Classification

Semantically all morphemes are subdivided into:

1. root morphemes – they’re lexical centers of the words, they’re basic constituent parts: london er, black ness

In English the root is very often homonymous with words (play, head, wind)

2. Affixational (affixes)

They are subdivided into prefixes and suffixes. They have a generalized meaning (lexical) and the part-of-speech meaning. E.g. suffixes –er; -ee denote a doer of an action, noun-forming.

Structurally morphemes are divided into: free, bound and semi-bound (semi-free).

Free – a form may stand alone without changing its meaning

Bound – a form cannot occur in speech alone. E.g. all the affixes

Semi-bound – they can function both as an affix and as a free morpheme. E.g. thing – anything, like – womanlike, well – well-done.

Prefixes and suffixes are derivational morphemes. They are used to form new words. Words, which consist of a root and prefix or a suffix (or both), are called derived words (производные) or derivatives.

When a derivational affix is stripped from a word what remains is a stem. If a stem is a single morpheme and contains nothing but a root, it’s a simple stem.

If a stem consists of a root morpheme and an affix, it’s not simple but derived stem.

E.g. heart-i-er – derived stem

hearty – simple stem

2

Word-formation is the process of creating new words from the material of a language after certain structural and semantic fomulars and patterns.

Word-building is one of the main ways of enriching vocabulary.

There are four main ways of word-building in Modern English: affixation, composition, conversion, shortening.

There are also secondary ways of word-building: soundinterchange, stress interchange, sound imitation, blends, back formation (disaffixation).

Sound-interchange is the way of word-building when some sounds are changed to form a new word, e.g. to strike – stroke, to sing – song.

Stress interchange can be mostly met in verbs and nouns of Romanic origin: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last syllable, e.g. accent – to accent.

Sound imitation is the way of word-building when a word is built by imitating different sounds:

a) sounds produced by human beings: to whisper, to mumble;

b) sounds produced by animals, birds, insects: to moo, to hiss, to buzz;

c) sounds produced by nature and objects: to splash, to bubble, to clatter.

Blends are words formed from a word-group or two synonyms, e.g. hustle (hurry and bustle), cinemaddict (cinema addict).

Backformation (disaffixation) is the way of word-building when a word is formed by dropping the final morpheme to form a new word, e.g. to bach (from bachelor), to televise (from television). The part-of-speech meaning of the primary word is changed, verbs are formed from nouns.

2.1 Affixation

Affixation is one of the most productive way in which new words have been made up.

It’s a formation of new words by adding derivational affixes to the stem.

Unlike root, affixes are always bound forms. The differemce between suffixes and prefixes is not only in their position, it also concerns their function and meaning.

Prefixes:

1. prefixation is mostly typical of verbs;

2. prefixes change the lexical meaning of the stem (write – rewrite);

3. only some prefixes change the part of speech formed (reach – to inreach).

Suffixes:

1. suffixation is mostly typical of nouns and adjectives;

2. suffixes also change the lexical meaning of words (help – helpless);

3. the majority of suffixes change the part of speech formed (black – to blacken); only some suffixes don’t change part of speech (brown – brownish, child – childhood), they transfer a word into another semantic group.

Prefixes is the way of word-building with help of prefixes. Prefixes may be classified on different principals:

1. according to their origin:

a) native

-after, -out, -mis, un-, over-, under- – unhappy, overfeed, undernourish;

b) foreign: latin: in, il, im, ir

greek: pre, post, super, sub, co, inter, extra, anti, ultra

2. according to their meaning

negative: un, dis, non, in

of repetition: re

revesative: to button – to unbutton, to form – to deform, to populate – to depopulate, to connect – to disconnect

of time and order: pre / post, ex, after

perjorative: mal

locative: super, sub, inter, over, trans

Suffixation is the way of word building with help of suffixes. Suffixes may be classified:

1. according to their origin

native: ness, ish, dom, hood, ing

foreign: ist, ism, atiom, ment, able

2. according to the part of speech formed

noun-forming: er, dom, ation, ist, ism, ment, ee, ss

adj-forming: able, less, ful, ic, ous, ish, ative

adverb-forming: ly, ward

verb-forming: en, fy, ize, ate

3. according to their meaning

1) noun suffixes

*agent, profession, occupation: ist, er, eer

*appurtinance (принадлежность): an, ian, ees

*callactivity: dom, hood

* abstract ideas: ship, ment, tion, hood, th

2) adj-suffixes

* presence or absense of quality: ful, able, ous, less

Semi-affixes

There are cases when it’s rather difficult to draw a line between roots and affixes. There’re a few roots in english whch have developed great combining ability in the position of the 2^nd element of a word anda very general meaning similar to that of an affixe. These are called semi-affixes. They recieve this name because sementiccaly, structurally and functionaly they behave more like affixes than like roots. Their meaning is very general. They determine lexico-grammatical class, the word belongs to. The most common semi-affixes are:

• half (half – halfdone)

• man (man – policeman)

• well (well – well-done)

• ill (ill – ill-dressed)

• self (self – selfportrait)