Word-formation in English
by

Ingo
Plag
Universität
Siegen

in
press
Cambridge University Press
Series 'Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics'

Draft version of September 27, 2002

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
........ 1

..................................................................................................

1. Basic concepts
1.1. What is a word?

4

1.2. Studying word-formation
1.3. Inflection and derivation
1.4. Summary
Furthe r rea ding

23

Exercises
2. Studying complex words
2.1. Identifying morphemes
2.1.1. The morpheme as the minimal linguistic sign
2. 1. 2. Problems with the morpheme: the mapping of
form and meaning

27

2.2. Allomorphy
2 . 3 . E s t a b l i s h i n g w o r d-formation rules
2.4. Multiple affixation
2.5. Summary
Further reading
Exercises
3. Productivity and the mental lexicon

1

3.1. Introduction: What is productivity?

551

3.2. Possible and actual words

1

3.3. Complex words in the lexicon
3.4. Measuring productivity
Pages 55-57 appear twice due to software-induced layout-alterations that occur
when the word for
1

windows files are converted into PDF.

ii
3.5. Constraining productivity

73

3.5.1. Pragmatic restrictions
3.5.2. Structural restrictions
3.5.3. Blocking
3.6. Summary
Further

reading

85

Exercises
4.

A ffi

xation

4.1. What is an affix?
4.2. How to investigate affixes: More on methodology
4.3. General properties of English affixation
4 . 4 .

S u ffi

x e s

1 0 9

4.4.1. Nominal suffixes
4.4.2. Verbal suffixes
4.4.3. Adjectival suffixes
4.4.4. Adverbial suffixes
4.5. Prefixes
4 . 6 .

I n fi

x a t i o n

4.7. Summary
F u r t h e r

r e a d i n g

1 3 1

E x ercises
5 .

D e r i v a t i o n

w i t h o u t

a ffi

x a t i o n

5.1. Conversion
5.1.1. The directionality of conversion
5 . 1 . 2 .

C o n v e r s i o n

5 . 1 . 3 . C o n v e r s i o n :
o r m o r p h o l o g i c a l ?
5.2. Prosodic morphology
5.2.1. Truncations: Truncated names,
-y diminutives and clippings
5.2.2. Blends

o r

z e r o-affixation?

S y n t a c t i c
1 4 3

iii
5.3. Abbreviations and acronyms
5.4. Summary
F u r t h e r

r e a d i n g

Exercises
6. Compounding
6.1. Recognizing compounds
6.1.1. What are compounds made of?
6 . 1 . 2 .
M o r e
o n
t h e
s t r u c t u r e
o f
c o m p o u n d s :
t h e

n o t i o n

o f

h e a d

6.1.3. Stress in compounds
6.1.4. Summary
6 . 2 .
A n
i n v e n t o r y
o f
c o m p o u n d i n g
p a t t e r n s
6.3. Nominal compounds
6.3.1 Headedness
6.3.2. Interpreting nominal compounds
6.4. Adjectival compounds

194

6.5. Verbal compounds
6.6. Neo-classical compounds
6.7. Compounding: syntax or morphology?
6.8. Summary
F u r t h e r

r e a d i n g

Exercises
7. Theoretical issues: modeling word -formation
7 . 1 .
I n t r o d u c t i o n :
t h e o r y ?

W h y

7.2. The phonology-morphology interaction: lexical phonology
7.2.1. An outline of the theory of lexical phonology
7.2.2. Basic insights of lexical phonology
7.2.3. Problems with lexical phonology
7 . 2 . 4 .
A l t e r n a t i v e
t h e o r i e s
7.3. The nature of word-formation rules

2 2 2

iv
7.3.1. The problem: word -based versus morpheme-based
morphology
7 . 3 . 2 .
morphology

M o r p h e m e -based

7.3.3. Word-based morphology
7 . 3 . 4 .
F u r t h e r
Exercises
References

S y n t h e s i s
r e a d i n g

2 4 3
2 4 4

v

ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTATIONAL CONVENTIONS

A

adjective

AP

adjectival phrase

Adv

adverb

C

consonant

I

pragmatic potentiality

LCS

lexical conceptual

structure n1

hapax legomenon

N

noun

N

number of observations

NP

noun phrase

OT

Optimality Theory

P

productivity in the narrow sense

P*

global

productivity PP prepositional
phrase PrWd

prosodic

word
SPE

Chomsky and Halle 1968, see references

UBH

unitary base hypothesis

UOH

unitary output

hypothesis V
V

verb

vowel

VP

verb phrase

V

extent of use

WFR

word formation rule

#

word boundary

.

syllable boundary

|

in the context of

vi
< >

orthographic representation

/

/

phonological (i.e. underlying) representation

[

]

phonetic representation

*

impossible word

!

possible, but unattested

1

Introduction:
What this book is about and how it can be used
The existence of words is usually taken for granted by the speakers of a
language. To speak and understand a language means - among many
other things - knowing the words

of

that

language.

The

average

speaker knows thousands of words, and new words enter our minds and
our language on a daily basis. This book is about words. More specifically,
it deals with the internal structure of complex words, i.e. words that are
composed of more than one meaningful element. Take, for example, the
very word meaningful, which could be argued to consist of two elements,
meaning and -ful,
or even three, mean, -ing, and -ful. We will address the question of how
such words
are related to other words and how the language allows speakers to
create

new words.

For

example,

meaningful seems to be clearly

related to colorful, but perhaps less so to awful or plentiful. And, given
that meaningful may be paraphrased as 'having
(a

definite)

meaning',

and

colorful as

'having

(bright or many

different) colors', we could ask whether it is also possible to create
the word coffeeful, meaning 'having coffee'. Under the assumption that
language is a rule-governed system, it should be possible to find
meaningful answers to such questions.
This

area

of

study

is

traditionally

referred

to

as

word-

formation and the present book is mainly concerned with word formation in one particular language, English. As a textbook for an
undergraduate readership it presupposes very little or
no prior knowledge of linguistics and introduces and explains linguistic
terminology and theoretical apparatus as we go along.
The purpose of the book is to enable the students to engage in
(and enjoy!) their

own

analyses

of

English

(or

other

languages')

complex word s. After having worked with the book, the reader should
be familiar with the necessary and most recent methodological tools
to

obtain

various

relevant

types

of

data

(introspection,

dictionaries,

basic

electronic

text collections,

psycholinguistic

experiments,

2
internet resources), should be able to systematically analyze their data
and to relate their findings to theoretical problems and debates. The
book is not written in the

3
perspective of a particular theoretical framework and draws on insights from
various research traditions.
Word-formation in English can be used as a textbook for a
course on word - formation (or the word-formation parts of morphology
courses), as a source-book for teachers, for student research projects,
as a book for self-study by more advanced students (e.g. for their
exam preparation), and as an up-to-date reference concerning selected
word -formation processes in English for a more general readership.
For

each

chapter

there

are

a

number

of

basic

and

more

advanced exercises, which are suitable for in-class work or as students'
homework. The more advanced exercises include proper research tasks,
which also give the students the opportunity
to use the different methodological tools introduced in the text. Students
can control their learning success by comparing their results with the
answer key provided at
the end of the book. The answer key features two kinds of answers. Basic
exercises always receive definite answers, while for the more advanced
tasks sometimes no
'correct' answers are given. Instead, methodological problems and
possible lines of analysis are discussed. Each chapter is also followed
by a list of recommended further readings.
Those who consult the book as a general reference on English word formation

may

check

author,

subject

bibliography in order to quickly find

and

what

affix
they

indices
need.

and

Chapter

the
3

introduces most recent developments in research methodology, and
short descriptions of individual affixes are located in chapter 4
As every reader knows, English is spoken by hundreds of millions
speakers and there exist numerous varieties of English around the world.
The variety that has been taken as a reference for this book is General
American English. The reason for this choice is purely practical, it is the
variety the author knows best. With regard to most of the phenomena
discussed in this book, different varieties of English pattern very much
alike. However, especially concerning aspects of pronunciation there are
sometimes
observable

remarkable,

though

perhaps

minor,

differences

between different varieties. Mostly for reasons of space, but

also due to the lack of pertinent studies, these differences will not be

4
discussed here. However, I hope that the book will enable the readers to
adapt and relate the findings presented with reference to American
English to the variety of English they are most familiar with.

5
The structure of the book is as follows. Chapters 1 through 3
introduce the basic notions needed for the study and description of
word -internal

structure (chapter 1), the problems that arise with the

implementation of the said notions in the actual

analysis

of

complex

words in English (chapter 2), and one of the central problems in
word -formation, productivity (chapter 3). The descriptively oriented
chapters 4 through 6 deal with the different kinds of word-formation
processes that can
affixation,

be

chapter

found
5

in

English:

non-affixational

chapter

4

processes,

discusses
chapter

6

compounding. Chapter 7 is devoted to two theoretical issues,
the role of phonology in word-formation, and the nature of word-formation
rules.
The author welcomes comments and feedback on all aspects
of this book, especially from students. Without students telling their
teachers

what

is

good

for them

(i.e.

for

the

students), teaching

cannot become as effective and enjoyable as it should be for for both
teachers and teachees (oops, was that a possible word of English?).

6

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

1.

BASIC CONCEPTS

Outline

This chapter introduces basic concepts needed for the study and
description of morphologically complex

words.

Since

this

is

a

book

about the particular branch of morphology called word- formation, we
will first take a look at the notion of 'word'. We will then turn to a first
analysis of
the kinds of phenomena that fall into the domain of word-formation, before
we finally discuss how word-formation can be distinguished from the other
sub-branch of morphology, inflection.

1. What is a word?

It has been estimated that average speakers of a language know from
45,000 to 60,000 words. This means that we as speakers must have
stored these words somewhere in our

heads,

our

so-called mental

lexicon. But what exactly is it that we have stored? What do we mean
when we speak of 'words'?
In non-technical every-day talk, we speak about 'words' without ever
thinking
that this could be a problematic notion. In this section we will see
that,

perhaps contra

linguistic

unit

our

deserves

first

intuitive

feeling,

the

'word'

as

a

some attention, because it is not as

straightforward as one might expect.
If you had to define what a word is, you might first think of the word as
a unit
in the writing system, the so-called orthographic word. You could say,
for example, that a word is an uninterrupted string of letters which is
preceded by a blank space and followed either by a blank space or a
punctuation mark. At first sight, this looks like a good definition that
can be easily applied, as we can see in the sentence in example (1):

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

(1)

Linguistics is a fascinating subject.

7

8

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

We count 5 orthographic words: there are five uninterrupted strings of
letters, all of which are preceded by a blank space, four of which are
also followe d by a blank space, one of which is followed by a period.
This count is also in accordance with our intuitive feeling of what a
word is. Even without this somewhat formal and technical definition,
you might want to argue, you could have told that the sente nce
in (1) contains five words. However, things are not always as
straightforward. Consider the following example, and try to determine how
many words there are:
(2)

Benjamin's girlfriend lives in a high-rise apartment building

Your result depends on a number of assumptions. If you consider
apostrophies to be punctuation
two

(orthographic)

marks,

words.

If

Benjamin's

constitutes

not, Benjamin's is one word. If you

consider a hyphen a punctuation mark, high-rise is two (orthographic)
words, otherwise it's one (orthographic) word. The last two strings,
apartment

building, are easy to classify, they are two (orthographic)

words, whereas girlfriend must be considered one (orthographic) word.
However, there are two basic problems with our orthographic analysis.
The first one is that orthography is often variable. Thus,

girlfriend

is

also attested with the spellings , and even
(fish brackets are used to indicate spellings, i.e. letters). Such
variable spellings are rather common (cf. word-formation, word formation,
and wordformation, all
of them attested), and even where the spelling is conventionalized, similar
words are often

spelled

differently,

as

evidenced

with

grapefruit

vs. passion fruit. For our problem of defining what a word is, such
cases are rather annoying. The notion of what a word is, should, after
all, not depend on the fancies of individual writers or
the

arbitrariness

of

the

English

spelling

system.

The

second

problem with the orthographically defined word is that it may not always
coincide with our intuitions. Thus, most of us would probably agree that
girlfriend is a word (i.e. one word) which consists of two words (girl and
friend), a so-called compound. If compounds are one word, they should
be

spelled

without

a

blank

space

separating

the

elements

that

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

9

together make up the compound. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The

compound apartment building, for example, has a blank space between
apartment and building.

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

To summarize our discussion of purely orthographic criteria of
wordhood, we must
reliable.

say

Furthermore,

that
a

these

criteria

are

not

entirely

purely orthographic notion of word would

have the disadvantage of implying that illiterate speakers would have no
idea about what a word might be. This is plainly false.
What, might you ask, is responsible for our intuitions about what a
word is, if not the orthography? It has been argued that the word could be
defined in four other ways:

in

terms

of

sound

structure

(i.e.

phonologically), in terms of its internal integrity, in terms of meaning
(i.e.

semantically),

or

in

terms

of

sentence

structure (i.e.

syntactically). We will discuss each in turn.
You might have thought that the blank spaces in writing reflect
pauses in the spoken language, and that perhaps one could define the
word as a unit in speech surrounded
carefully

listen

to

naturally

by

pauses.

However,

if

you

occurring speech you will realize that

speakers do not make pauses before or after each word. Perhaps we
could say that words can be surrounded by potential pauses in speech.
This criterion works much better, but it runs into problems because
speakers can and
do make pauses not only between words but also between syllables, for
example for emphasis.
But there is another way of how the sound structure can tell
us something about the nature of the word as a linguistic unit. Think of
stress. In many languages (including

English)

the

word

is

the

unit

that is crucial for the occurrence and distribution of stress. Spoken in
isolation, every word can have only one main stress,
as indicated by the acute accents (´) in the data presented in (3) below
(note that we
speak of linguistic 'data' when we refer to language examples to be
analyzed).
(3)

cárpenter

téxtbook

wáter

análysis

féderal

sýllable

móther

understán
d

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

The main stressed syllable is the syllable which is the most prominent one in
a word.
Prominence of a syllable is a function of loudness, pitch and duration, with
stressed syllables being pronounced louder, with higher pitch, or with
longer duration than

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

the neighboring syllable(s). Longer words often have additional, weaker
stresses, so- called secondary stresses, which we ignore here for
simplicity's sake. The words in
(4) now show that the phonologically defined word is not always identical
with the orthographically defined word.
(4)
Bénjamin'
s
gírlfriend
apártment building
While apártment building is two orthographic words, it is only one word
in terms of stress behavior. The same would hold for other compounds
like trável agency, wéather forecast, spáce shuttle, etc. We see that in
these examples the phonological definition of
'word' comes closer to our intuition of what a word should be.
We have to take into consideration, however, that not all words
carry stress. For example, function words like articles or auxiliaries are
usually unstressed (a cár,
the dóg, Máry has a dóg) or even severely reduced (Jane's in the
garden, I'll be there). Hence, the stress criterion is not readily applicable
to function words and to words that hang on to other words, so-called
clitics (e.g. 've, 's, 'll).
Let us now consider the integrity criterion, which says that the
word is an indivisible
may

be

inserted.

If

unit

into

which

no

intervening

material

some modificational element is added to a word,

it must be done at the edges, but never inside the word. For example,
plural endings such as

-s in

girls, negative elements such as un- in

uncommon or endings that create verbs out of adjectives (such as -ize in
colonialize) never occur inside the word they modify, but are added
either before or after the word. Hence, the impossibility of formations
such as *gi-s-rl, *com-un-mon,
*col-ize-onial (note that the asterisk indicates impossible words, i.e. words
that are not formed in accordance with the morphological rules of the

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

language in question).
However, there are some cases in which word integrity is
violated. For example, the plural of son-in-law is not *son-in-laws
but

sons-in-law. Under the assumption that

son-in-law is one word

(i.e. some kind of compound), the plural ending

is

the word and not at the end. Apart from certain

inserted

inside

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

compounds, we can find other words that violate the integrity criterion for
words. For example, in creations like abso-bloody-lutely, the element
bloody is inserted inside
the word, and not, as we would expect, at one of the edges. In fact, it is
impossible to add

bloody

before

or

after

absolutely

in

order

to

achieve the same effect. Absolutely bloody would mean something
completely different, and *bloody absolutely seems utterly strange and,
above all, uninterpretable.
We can conclude that there are certain, though marginal
counterexamples to
the integrity criterion, but surely these cases should be regarded as the
proverbial exceptions that prove the rule.
The semantic definition of word states that a word expresses
a

unified semantic concept. Although this may be true for most

words

(even

for

son-in-law, which is ill-behaved with regard to the

integrity criterion), it is not sufficient in order
to differentiate between words and non-words. The simple reason is
that not every unified semantic concept corresponds to one word in a
given language. Consider, for example, the smell of fresh rain in a forest
in the fall. Certainly a unified concept, but
we would not consider the smell of fresh rain in a forest in the fall a word.
In fact, English simply has no single word for this concept. A similar
problem arises with phrases like the woman who lives next door. This
phrase refers to a particular person and should therefore be considered
as something expressing a unified concept. This concept is however
expressed by more than one word. We learn from this example
that although a word may always express a unified concept, not every
unified concept is expressed by one word. Hence the criterion is not
very helpful in distinguishing between words and larger units that
are not words. An additional problem arises from the notion of 'unified
semantic concept' itself, which seems to be rather vague. For example,
does the complicated word conventionalization really express a unified
concept? If we paraphrase it as 'the act or result of making something
conventional',
it is not entirely clear whether this should still be regarded as a
'unified concept'. Before

taking

the

semantic

definition

of

word

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

seriously,

it

would

be

necessary

to define exactly what 'unified

concept' means.
This leaves us with the syntactically-oriented criterion of
wordhood. Words
are usually cons idered to be syntactic atoms, i.e. the smallest elements in a
sentence. Words belong to certain syntactic classes (nouns, verbs,
adjectives, prepositions etc.),

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

which are called parts of speech, word classes or syntactic
categories. The position
in which a given word may occur in a sentence is determined by the
syntactic rules
of a language. These rules make reference to words and the class they
belong to. For example, the is said to belong to the class called articles,
and there are rules which determine where in a sentence such words,
i.e. articles, may occur (usually before nouns and their modifiers, as
in the big house). We can therefore test whether something is a word
by checking whether it belongs to such a word class. If the item
in question, for example, follows the rules for nouns, it should be a
noun, hence a word.

Or

consider

the

fact

that

only

words

(and

groups of words), but no smaller units can be moved to a different
position in the sentence. For example, in 'yes/no' questions, the auxiliary
verb does not occur in its usual position but is moved to the beginning of
the

sentence

(You

can

read my textbook

vs.

Can

you read my

textbook?). Thus syntactic criteria can help to determine the wordhood of a
given entity.
To summarize our discussion of the possible definition of word we
can say that, in spite of the intuitive appeal of the notion of 'word', it is
sometimes not easy
to decide whether a given string of sounds (or letters) should be regarded
as a word
or not. In the treatment above, we have

concentrated on

the

discussion of such problematic cases. In most cases, however, the stress
criterion, the integrity criterion and the syntactic criteria lead to
sufficiently clear results. The properties of words
are summarized in (5):
(5)

Properties of words
- words are entities having a part of speech specification
- words are syntactic atoms
- words (usually) have one main stress
- words (usually) are indivisible units (no intervening material
possible)

Unfortunately, there is yet another problem with the word

word

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

itself, namely its ambiguity.

Thus,

even

if

we

have

unequivocally

decided that a given string is a word, some insecurity remains about
what exactly we refer to when we say things like

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

(6)

a.

“The word be occurs twice in the
sentence.”
[D´w„dbi´k„ztwaIsInD´sent´ns]

b.

The utterance in (6), given in both its orthographic and its phonetic
representation,
can be understood in different ways, it is ambiguous in a number of
ways. First,
or the sounds [bi] may refer to the letters or the sounds which
they stand for. Then sentence (6) would, for example, be true for every
written sentence in which the string
occurs

twice.

Referring

to

the

SPACE

be

SPACE>

BLANK

spoken equivalent

of

(6a),

represented by the phonetic transcription in (6b), (6) would be true
for any sentence in which the string of sounds [bi] occurs twice. In this
case, [bi] could refer to two different 'words', e.g. bee and be. The next
possible interpretation is that in (6) we refer to the grammatically
specified form be, i.e. the infinitive, imperative or subjunctive form
of

the

linking

called the
this

verb

BE.

grammatical

reading,

(6)

Such a grammatically specified form is

word (or morphosyntactic

word). Under

would be true of any sentence containing two

infinitive, two imperative or two subjunctive forms of be, but would not
be true of a sentence which contains any of the forms am, is, are, was,
were.
To complicate matters further, even the same form can stand for
more than
one different grammatical word. Thus, the

word-form be is used for

three different grammatical words, expressing subjunctive infinitive or
imperative,

respectively. This

interpretation,

namely

that

brings

(6)

us

may

to

the

last

possible

refer to the linking verb

BE

in

general, as we would find it in a dictionary entry, abstracting away from
the different word-forms in which the word
were, be, been).

Under

this

reading,

(6)

sentence containing any two word-forms
am, is, are, was, were,

and

BE

of

occurs (am, is, are, was,

would
the

be

true

linking

for

any

verb,

i.e.

be. Under this interpretation, am, is,

are, was, were, be and been are regarded as realizations of an
abstract morphological entity. Such abstract entities are called lexemes.
Coming back

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

to our previous example of be and bee, we could now say that
and

BEE

BE

are two different lexemes that simply sound the same (usually

small capitals are used when writing about lexemes). In technical terms,
they are homophonous words, or simply homophones.

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

In everyday speech, these rather subtle ambiguities in our use
of the term
'word' are easily tolerated and are often not even noticed, but
when discussing linguistics, it is sometimes necessary to be more explicit
about what exactly one talks about. Having discussed what we can mean
when we speak of 'words', we may now turn

to

the

question

what

exactly we are dealing with in the study of word- formation.

2. Studying word-formation

As the term 'word-formation' suggests, we are dealing with the formation of
words, but what does that mean? Let us look at a number of words that fall
into the domain
of word-formation and a number of words that do not:
(7)

a.

employee

b.

apartment building

inventor

greenhouse

inability

team manager

meaningless

c.

chair
neighbo
r
matter

truck driver

brow

suddenness

blackboard

great

unhappy

son-in-law

decolonialization

pickpocket

promis
e
discuss

In columns (7a) and (7b) we find words that are obviously composed
by putting
together smaller elements to form larger words with more complex
meanings. We can say that we are dealing with morphologically
complex words. For example, employee can be analyzed as being
composed of the verb employ and the ending -ee,
the adjective unhappy can be analyzed as being derived from the
adjective happy by
the attachment of the element

un-, and

decolonialization can be

segmented into the smallest parts de-, colony, -al, -ize, and -ation. We
can thus decompose complex words into their smallest meaningful units.
These units are called morphemes.

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

In contrast to those in (7a) and (7b), the words in (7c) cannot be
decomposed into smaller meaningful units, they consist of only one
morpheme, they are mono - morphemic. Neighbor, for example, is not
composed of neighb- and -or, although the word looks rather similar to a
word such as inventor. Inventor ('someone who invents (something)') is
decomposable into two morphemes, because both invent- and -or are
meaningful elements, wheras neithe r neighb- nor -or carry any meaning
in neighbor (a neighbor is not someone who neighbs, whatever that may
be...).
As we can see from the complex words in (7a) and (7b), some
morphemes can occur only if attached to some other morpheme(s).
Such morphemes are called bound morphemes, in contrast to free
morphemes, which do occur on their own. Some bound morphemes,
for

example

un-,

must

always

be

attached

before

the central

meaningful element of the word, the so-called root, stem or base,
whereas other bound morphemes, such as
follow

the

root.

-ity, -ness, or -less, must

Using Latin-influenced terminology, un- is called a

prefix, -ity a suffix, with affix being the cover

term

for

all

bound

morphemes that attach to roots. Note that there are also bound
roots, i.e. roots that only occur in combination with some other
bound morpheme. Examples of bound roots are often of Latin origin,
e.g. later- (as in combination with the adjectival suffix -al), circul- (as in
circulate, circulation, circulatory, circular),

approb-

(as

in

approbate,

approbation, approbatory, approbator), simul- (as in simulant, simulate,
simulation), but occasional native bound roots can also be found
(e.g. hap-, as in hapless).
Before we turn to the application of the terms introduced in this
secti on, we
should perhaps clarify the distinction between 'root', 'stem' and 'base',
because these terms
morphological

are

literature

not
and

always

clearly

defined

in

the

are therefore a potential source of

confusion. One reason for this lamentable lack of clarity is that
languages differ remarkably in their morphological make-up, so that
different

terminologies

reflect

different

organizational

principles

in

the different languages. The part of a word which an affix is attached to
is called base. We will use the term root to refer to bases that cannot

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

be analyzed further into morphemes. The term 'stem' is usually used
for bases of inflections, and occasionally also for

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

bases of derivatio...