LINGUIST 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Word Formation, Justin Bieber, Bound And Unbound Morphemes
5 Apr 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Affixation is quite productive meaning our mental grammar uses the process for many different words, even for new words that come into the language. Affixation involves affixing a bound morpheme to a base. Compounding involves joining two or more morphemes that would usually be free to derive a new word: example: the free morpheme green (adjective) and combine it with the free morpheme house (noun). You can tell that it"s a new word because it"s meaning is different than if we just combined the two words to make a phrase: you can walk down the street describing houses. This is brown house , here is a green house but a greenhouse is different from a house that"s green: greenhouse is a new word derived by compounding. Another way words derive by compounding differ from affixation is there is not really a root or base in a compound that determines the meaning of the word.
