Derivational Morphemes- meaning, types and uses

Bolanle Elizabeth Arokoyo

Morphology Lecture Series VIII

This topic will be divided into a series of subtopics which will be treated in about four lectures. For a better understanding, kindly go through the previous lectures especially The Morpheme and Types of Morpheme.

1.Introduction

 

Morphemes combine to form words.

Derivational morphemes are affixes used in the creation of words.

They are bound morphemes attached to roots to derive new words.

When attached to roots, they may change the syntactic class of the lexical items.

This means that bound morphemes could either be class maintaining or class changing affixes.

The most productive means of creating new words in human languages is through the use of derivational morphemes.

The addition of the derivational morpheme -er to the following verbs will change them to agentive nouns, i.e. class changing.

 

1. Verb Noun

a. sing singer

b. play player

c. mow mower

d. check checker

 

The affix –able in English when attached to verbs derive deverbal adjectives. For example:

 

2. Verb Adjective

a. think thinkable

b. live livable

c. read readable

d. deport deportable

 

The two affixes above changed the grammatical class of the root from verb to noun and from verb to adjective respectively.

There are, however, affixes that will not change the class of the word. In English, for example, nouns are derived from nouns with the addition of the suffix -dom, -let, -ess, -ship, -hood, -ist, etc. as exemplified in data (3) below.

 

3a. Noun Noun

a. king kingdom

b. chief chiefdom

c. fief fiefdom

 

3b. Noun Noun

a. book booklet

b. drop droplet

c. pig piglet

 

3c. Noun Noun

a. prince princess

b. waiter waitress

c. actor actress

 

3d. Noun Noun

a. king kingship

b. lord lordship

c. lady ladyship

 

3e. Noun Noun

a. mother motherhood

b. father fatherhood

c. priest priesthood

 

3f. Noun Noun

a. cartoon cartoonist

b. Marx Marxist

c. Bhuda Bhudist

 

The addition of the suffixes did not change the class of the words.

Derivational morphemes create new words that enrich the lexicon of the language.

They are very productive in the creation of lexical morphemes; nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Bound morphemes are not just attached to any base, but select the particular type of base to be attached to for a particular meaning to be derived.

The bound morpheme attached to a base determines the meaning of the derived word.

The bound morphemes, dis- and -ment in the following examples determine the meaning of the derived words.

 

4.

a. content dis-content

b. own dis-own

c. punish punishment

d. judge judgment

 

There are different types of derivational morphemes attested and they are attached to roots through the process of affixation.  

This lecture seeks to examine how derivational affixes are used to derive words in languages.

Affixation is one major means of deriving words; there are however other word formation rules which will be discussed in later under morphological processes.

 

 

2.Derivational Affixation

 

Affixation is a process whereby affixes are attached to morphemes for the purpose of deriving new words or providing additional grammatical information.

Affixation could either be derivational or inflectional. Inflectional affixation will be examined later.

According to Crystal (2008 p16), affixation is the morphological process whereby a grammatical or lexical information is added to a stem.

Derivational affixation is strictly used for the creation of new words.

It is a common and productive word formation process in languages.

Affixation can be divided into prefixation, suffixation, infixation, interfixation, circumfixation and suprafixation. These have all been examined under Affixes.

It should be noted that not all these processes are present in all languages.

English for example attests prefixation, suffixation, interfixation and suprafixation but not infixation and circumfixation.

Yoruba on the other hand attests prefixation, interfixation and suprafixation.

Unlike most languages, Yoruba does not attest suffixation.

Derivational affixation is a highly productive process and content words are created via this process.

Content words are words with lexical meaning that belong to the open class.

This is the class that is open to accepting new members; noun, verb, adjective and adverbs.

Exercises

1. Formulate the morphological rule for the derivation of the following Chalcatongo Mixtec adjectives.

NounAdjective

káɁba káɁbá. ‘dirty’

žuù žúú. ‘solid, hard’

xaɁà xáɁá. ‘standing’

(Macaulay, 1996, p64)

2. Consider the following data from Tzeltal. Determine the meaning of the suffixes.

 

a. bet ‘loan’

betan ‘to loan’

b. ˀip ‘strength’

ˀipan ‘to nourish’

c. k’op ‘speech’

k’opan ‘to speak with’

d. ˀabat ‘servant’

ˀabatin ‘to serve’

e. mul ‘sin’

mulin ‘to commit sin’

 

3. What are derivational affixes?

 

4. Examine class maintaining and class changing affixes.

5. Be creative! What are the possible forms you can come up with using these negative suffixes like un-, in-, dis-, il-, on these words?

Can you explain why the derived forms sound the way they do? What are their possible meanings?

 

possible peddle obvious

regular number derive

classify legal descript

 

NB

a. In the next lecture, we will examine Noun Derivation.

 

b Excerpts are taken from Arokoyo (2017).

References

Arokoyo, Bolanle Elizabeth. (2017). Unlocking morphology. Ilorin: Chridamel Publishing House.

Crystal, David. (2008). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Macaulay, Monica. (1996). A grammar of Chalcatongo Mixtec. Berkeley: University of California Press.