A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning, the basic building blocks of words.

Derivational morphemes

1.  create "new" words

2.  change the meaning of words

3.  can change the word's part of speech

4.  are formed using either prefixes or suffixes

Inflectional morphemes

1.  provide grammatical information

2.  don't change the meanings of words

3.  cannot change the part of speech

4.  are formed using suffixes

The actual forms of a morpheme used in words. Examples include:

-able, -ible, -ed

1.  Noun plural

2.  Noun possessive

3.  Verb 3rd person singular

4.  Verb past tense

5.  Verb past participle

6.  Verb present participle

7.  Adjective comparative

8.  Adjective superlative

English verbs can be present tense or

past tense ONLY!

There is no future tense inflected on English verbs.

Future is expressed NOT by an inflectional ending, but by:

1.  using an auxiliary helping verb

2.  using the simple present tense plus an adverbial (or adverb phrase)

Considering derivational morphemes, is it prefixes or suffixes that usually change word classes?

Keep in mind that word classes are refered to as parts of speech and lexical categories.

Derivational suffixes usually change word classes. For example:

Teach vs. teacher          v to n

Afford vs. affordable      v to adj

Bright vs. brighten        adj to v

No, derivational prefixes don't usually change word classes. For example:

Activate vs. deactivate          v to v

Judge vs. prejudge               v to v

Correct vs. incorrect             v to v

1.  Negating prefixes:  un, in, dis, anti, a

2.  Noun-making endings:  ation, er, ness, ity, ment

3.  Verb-making endings:  ate, ize, en, fy

4.  Adjective-making endings:  ive, al, ing, ful, ish, ly, less

5.  Adverb-making endings:  ly

Define and give examples of functional shift.

Words that change grammatical functions without affixation.

verb to noun                 noun to verb

adjective to noun           noun to adverb

preposition to adverb

An example is "verbing": I am marmalading my toast.

Form class words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs

1.  members usually have lexical meaning (can be found in the dictionary)

2.  members usually undergo changes in form (smell can become smelly, smelliest, or smelled)

3.  they are open-ended, not limited in the number of their members

Structure class words:

1.  their members have mostly grammatical meaning

2.  members generally do not change form

3.  are mostly closed, relatively small groups (of, out, his, the)

can     may     will     shall     must

might     could     should     would

Nouns: friendship, friendliness,unfriendliness

Adjectives:  friendly, unfriendly, friendless

Verb:  befriend

1.  Friday fasts always leave me hungry on Saturdays.

2.  I fasted yesterday.

3.  She eats faster than me, but Bill eats the fastest.

Name 3 classes of dialects.

1. dialects by geographical region

2. dialects by social class

3. dialects by historical time periods

Within America: New England, Northern, Central Southern, etc.

Worldwide: British, Australian, American, etc.

English that is considered the "standard" by the majority of Americans.

• It is refered to as "network English" or "radio English
• The standardizers are "middle-class, urban, educated" speakers
  

Stage 1:  Child interacts with family

Stage 2:  Child interacts with other children

Stage 3:  Child goes to school

The word's word class describe how it behaves in a sentence. For example:

• A noun can appear together with a determiner...
• A verb can be modified by an adverb...
• An adjective can...
• An adverb can...

The ____________ seems all right.

• Fits the frame sentence:  The government seems all right.
• Has a noun-making morpheme: government
• Can occur with the plural morpheme: governments
• Can occur with the possessive morpheme: government’s
• Can directly follow an article: the government

Give 4 peripheral cases of nouns.

• nouns derived from adjectives (happiness, diligence)
• nouns derived from verbs (reaction, runner)
• adjectives that are also nouns (red, cold)
• verbs that are also nouns (run, hit)

1.  Proper nouns name specific places, persons, or events:

Grand Rapids, President Reagan, Christmas

Grammatical consequences: proper nouns usually cannot follow articles (a, an, the)

2.  Count nouns refer to things that are considered separate entities:

pen, cell phone, egg
Grammatical consequences: count nouns occur with many and other determiners that establish number:

Subject pronouns I, he, she, we, and they

Remember these using the sentence:

_____did the job.

1.  Has a verb-making morpheme:  criticize

2.  Can occur with a present-tense morpheme:  criticizes

3.  Can occur with a past-tense morpheme:  criticized

4.  Can occur with a present-participle morpheme:  criticizing

5.  Can occur with a past-participle morpheme:  had criticized

6.  Can be made into a command:  Criticize this work!

7.  Can be made negative:  They did not criticize this work.

8.  Fits the frame sentence:  They must criticize (it).

They must ___________ (it).

1.  Base form:  uninflected form listed in the dictionary

2.  Simple Present-Tense form:  ends in allomorphs of {-d}, but with a number of irregular verbs the past-tense is indicated by a change of vowel (e.g., ride/rode)

3.  Past-Participle form:  created with an inflection identical with that of the past tense (walked/have walked), but many irregular verbs have -en as the past-participle marker (e.g., ridden)

4.  Present-Participle form:  always creaded with -ing

A verb that has no complement or has an adverb as its complement.

A verb in a Type I sentence.

Type I -- The Intransitive Type consists of a subject followed by a predicate in which there is only one main verb that can be followed by optional verb phrases. For example: Fish swim.  A telephone is ringing.  Jan snores loudly.  The customer complained persistently.  Carla must have enrolled rather early.

Define transitive verb.

A verb that has a direct object as its complement.

                  A verb in a Type V sentence.
Transitive verbs require a noun phrase complement that refers to something or someone other than that tow which the subject noun phrase refers. None of the other sentence types have this characteristic! For example:

Our neighbor's dog chased the cat outdoors.

chased is the verb separating the first noun phrase from the second, and the second noun phrase does not refer back to the first.

• A verb in its present participial form (-ing) acting like a noun

• A verb in form, a noun in function
• Reading requires time.
• We enjoy reading...

The _____man seems very _____.

1.  Has an adjective-making morpheme:  lovable, funny
2.  Takes a comparative or superlative morpheme:  funnier, funniest -- shorter, shortest

3.  Can be made comparative or superlative by using more or most:  more lovable, most lovable

4.  Can be qualified:  rather lovable, very funny

5.  Can fit both slots of the frame sentence: The _____ man seems very _____.

1.  Attributive and predicative adjectives.

2.  Predicative adjectives requiring complements.

3.  Gradable and nongradable adjectives.

Attributive adjectives only fit best in the first slot of the frame sentence.

The entire pizza seems very entire.

• attributive adjectives occur before a noun, usually attributing a quality to that noun
• The entire pizza disappeared.

Predicative adjectives only fit best in the second slot of the frame sentence.

The afraid pizza seems very afraid.

• predicative adjectives occur in the predicate of a sentence and without a following noun
• Our teacher was aghast.

Gradable adjectives can be distinguished by qualifiers indicating intensity: 

somewhat late, a bit late, very late, extremely late

Nongradable adjectives don’t normally occur with such qualifiers. The following qualified adjectives seem nonsensical:

rather vertical, somewhat perfect, very double, extremely triangular