading 58
6 Compound
words, blends and phrasal words 59
6.1 Compounds
versus phrases 59
6.2 Compound
verbs 60
6.3 Compound
adjectives 61
6.4 Compound
nouns 61
6.5 Headed and
headless compounds 64
6.6 Blends and
acronyms 65
6.7 Compounds
containing bound combining forms 66
6.8 Phrasal
words 67
6.9 Conclusion
68
Exercises 68
Recommendations
for reading 69
7 A word and its
structure 71
7.1 Meaning and
structure 71
7.2 Affixes as
heads 71
7.3 More
elaborate word forms: multiple affixation 72
7.4 More
elaborate word forms: compounds within
compounds 76
7.5 Apparent
mismatches between meaning and structure 79
7.6 Conclusion:
structure as guide but not straitjacket 82
Exercises 83
Recommendations
for reading 84
vi AN
INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY
8 Productivity
85
8.1
Introduction: kinds of productivity 85
8.2 Productivity
in shape: formal generality and regularity 85
8.3 Productivity
in meaning: semantic regularity 88
8.4 Semantic
blocking 91
8.5 Productivity
in compounding 93
8.6 Measuring
productivity: the significance of neologisms 95
8.7 Conclusion:
‘productivity’ in syntax 97
Exercises 98
Recommendations
for reading 99
9 The historical
sources of English word formation 100
9.1 Introduction
100
9.2 Germanic,
Romance and Greek vocabulary 100
9.3 The rarity
of borrowed inflectional morphology 102
9.4 The
reduction in inflectional morphology 104
9.5
Characteristics of Germanic and non-Germanic
derivation 106
9.6 Fashions in
morphology 108
9.7 Conclusion:
history and structure 110
Exercises 111
Recommendations
for reading 113
10 Conclusion:
words in English and in languages generally 114
10.1 A puzzle:
disentangling lexemes, word forms and
lexical items
114
10.2 Lexemes and
lexical items: possible reasons for their
overlap in
English 115
10.3 Lexemes and
lexical items: the situation outside
English 116
10.4 Lexemes and
word forms: the situation outside
English 118
Recommendations
for reading 119
Discussion of the exercises 120
Glossary 141
References 148
Index 150
