Microsoft Word Theoretical Course of English Grammar

Nino Kirvalidze
15
three morphemes boy + ish + ness 
four morphemes gentle + man + li + ness 
more than four morphemes un + gentle + man + li + ness 
The decomposition of words into morphemes illustrates one of the fundamental properties 
of human language – discreteness (
დანაწევრებულობა
). In all languages, discrete linguistic 
units combine in rule-governed ways to form larger units. Sound units combine to form 
morphemes, morphemes combine to form words, and words combine to form larger units – 
phrases and sentences. 
Discreteness is one of the properties that distinguish human languages 
from the communication systems of other species. 
Our knowledge of these discrete units and 
the rules for combining them accounts for creativity of human language, which refers to a 
person’s ability to produce and understand an infinite range of sentences never heard before 
(Fromkin 2003: 76). 
Roots and Stems 
A root is a lexical content morpheme that cannot be analyzed any further into smaller 
parts.
Morphologically complex words consist of a root and one or more affixes. Some examples 
of English roots are, for example, 
paint
in 
painter
, 
read
in 
reread
, 
ceive
in 
conceive
. The root is 
obligatory for any word, while affixes are not obligatory. 
The affixal morphemes include prefixes, suffixes and inflexions. Of these, prefixes and suf-
fixes have word-building or derivational functions while inflexions have only grammatical or 
form-building function
. Derivational morphemes (i.e., suffixes and prefixes), when affixed to 
roots and stems, change the grammatical word class and the basic meaning of the word. For 
instance: 
beauty - beautiful
; 
advise – advice
, etc. Thus, derivational affixal morphemes express 
the specifications that are of lexical and grammatical character. 
When a root morpheme is 
combined with a derivational affix it forms a stem, which may or may not be a word
(
painter
is 
both a word and a stem; 
ceive
+ 
er
is only a stem).
Different from prefixes and suffixes, inflexions have strictly grammatical or form-building 
function. Inflectional morphemes never change the grammatical word class they are attached 
to. They only mark such properties (morphological categories) as tense, aspect, voice, number, 

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Theoretical Course of English Grammar 
Script by prof. 
Nino Kirvalidze
16
case and so forth.
They signal grammatical relations and are required by the rules of sentence 
formation. Inflectional morphemes in English typically follow derivational morphemes. 
Compared to many languages of the world, English has relatively few inflections. 
At the 
present stage of English history, there are totally eight inflectional affixes
(Fromkin et al. 2003: 
100-101): 
English Inflectional Morphemes Examples 
-s third-person singular present She wait-s at home. 
-ed past tense She wait-ed at home.
-ing progressive She is eat-ing the donut.
-en past participle Mary has eat-en the donuts. 
-s plural She ate the donut-s. 
-‘s possessive Disa’s hair is short. 
-er comparative Disa has short-er hair than Karin.
-est superlative Disa has the short-est hair.