MORPHOLOGY
WORD (Inflectional Suffixes and Homophone of Inflectional Suffixes)
Lecturer: Ulfatmi azlan, S.S., M.A
Arrange by: Siti Humairoh Soffia Molina Citra Widya Astuti
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF TARBIYAH FACULTY THE STATE INSTITUTE FOR ISLAMIC STUDY SULTHAN THAHA SAIFUDDIN JAMBI
INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES AND HOMOPHONE OF INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES
A. INTRODUCTION
In linguistics, a suffix (also sometimes called a postfix or ending) is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Suffixes can carry grammatical information (inflectional suffixes) or lexical information (derivational suffixes). 1
An inflectional suffix is sometimes called a desinence . Inflectional changes grammatical properties of a word within its syntactic category. Derivational gives related word different meanings and/or show that they belong to different word classes. Homophones (from the Greek words homos, meaning 'the same' and phone, meaning 'sound') are words which are pronounced the same, but which
have different spellings and meanings. B. INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES
Inflectional suffixes do not change the meaning of original word. So in “everyday I walked to school” and “everyday I walked to school”, the words walk and walked have the same basic meaning. In “I have one car” and “I have
two cars”, the basic meaning of the words car and cars are exactly the same. In these cases, the suffix is added simply for grammatical “correctness”. Inflectional morphemes: vary (or "inflect") the form of words in order to express grammatical features, such as singular/plural or past/present tense. Thus
1
Boy and boys, for example, are two different forms of the "same" word; the choice between them, singular vs. plural, is a matter of grammar and thus the business of inflectional morphology. (Crystal, p. 90.) Inflectional Morphemes generally: 1) Do not change basic meaning or part of speech, e.g., big, bigg-er, bigg-est are all adjectives. 2) Express grammatically-required features or indicate relations between different words in the sentence. Thus in Lee love-s Kim: -s marks the 3rd person singular present form of the verb, and also relates it to the 3rd singular subject Lee. 3) Are productive. Inflectional morphemes typically combine freely with all members of some large class of morphemes, with predictable effects on usage/meaning. Thus the plural morpheme can be combined with nearly any noun, usually in the same form, and usually with the same effect on meaning. 4) Occur outside any derivational morphemes. Thus in ration-al-iz-ation-s the final -s is inflectional, and appears at the very end of the word, outside the derivational morphemes -al, -iz, -ation.
suffix
grammatical change
example original word
example suffixed word
-s
plural
dog
dogs
-en
plural (irregular)
ox
ox en
-s
3rd person singular present
like
he like s
-ed
past tense past participle
work
he work ed he has work ed
-en
past participle (irregular)
eat
he has eat en
-ing
continuous/progressive
sleep
he is sleep ing
2
-er
comparative
big
bigg er
-est
superlative
big
the bigg est
„s
possessive
adam
Adam‟s apple
Negative
Do
Don‟t
2
n‟t
Notice how most of them give a relatively unambiguous clue to the word class of the word containing them.
s marks a noun as plural, but a present tense verb as (third person) singular: e.g. The books look interesting but The book looks interesting; s changes to es after a hissing sound (e.g. hiss - hisses)
ed marks a verb as either a past tense or a past participle: e.g. She walked or She has walked.
ing marks a verb as a present participle: e.g. She was walking.
er marks an adjective or adverb as comparative: e.g. quicker, sooner.
est marks an adjective or adverb as superlative: e.g. quickest, soonest .
C. HOMOPHONE OF INFLECTIOAL SUFFIXES
What are homophones? They are morphemes of identical pronunciation but with distinct meaning. Examples: meat /mi:t/ meet /mi:t/ See /si:/ sea /si:/
2
Zwicky, Arnold M.; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1983), "Cliticization vs. Inflection: English n't ", Language (Language, Vol. 59, No. 3) 59 (3): 502 – 513
3
Homophones of inflectional suffixes are morphemes of identical pronunciation of some words. It is sometime difficult to differentiate between inflectional suffixes and derivational suffixes, even inflectional it self. Examples: She walks to school (s means third person singular) There are some books (s means plural noun) Adam’s
aplle (s means possessive)
Speak er (doer) Better (comparative ) Chatt er (repetation)
Mak ing money is my obsession (gerund) Anne was clean ing the bathroom (present participle)
Jhon has visit ed his mom (past participle) The departed passengers have been worried about their flight (adjective)
4
REFERRENCE
Marchand, Hans. 1969. The categories and types of present-day English word formation: A synchronic-diachronic approach. Munich: Beck McCharty, Andrew Carstairs. 2002. An introduction to English Morphology. Edinburg University: Great Britain Oxford University. 2008. Oxford Learner‟s Pocke dictionary. Oxford: London Stageberg, Norman C. and Dallin D. Oaks. 2000. An Introductory English Grammar , Henle, Boston: USA Zwicky, Arnold M.; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1983 ), "Cliticization vs. Inflection: English n't", Language (Language, Vol. 59, No. 3)
www.thefreeonlinedictionary.com www.wikipedia.com
