LING 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Word Formation, Affix, Inflection

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 1001
• Professor: Bethany Mac Leod

Document Summary

Specific ways in which morphemes combine: word-formation processes. Most common word-formation process (in english) is affixation: attaching affix to stemn. Suffixation: suffix attaches to stem (*diagram in lecture slide*) > af -er: v -> n. > af -ify: a -> v. > af -al: n -> a. Prefixation: prefix attaches to stem (*diagram in lecture slide*): Suffixation can cause category of stem to change. Affixation that forms word w/ meaning &/or category distinct from its base. Category changes: v -> n: meaning changes: call caller, n -> v call. Category changes: n -> a: meaning changes: season seasonal, a -> n season. Constraints on derivation: not every affix can attach to every base. But not un + n: *undog, *unhouse. Another word-formation process: inflection: modification of a word to indicate grammatical info, in most languages this is usually also affixation (like derivation), but they can differ in how they inflect words. Far fewer inflectional affixes in english than derivational.