f.
Adj
Noun
-ness
‘forms a noun expressing state or condition’:
good-ness, fair-ness, bitter-ness,
dark-ness
-ity
‘forms a noun expressing state or condition’:
timid-ity, banal-ity, pur-ity, antiqu-ity
-ship
‘state or condition of being X’:
hard~hardship
-ery
‘having the property indicated by the adjective’:
brav-ery, effront-ery, trick-ery, chican-ery
g.
Adj
Adv
.
-ly
‘forms adverbs from adjectives’:
usual-ly, busi-ly, proud-ly, loud-ly,
grateful-ly
h.
Noun
Noun
-aire
‘to be possessed of X’:
million-aire, doctrin-aire, solit-aire
-acy
‘derives a noun of quality, state or condition from another noun or adjective (normally the base to
which it is added also takes the nominal suffix
-ate)’:
advoc-acy, episcop-acy, intim-acy, accur-acy, obdur-acy
-er
‘a person who practises a trade or profession connected to the noun’:
marin-er, geograph-er,
football-er, haberdash-er, hatt-er
-ery
‘derives nouns indicating general collective sense “-ware, stuff”’:
machin-ery, crock-ery, jewell-ery, pott-ery
-let
‘derives a diminutive noun’:
pig-let, is-let, riv(u)-let
-ling
‘derives a diminutive noun from another noun’:
duck-ling, prince-ling,
found-ling
-hood
‘quality, state, rank of being X’:
boy-hood, sister-hood, priest-hood
-ship
‘state or condition of being X’:
king-ship, craftsman-ship, director-ship, steward-ship
-ism
‘forms nouns which are the name of a theory, doctrine or practice’:
femin-ism,
capital-ism, Marx-ism, structural-ism
-ist
‘adherent to some
-ism, a protagonist for X, an expert on X’ (usually a base that takes
-ist also takes
-
ism
):
femin-ist, capital-ist,
Marx-ist, structural-ist
i.
Adj
Adj.
-ish
‘having the property of being somewhat X’:
narrow-ish, blu-ish, pink-ish
j.
Verb
Verb
-er
‘adds frequent or iterative meaning to verbs’:
chatt-er, patt-er, flutt-er
Having studied [4.11], I suggest that you find one fresh example of a word that contains each of the
suffixes listed. Afterwards identify two non-neutral suffixes which affect the location of stress in the base to
which they are attached and two neutral ones that do not. This will give you a taste of the challenge posed
46 BUILDING WORDS
by suffixes for morphological theory by the interaction between word-formation rules and phonological
rules. We will take up that challenge in the next two chapters.
Let us now turn to INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES. English has not got much inflection, being essentially
an isolating language, as noted in section (
3.6.5
). The little inflection that it has consists of suffixes rather than
prefixes. [4.12] contains a sample of common inflectional suffixes.
[4.12]
a.
Verbal suffixes
Function
Example
-s
3rd person, singular, present
He snore-s
-ing
progressive
aspect
(denoting action in progress)
He is snor-ing
-ed
past tense
He snor-ed
b.
Noun suffixes
-s
noun plural marker
road-s
c.
Adj. suffixes
-er
comparative adjective/ adverb
slow-er,
sooner
-est
superlative adjective/ adverb
slow-est, soonest
A base to which inflectional affixes are added is called a STEM. Singling out stems from other bases in
this fashion enables us to highlight the distinction between inflection and derivation. This is important, as
we will see in
Chapter 11
, not only for the way linguists describe language but also for the way in which the
brain processes words. So the bases in
road-s, government-s and
schoolboy-s are all stems since they are
followed by the plural inflectional suffix-s. Of course, the internal structure of these stems is different:
road
is a simple root,
govern-ment is a complex one, containing as it does the derivational suffix
-ment; and
school-boy
is also complex since it is a compound word.
Although until now we have treated inflection and derivation separately, it does not mean that they are
mutually exclusive. Both derivational and inflectional morphemes may be found in the same word. In that
event, derivational morphemes are attached first and any inflectional morphemes are added later, as it were.
That is why when both inflectional and derivational morphemes are present, the inflectional morphemes are
on the outer fringes of the word, as you can see in [4.13]. In other words, derivation can create the input to
inflection. A new lexeme that has been yielded by derivation can subsequently undergo inflection in order
to ensure that the word has the appropriate grammatical properties for the syntactic position in which it
occurs.
Similarly, if both compounding and inflection take place, as a rule compounding is carried out first. So,
the inflectional morpheme is appended on the outer margins to the second element of the compound, which
is on the right (cf. [4.14a]). Finally, if a compound stem which includes an affixed base is inflected, as in [4.
14b], again the inflectional morpheme appears on the margin, as the element of the word furthest to the
right:
[4.13]
Inflection of stems with derivational suffixes
de-regul-at(e)-
ed (*de-regul-
ed-ate)
perfect-ion-ist-
s (*perfect-
s-ion-ist)
ENGLISH WORDS 47
Thus, inflectional morphemes tend to be more peripheral than derivational morphemes in a word, not
only in English but also in other languages (see Katamba 1993).
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
