BUSL External Degree Program 2019

Derivational Morpheme in Grammar

In morphology, a derivational morpheme is an affix that's added to a word to create a new word or a new form of a word. Compare with inflectional morpheme.

Derivational morphemes can change the grammatical category (or part of speech) of a word. For example, adding -ful to beauty changes the word from a noun to an adjective (beautiful), while adding -(e)r to merge changes the word from a verb to a noun (merger).

The form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme is called a derived word or a derivative.

"Derivational morphemes are used to change the grammatical categories of words. For example, the derivational morpheme -er is used to transform the verb bake into the noun baker. The morpheme -ly changes the adjective quick into the adverb quickly. We can change adjectives such as happy into nouns such as happiness by using the derivational morpheme -ness. Other common suffixes include -ism, -tion, -able, -ment and -al. Derivational morphemes can also be prefixes, such as un-, in-, pre- and a-.

"Derivational morphemes can be added to free morphemes or to other derivational morphemes. For example, the verb transform consists of the root word form and the prefix trans-, a derivational morpheme. It can become the noun transformation by adding the derivational morpheme -ation.

Derivational Morphemes and Meanings

"Derivational morphemes have clear semantic content. In this sense they are like content words, except that they are not words.

. . . [W]hen a derivational morpheme is added to a base, it adds meaning. The derived word may also be of a different grammatical class than the original word, as shown by suffixes such as -able and -ly. When a verb is suffixed with -able, the result is an adjective, as in desire + able. When the suffix -en is added to an adjective, a verb is derived, as in dark + en. One may form a noun from an adjective, as in sweet + ie."
(Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams, An Introduction to Language, 10th ed. Cengage, 2013

Derivational Affixes

"Unlike the inflectional affixes, which number only eight in English, the set of derivational affixes is open-ended; that is, there are a potentially infinite number of them (although the number is finite at any one time for a particular speaker). Since it would be impossible to enumerate them exhaustively, let us look at a few representative examples. [In American English the] suffix -ize attaches to a noun and turns it into the corresponding verb, as in criticize, rubberize, vulcanize, pasteurize, mesmerize, and so on. (This suffix can also be added to adjectives, as in normalize, realize, finalize, vitalize, equalize, and so on.) The suffix -ful attaches to a noun and turns it into the corresponding adjective, as in helpful, playful, thoughtful, careful, and so on."

Inflectional Morphemes and Derivational Morphemes

"Some inflectional endings . . . acquire characteristics of derivational morphemes. These include -ed, -en, -er, -ing and -ly. To make this clear, let us take an example. The morpheme -er can function both as an inflectional morpheme and as a derivational morpheme. As an inflectional morpheme, -er is attached to adjectives to show the comparative as in hotter, describing something as having a higher temperature. As a derivational morpheme, -er is highly productive in forming new nouns. In this use, the morpheme expresses mainly agenthood. It is attached to verbal roots to form nouns as in camper, describing someone who performs the action indicated by the verb. It is attached to adjectival roots to form nouns as in teenager, describing someone as having the quality denoted by the adjective.

It is attached to nominal roots to form nouns as in freighter, describing a large ship or aircraft designed for carrying goods."

Meaning and Examples of Inflectional Morphemes

In English morphology, an inflectional morpheme is a suffix that's added to a word to assign a particular grammatical property to that word.

Inflectional morphemes serve as grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison. Inflectional morphemes in English include the bound morphemes -s (or -es); 's (or s'); -ed; -en; -er; -est; and -ing.

Unlike derivational morphemes, inflectional morphemes do not change the essential meaning or the grammatical category of a word.

• Inflectional Morphology
• Bound Morphemes

• "[O]nly English nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs--all open classes of words--take inflectional affixes. Closed classes of words . . . take no inflectional affixes in English. Inflectional affixes always follow derivational ones if both occur in a word, which makes sense if we think of inflections as affixes on fully formed words. For example, the words antidisestablishmentarianism and uncompartmentalize each contain a number of derivational affixes, and any inflectional affixes must occur at the end: antidisestablishmentarianisms and uncompartmentalized.
  
  "We can also see . . . that not only does English have few inflectional affixes but also that possessive, plural, and third-person singular are identical in form; they are all -s. The past participle affix -ed is also sometimes identical in form to the past tense affix, -ed. This lack of distinction in form dates back to the Middle English period (1100-1500 CE), when the more complex inflectional affixes found in Old English were slowly dropping out of the language for a variety of reasons . . .."
  (Kristin Denham and Anne Lobeck, Linguistics for Everyone. Wadsworth, 2010) 

• Inflectional Morphemes and Derivational Morphemes

"The difference between derivational and inflectional morphemes is worth emphasizing. An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical categoryof a word. For example, both old and older are adjectives. The -er inflection here (from Old English -ra) simply creates a different version of the adjective. However, a derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word. The verb teach becomes the noun teacher if we add the derivational morpheme -er (from Old English -ere). So, the suffix -er in modern English can be an inflectional morpheme as part of an adjective and also a distinct derivational morpheme as part of a noun. Just because they look the same (-er) doesn't mean they do the same kind of work.

"Whenever there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix attached to the same word, they always appear in that order. First the derivational (-er) is attached to teach, then the inflectional (-s) is added to produce teachers."

Inflectional Morphemes and Meanings

"[W]hereas a derivational morpheme relates more to the identity of a word itself (in that it more directly affects the meaning of the stem), an inflectional morpheme relates the word to the rest of the construction, motivating a position on the very periphery of the word. . . .

"An inflectional morpheme does not have the capacity to change the meaning or the syntactic class of the words it is bound to and will have a predictable meaning for all such words. Thus, the present tense will mean the same thing regardless of the verb that is inflected, and the dative case will have the same value for all nouns. Semantic abstraction and relativity do not mean that there is little or simple meaning involved; inflectional categories are never merely automatic or semantically empty. The meanings of inflectional categories are certainly notoriously difficult to describe, but they exhibit all the normal behavior we expect from cognitive categories, such as grounding in embodied experience and radial structured polysemy (see Janda 1993)."
(Laura Janda, "Inflectional Morphology."