Inflection and Derivation

Dr. Will Styler - LIGN 120

Today’s Plan

• Inflection, Derivation, and Split Morphology

• Lexical Families

• Inflectional Paradigms

How are words constructed when making language?

We’ve been thinking mostly about the surface result

• “What’s present at the end of the process”

• … but there’s a process involved!

• What is the nature of word formation in actual linguistic practice?

The Split-Morphology Hypothesis

Why might we want Morphology to be split?

• Many argue there are two stages of word construction!

Two ‘types’ of word formation

• Deriving or creating ‘new words’

  • By Derivation (e.g. read -> readable, reader, unread)

  • Or by Compounding (e.g. readthrough, sight read, proofread)

  • These form lexical families of derivationally-related lexemes

• Inflecting words to make the gramatically necessary forms during language use

  • Read -> reads, read, is read, has read

  • These form paradigms of inflectionally-related word forms

Inflection vs. Derivation Intuitions

• What ‘belongs in the dictionary’?

  • Reader? Reading? Reads? Proofread?

  • Nerd? Nerdy? Nerds? Nerding? Nerd out?

• What forms are missing?

  • Can you think of a noun which can’t take a plural?

  • Can you think of an adjective which can’t take un-?

• What affixes change the lexical category of the base?

• What affixes leave the word ‘meaning the same thing’?

So, how do we split morphology?

These represent two very different worlds

• Not just for morphology!

• We’re not going to take a strong stand on which one is correct

• We’ll focus on the consequences of either of these perspectives for Language

• But we will treat the inflection vs. derivation distinction as useful and meaningful

Paradigms and Inflection

Inflectional Morphology

The addition of morphemes which change the meaning of a lexeme in a given linguistic or grammatical context

Certain grammatical contexts demand certain forms

• *“I see three cat yesterday”

  • I saw three cats yesterday

• *“John walk to work and see Jane dog”

  • John walked to work and saw Jane’s dog

• *“Walk in nature make me feel more alive”

  • Walking in nature makes me feel more alive

These forms are very predictable

• A given grammatical (e.g. 3sg) or situational (e.g. plural, past) context requires certain morphemes

• We do not need to memorize (most of) them

• These new word forms are generated ‘on the fly’

Inflectional Forms form Paradigms

Paradigm

A set of word-forms which belong to a single lexeme

• Noun paradigms are often called declension classes

• Verb paradigms are often called verb conjugations

Russian Case Marking Paradigm

Turkish Possessive Paradigm

Spanish Verb Conjugations

Word Families and Derivation

How are words created?

Lexeme

A single unit of form and meaning, which may have many word-forms

Sometimes, lexemes are just made up

• ‘yeet’

• ‘google’

• ‘uber’*

• ‘xerox’

• These words are roots, and are not analyzable

• These words were not created from an existing word!

Often, new word-forms are created from existing lexemes

• burn -> ‘burner’

• left -> ‘lefty’

• boy, soy -> ‘soyboy’

• pad, phone, OS -> iPad, iPhone, iOS

• beauty -> ‘beautiful’

• tender -> ‘tenderness’

• These words are analyzable, and multi-morphemic!

Derivational Morphology

Adding affixes or other morphological units to a lexeme to create a new word forms

This process creates ‘families’ of words

• A list of word-forms which are all derivationally related to a single lexeme

• Pretty, Prettily, Prettyish, Non-Pretty, Anti-Pretty, Prettify?

• Tight, tighten, overtighten, tightener, tight-ish, anti-tighten?

• Rock, rocklike, Rocky, De-rock, derocker, non-rock, Rockify/Rocken?

What about these?

• Hook, Unhook, Rehook, Hooky, Hookup, Right Hook, Fish-hook

• Rock, rocker, rock out, anti-rock, rock-esque

• These are not considered word families

  • 1) They introduce new concepts

  • 2) The lexical category of the bases are different

  • 3) The meanings are unpredictable (e.g. rocker, hooker)

• … but this is still derivational morphology!

Word families can be treated like paradigms

… but they’re often incomplete

• Not all derivational affixes can apply to all lexemes

• There’s less contrast in ‘sweeten’ vs ‘sweetify’, ‘unhappy’ vs. ‘non-happy’

  • Compare ‘cat’ vs. ‘cats’, ‘walk’ vs. ‘walked’

• The process is less predictable

  • You don’t know whether an affix ‘works’ without language knowledge

  • The meanings aren’t clear, necessarily

So, we have derivation and inflection

• One builds paradigms, and changes words ‘online’ according to situational or grammatical context

• One builds lexical families, and seems to produce new words which belong in the dictionary

• What’s the problem?

Distinguishing Derivation and Inflection

How can you tell these apart?

• “Am I looking at two members of a lexical family, or two forms in the same paradigm?”

• “Where, in a split-morphology point of view, was this word formed?”

The ‘-ful’ in ‘bountiful’ is an example of…

1. Inflectional Morphology

2. Derivational Morphology

The ‘-en’ in ‘darken’ is an example of…

1. Inflectional Morphology

2. Derivational Morphology

The ‘-er’ in ‘computer’ is an example of…

1. Inflectional Morphology

2. Derivational Morphology

The ‘-less’ in ‘tactless’ is an example of…

1. Inflectional Morphology

2. Derivational Morphology

The ‘un’ in ‘unimpressed’ is an example of…

1. Inflectional Morphology

2. Derivational Morphology

The ‘re’ in ‘re-adjust’ is an example of…

1. Inflectional Morphology

2. Derivational Morphology

This can be trickier than it seems!

Sometimes, it’s tricky

• In Spanish, the diminutive is ‘-it@’

  • Gato -> Gatito
  • Señora -> Señorita
  • Libro -> Librito
  • Ardilla -> Ardillita

• … but both ‘gatos’ and ‘gatitos’ can be pluralized

• Is the Spanish diminutive inflection or derivation?

Many linguists consider this a continuum

Your textbook gives you a list of properties

… but even those point to gradience!

### What does this mean for split morphology?

It’s complicated!

• Luckily, we don’t need to make hard-and-fast decisions

• We can think about the theoretical issues

• … and talk about the things that are classically considered inflectional or derivational

Wrapping Up

• There’s theoretical debate about the nature of morphology in the mind

• Some morphology feels inflectional, some feels derivational

• Inflectional seems like it builds new word forms on-line in paradigms

• Derivational morphology seems to create new word form families in the lexicon

• The line is blurry, but that’s OK!

For Next Time

• We’ll dive into inflection a bit more!

Thank you!