BA VI SEMESTER

ENGLISH
PAPER: LINGUISTICS (BENG 612)
UNIT – D

Teacher: Dr. Rebeka Borang

INFLECTION AND DERIVATION:

Derivation and inflection are process of adding affixes to the root and base. One of the key
distinctions between derivational and inflectional morpheme is that Derivational morphemes
change the Meaning and the Parts of speech (POS) of the word, while inflectional morpheme
does not. Inflectional morpheme simply adds grammatical information to the root/base. This
will be further elaborated below:

Derivation
When an affix/morpheme changes the meaning and the Parts of Speech of a word, the
process is called derivation and the affix/morpheme is called derivational affix/morpheme.

For example: Word Derivation

friend (Noun) → Friendly (adjective)
Fool (Noun) → Foolish (Adjective)
Friendly (Adjective) → Friendliness (Noun)
Fish (Noun) → Fishing (Verb)
School (Noun) → Schooling (Verb)

As seen in above example, through addition of derivational morpheme, parts of speech (POS)
of the word can be changed from noun to adjective, verb and vice-versa.

There are few derivational morphemes which change the meaning of the word but do not
change the parts of speech. For example:
Word Derivation
Cover (verb) recover (Verb)
Taken (verb) Mistaken (Verb)

In this example, the addition of /–re/ has changed the meaning of the word but does not
change the parts of speech. Majority of such Derivational morphemes are prefixes.

Since derivational morpheme changes the parts of speech of the word, it is also included in
word formation process (Process for forming new words). In many languages, process of
derivation is actively used to derived a new word from the existing word.
Examples of derivational morpheme:

Derivational
Morpheme Meaning Example
mis- wrong Misguide, mistaken
ex- former Ex-wife,ex-boss
 -able able to be excitable, portable, preventable
-age action or process passage, pilgrimage, voyage
-aholic/-oholic one with an obsession for workaholic, alcoholic
-al relating to bacterial, theatrical, natural
-ant a person who applicant, immigrant, servant
-ation action or process creation, narration, emancipation
-ative tending to creative, preservative, talkative
-dom condition of, state, realm boredom, freedom, wisdom
-er action or process flutter, ponder, stutter
-er a person who does an action announcer, barber, teacher

Inflection:

Inflectional morphemes are affixes which carry grammatical meaning They do not change the
part of speech or meaning of the word; they function to ensure that the word is in the
appropriate form so the sentence is grammatically correct.

For example: Word Inflection

Girl (Noun) Girls (Noun) (added plural marker –s)

Walk (Verb) walked (verb) (added tense marker –ed)

Eat (verb) eats (verb) (added 3rd person marker –s)

Do (verb) undo (verb) (added negative prefix –un)

In the examples above, it is clear that the Parts of speech of the words do not change
after adding the affixes. However, it changes only the grammatical information of the word.

Examples of inflectional morphemes:

Inflectional Morpheme Meaning Example

-s/-es third person singular present eats, washes
-ed regular past participle called, smiled
-en irregular past participle eaten, written
-ing present participle marking, arguing, writing
-s/-es plural cats, dogs, watches, axes
-‘s/-s’ possessive Heather’s, daughters’
-er comparative faster, prettier
-est superlative fastest, prettiest

Order of Derivational and Inflectional morpheme

 Derivational morphemes are always added to the root before inflectional morphemes.
 Once inflectional morpheme is added, derivational morphemes cannot be added.