this slide share is meant only for educational purposes. It gives review of Words Formation (Morphology)... Special Thanks to our instructor, Mam Madiha Neelum

1. Morphology
Submitted to:
Mam Madiha Neelum
Submitted by:
Shakeel Ahmed
(2013-MA-ELT-04)

2. Morphology
Inflection
Wordformation
Derivation Compounding
Affixation Other 1or2 free roots
prefix suffix infix
redup conversion
+/- class-changing

3. Morphology
 Morphology comes from a Greek word
meaning ‘shape’ or ‘form’ and is used in
linguistics to denote the study of words,
both with regard to their internal structure
and their combination or formation to form
new or larger units.

4. Words
 Word’ is a term in common everyday use
but one which linguists cannot easily
define. Is isn’t for example one word or
two? And how about mother-in-law? It
denotes one concept but is formed out of
three recognizable ‘words’: mother, in and
law. Linguists therefore prefer other terms,
referring to morphs, morphemes and
lexemes when talking about ‘words’.

5. Morphemes Types:
 Morpheme is the smallest unit in a
language.

6. Affixes
 Affixes are parts of words that “affixed” to
other parts of words
 We have prefixes, suffixes, and infixes
 Prefix goes at the beginning (pre-)
 Suffix goes at the end (-ing)
 Infix goes in the middle (-en-)

7. Derivation vs. Inflection
 Inflection is the creation of different grammatical
forms of all words.
 cat -> cats, and walk-walking
 In English, inflectional affixes are always suffixes
 Derivation is the process of creating words out
of other words.
 happy → unhappy
 Both words are adjectives, but the meaning
changes.

8. Other more productive word-
formation processes
 Compounding
 A second word-formation process is known as
Compounding, which is forming new words not from
bound affixes but from two or more independent words:
the words can be free morphemes, words derived by
affixation, or even words formed by compounds
themselves.
 e.g. girlfriend air-conditioner
 blackbird looking-glass
 textbook watchmaker

9. Reduplication
 A third word-formation process is known
as Reduplication, which is forming new
words either by doubling an entire free
morpheme (total reduplication) or part of a
morpheme (partial reduplication).
 English doesn’t use this, but other
languages make much more extensive
use of reduplication.

10. Blending
 A fourth type of word-formation process is
known as Blending, where two words
merge into each other, such as:
 brunch from breakfast and lunch
 smog from smoke and fog

11. CONCLUSION:
 The result is that the forms themselves
(affixes, etc.) aren’t morphologically
interesting.
 Instead, the patterns of relatedness
between word forms within paradigms is
where all the action’s at.