12. The derivative structure of English words. The distinction between morphological stem and derivational base. Derivational fields.

Derivative structure of English words:The nature, type and arrangement of the ICs (immediate constituent - непосредственная составляющая) of the word is known as its derivative structure. The derivative base – is the part of the word from which the word was built. The derivative pattern – is formed by derivative base and derivative affixes.

Though the derivative structure of the word is closely connected with its morphemic or morphological structure and often coincides with it, it differs from it in principle.

According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big classes: simplexes or simple, non-derived words and complexes or derivatives.

Simplexes are words which derivationally can't be segmented into ICs. The morphological stem of simple words, i.e. the part of the word which takes on the system of grammatical inflections is semantically non-motivated and independent of other words, e.g. hand, come, blue, etc.

Derivatives are words which depend on some other simpler lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically, i.e. the meaning and the structure of the derivative is understood through the comparison with the meaning and the structure of the source word. Hence derivatives are secondary, motivated units, made up as a rule of two ICs, i.e. binary units, e.g. words like teacher is made up of the ICs “to teach” and “-er”. The ICs are brought together according to specific rules of order and arrangement preconditioned by the system of the language. It follows that all derivatives are marked by the fixed order of their ICs.

Types of derivational bases:

- bases that coincide with morphemes (morphological stamps) – dutiful

- bases that coincide with grammatical word-forms – unknown

- bases the coincide with word-groups – second-rateness

Types of derivations:

- Derivative words (Affixational Conversions)

- Compound words (Compound words proper Derivational compounds.)

The distinction between morphological stem and derivational base: Derivational morphemes makes new words from old ones.Thus creation is formed from create , but they are two separate words. Inflectional morphemes: vary (or "inflect") the form of words in order to express grammatical features, such as singular/plural or past/present tense. Thus Boy and boys, for example, are two different forms of the "same" word; the choice between them, singular vs. plural, is a matter of grammar and thus the business of inflectional morphology.

Derivational morphemes generally: 1) Change the part of speech or the basic meaning of a word. Thus -ment added to a verb forms a noun (judg-ment). re-activate means "activate again."2) Are not required by syntactic relations outside the word. Thus un-kind combines un- and kind into a single new word, but has no particular syntactic connections outside the word -- we can say he is unkind or he is kind or they are unkind or they are kind, depending on what we mean.3) Are often not productive -- derivational morphemes can be selective about what they'll combine with, and may also have erratic effects on meaning. Thus the suffix -hood occurs with just a few nouns such as brother, neighbor, and knight, but not with most others. 4) Typically occur between the stem and any inflectional affixes. Thus in governments,-ment, a derivational suffix, precedes -s, an inflectional suffix. 5) In English, may appear either as prefixes or suffixes: pre-arrange, arrange-ment.

Inflectional Morphemes generally:1) Do not change basic meaning or part of speech, e.g., big, bigg-er, bigg-est are all adjectives.2) Express grammatically-required features or indicate relations between different words in the sentence. Thus in Lee love-s Kim: -s marks the 3rd person singular present form of the verb, and also relates it to the 3rd singular subject Lee.3) Are productive. Inflectional morphemes typically combine freely with all members of some large class of morphemes, with predictable effects on usage/meaning. Thus the plural morpheme can be combined with nearly any noun, usually in the same form, and usually with the same effect on meaning.4) Occur outside any derivational morphemes. Thus in ration-al-iz-ation-s the final -s is inflectional, and appears at the very end of the word, outside the derivational morphemes -al, -iz, -ation.5) In English, are suffixes only.