When
we deal with Morphology, we deal with the structure of words and how they are
formed. In the sentences listed below, the word presidential represents
the combination of two morphemes, president and
the affix -ial - The affixation of
president with the derivational affix
-ial morphing the noun presidential into the adjective, presidential.
a. The presidential candidate will give
an expensive dinner in Lee's honor.
b. Will the presidential candidate give an
expensive dinner in Lee's honor?
c. Will give the presidential candidate give an
expensive dinner in Lee's honor?
In
addition to the derivational affixation, there is a second type of affixation,
which adds additional information. This is called inflectional affixation. An
example of an inflectional affix is adding the letter -s to the word president
to create the new word presidents. While the derivational affix changes
the word from one form, such as a noun, to another, such as an adjective, the
inflectional affix offers more information about the word, such as the
pluralizing of the noun president. President remains in the noun form.
English
speakers intuitively understand morphology regardless of whether we can
identify it. We know that a president can be presidential or there can be
multiple presidents, yet we are unlikely to think of anything being a
presidenter or presidentive.
Other
processes we use to create new words in English include blending, clipping, compounding, coining
and creating new words from common acronyms (such
as AIDS).
To learn more about affixation, click next.
(Lobeck 5)
Lobeck,
Anne. Discovering Grammar: An Introduction to English
Sentence Structure. New York: Oxford, 2000.