Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

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539 Glossary for any unfamiliar terms

Prepositions and prepositional phrases | 469

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Word structure and word formation

Introduction

258

Word structure (morphology) 258a

Word, stem and base 258b

Inflection

259

Word formation

260

Prefixes

261

Suffixes

262

Panel: -ish and -y in informal contexts

263

Conversion

264

Compounds

265

General 265a

Compound nouns 265b

Compound adjectives 265c

Compound verbs 265d

Hyphenation

266

Other types of word formation

267

Abbreviation 267a

Back-formation 267b

Other types 267c

Productivity

268

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| 471

Word structure and word formation

INTRODUCTION

258

Word structure (morphology)

258a

The word is the basic unit which relates the grammar of a language to its

vocabulary. Words have internal structure which indicates their grammatical

identity (e.g. that the word is plural, or past tense) and their lexical identity (e.g.

that the word unhappiness is a noun with negative meaning referring to

emotions).

Grammar is generally divided into the study of the structure of sentences,

which is called syntax, and the study of the internal structure of words, which is

called morphology. 

Words are composed of morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest unit of

meaning. Some words consist of just one morpheme; some consist of several. 

In the table below, the words dog and drink cannot be broken down into

smaller meaningful units. They are words which consist of one morpheme.