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Derivational Morphology
Mihaela Tnase-Dogaru, Fall semester 2014
Course design: Ileana Baciu (2004). English Morphology. Word formation (EUB)
Lecture 2

The morpheme. Identification and classification

1. Boundary Types
- there is a relation between morphemic boundaries and phonemic features.
- morphemes = sequences of phonemes; loose contact and division between breath-groups and phonemes
occur at morpheme boundaries.
(1)

per-mit
re-arm
night-gown

- the pauses = evidence of morpheme boundary

Chomsky and Halle (1968) three types of boundary:

(i)

Word Boundary #

- the WB # is placed in word initial and word final position

(2)

boy = #boy#

- the presence of WB indicates that the stress pattern never changes even if the words are embedded into
larger sequences
(3)

/ #boy#ish /

SO - the presence of the boundary # word-internally indicates that the stress pattern of the stem is
preserved.
- all morphemes which qualify as signs and which receive their own stress are marked by the WB #:
(4)

mis#manage
un#lucky
re#state

- from a morphological point of view the WB indicates that the respective complex word is a complex
sign made up of constituent signs.
(ii) Formative Boundary +
- the FB + indicates the existence of a morphemic segment; phonologically, the presence of + permits
shift in the stress pattern of the stem
(5)

/inform/ - /inform+ation/

(iii) The Boundary =

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- indicates, like the FB +, morphologically complex words, e.g. straw=berry, re=fer, per=mit, re=sume
etc. The identified morphemes are never signs and they evince at most a partial degree of independence.
2. Morphemic segments
SO, morpheme boundaries correspond to certain phonemic features; breath-groups, stress pattern
constitute observable evidence of morpheme boundary.
- after we have decided where to place the tentative morphemic boundaries we need some means of
checking whether we were right.
Structuralist procedures for setting up morphemic segments (Harris 1955): substitution and distributional
patterning.
2.1. Substitution
- a phoneme sequence is decomposable into morphemic segments iff one part of the respective sequence
occurs without the other part in the same total environment.
(6)

Thats our

roomer
room
London
Londoner

A
A
C
C

B
D
D
B

- the tentative morphemic segments -er, room, London may occur without the other in the same total
environment: Thats our ____:
if in the total environment X, the combination AB occurs and AD occurs and CB occurs and CD occurs
where A,B,C,D are each phonemically identifiable sequences, then it is possible to recognize A, B, C, D
as being each of them (tentatively) discrete morphemic segments in the environment (context, frame) X.
- in (6):
a. X is Thats our____
b. AB is roomer (where B is -er)
c. AD is room (i.e. D is zero)
d. CD is London (where D is zero)
e. CB is Londoner (where B is -er)
-what if we apply substitution to the following environment:
(7)

a)

Thats our roomer

room
hammer
ham

b)

The stars were gleaming

glittering
glowing

- in (7a) substitution identifies the tentative morphemic segments : room, ham and er; hammer would be
analysed as made up of two morphemic segments: ham and -er.
- in (7b) the application of substitution would yield for each element three morphemic segments because
gl- and -ing occur independently in other combinations in the same total environment.

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- this is known as oversegmentation. We need to back up the results by applying distributional
patterning.
2.2. Distributional Patterning
- is substitution + varying the context.
- a particular independent phonemic sequence is a morphemic segment only if it has identical relations to
many other environments.
(8)

The announcer
is no good
announcement
governer
government
assigner
assignment

- by substitution, the phoneme sequence announcer is made up of two morphemic segments since
announce may be substituted by govern, assign, reinforce etc and er can be substituted by -ment.
- the results of the application of substitution are to be validated by the procedure of distributional
patterning, which requires the occurrence of the identified morphemic segments in other contexts (frames)
as well.
- we have to find if there is any other general characteristic that distinguishes the group announce, govern,
assign as compared to other sequences which occur before -er.
- we find that all the morphemic segments that occur before -er also occur in the contexts below:
(9)

(a)
(b)
(c)

I cannot ________ it
Lets try to _______.
While ______ ing it.

- the phonemic sequence ham in hammer, which substitution alone would analyse as made up of two
morphemic segments ( ham+er), is actually made up of just one morphemic segment, alongside elements
like anger, spider, quiver, stammer, shimmer, glimmer, etc:
(10)

The *hamment is no good

I cannot *ham it
Lets try to *ham it
While *hamming it

SO, morphemic boundaries in an utterance are determined NOT on the basis of considerations interior to
the utterance but on the basis of comparison with other utterances.
3. Morph classification. Morpheme identification
- the distinction morph-morpheme overlaps the distinction variant-invariant and is patterned on the
distinction phone-phoneme.
- is phonemic resemblance alone enough for two morphs to belong to the same invariant morpheme?
(11) do the phonemically identical morphs -er in writer and and -er in larger belong to one and the same
invariant morpheme -ER?

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- how do we group morphs into morphemes?
- the grouping procedure is based on the notion partial resemblance of morphs. This notion refers to two
distinct properties:
a) resemblance in phonemic form;
b) resemblance (i.e. identity) of context of occurrence.
-!!! phonemic form alone is not relevant enough.
- the elements governor, assigner, announcer are made up of two independent morphemic segments (i.e.
morphs).
- the three occurrences of -er can be classified under one single morpheme ER since the stems to which
they attach belong to the same distributional class, namely the class traditionally identified as verb.
SO the three occurrences of -er are variants of the same invariant morpheme ER. Moreover, the complex
elements governor, assigner, announcer share the same context of occurrence.
SO - the context of occurrence for -er is represented by the frame / /X/V # er /N .
- given (ii), we can now understand why -er in stronger and -er in teacher cannot be grouped under one
single invariant morpheme. The two phonemically identical morphs are not variants of the same
morpheme because they have distinct contexts of occurrence:
(12)

a) This /X/V #er/N is perfect;

b) The /X/A #er/A man.

Criteria for morph classification:

(i) Morphs which are phonemically identical and have also identical environments constitute repetitions
of one and the same invariant morpheme. This is the case of -er in governor, announcer, assigner
discussed above.
(ii) Morphs that are phonemically different but display absolutely the same distribution i.e. have identical
contexts of occurrence, are classified under one single morpheme and are said to be free variants of the
same morpheme. The two free variant morphs represent two phonemic non-conditioned realizations of
one invariant morpheme. A well known example is economics with the free variants: /ekonomiks/ vs.
/iyknomiks/
(iii) Morphs which have phonemically different forms and the same general environment, except that the
environment of one morph always contains some element X which does not occur in the environment of
the other morphs and which accounts for the different phonemic form of the respective morpheme, belong
to one invariant morpheme. Such morphs are said to be in complementary distribution and are known
under the name of allomorphs. The different phonemic realization of the morphs can be conditioned
morphologically or phonologically. An example of morphological conditioning is the change in the
phonemic form of +al in national vs nationality, a change brought about by the presence of the
derivational suffix +ity .
- phonological conditioning = the case of the plural morpheme (or third person singular morpheme) that
has the phonemic shapes /s/, /z/ and /iz/ depending on the stem final consonant:
(13)

Cvoiceless ... /s/ books, cats

Cvoiced ..... /z/ cars, dogs
Csibilant ..... /iz/ glasses, torches

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(iv) Morphs that do not have the same phonemic form and, moreover, do not have the same distributional
contexts are instances of different morphemes.
- the result of the four criteria will be a number of distributional classes that will help us in uncovering the
hierarchically organized morphemic structure of language.