Kirsten Mills, 1998 http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/caneng/m orpheme.htm Derivational morpheme: this type of morpheme: morpheme changes the meaning of the word or the part of speech ( word class ) or both. Different
with inflectional morpheme Derivational morphemes often create new words. In English, derivational morphemes can be prefixes or suffixes. suffixes.
differences
http://wordformation.blogspot.com/20 08/04/derivational-morphemes.html Sari
(1988) says that derivational morphemes are bound
morphemes which derive (create) new words by either changing the meaning or the part of speech or both. Bound
morpheme = those that function only as parts of
words ( can’t stand on its own ) For
example : doubtful , establishment , frighten, teacher
The
underscore part = bound morpheme
Derivational
morphemes form new words
Derivational Morphemes
either by changing the meaning of the base to which they are attached
kind ~ un unkind; kind;
obey ~ dis disobey obey
accurate ~ in ina accurate; cigar ~ cigar ette; ette; or
act ~ re react act
book ~ booklet
by changing the grammatical category (part of speech) of the base
kind ~ kind ly; ly;
act ~ act ive ive ~ act ivity ivity
able ~ en enable; able;
damp ~ damp dampen en
care ~ care ful ;
dark ~ dark ness ness
Examples of Derivational Affixes Prefix
Grammatical Grammatical category of base category of output
Example
Suffix
Grammatical category of base
Grammatical category of output
Example
in-
Adj
Adj
inaccurate
-hood
N
N
child-hood
un-
Adj
Adj
unkind
-ship
N
N
leader-ship
un-
V
V
untie
-fy
N
V
beauti-fy
dis-
V
V
dis-like
-ic
N
Adj
poet-ic
dis-
Adj
Adj
dishonest
-less
N
Adj
power-less
re-
V
V
rewrite
-ful
N
Adj
care-ful
ex-
N
N
ex-wife
-al
V
N
refus-al
en-
N
V
encourage
-er
V
N
read-er
Another examples : • In the word happiness, happiness, the bound morpheme – ness creates a new word by changing both the
meaning and the part of speech. • Happy = adjective • The derived word happiness = noun.
A
similar process uses prefixes instead of suffixes
In
English, prefixes typically change the meaning of a word but do not alter its lexical category. Example : a. MIS- + Verb Verb ( misstep, misclassify ) misclassify ) b. UN- + Adjective Adjective ( unkind, untrue, unfair ) unfair ) c.
UN- + Verb Verb ( undo, unchain, uncover ) uncover )
Some
derivational
morphemes
create
new
meaning but do not change the syntactic category or part of speech. The word unhappy, for example, consists of the base happy and the derivational morpheme (prefix) un-. Happy The
= adjective
derived word unhappy is also an adjective. adjective.
In
English, such derivational morphemes tend to be added to the ends of words as suffixes The meaning changes and The relationship can be represent as follow : a.
Adjective ( beautiful, Noun + -ful doubtful ) b. Adjective + -ly Adverb ( truly, beautifully ) beautifully ) c. Verb + -ment amazement ) Noun ( amazement ) d. Verb + - er rider ) Noun ( teacher, rider ) e. Adjective + -en Verb ( brighten, harden ) f. Noun + -en Verb ( frighten, hasten )
d.
UNDER- +verb Verb ( undercount,
underscore ) e. RE- + Verb Verb ( rephrase, rewrite ) f. EX- + Noun Noun (ex-husband, (ex-husband, ex – wife )
Conclusion Derivational
morphemes produce new words from existing words in two ways : 1. They They can change the meaning of a word - example : true untrue paint repaint 2. They can change the lexical category of a word - example : true adjective truly adverb truth noun
