The Interaction Between Inflection and Derivation in English and MSA
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i Dedication To the memory of my father, Mitib Altakhaineh And to my mother, Kamlah Alhalalmeh, for everything
Transcript of The Interaction Between Inflection and Derivation in English and MSA
i
Dedication
To the memory of my father, Mitib Altakhaineh
And to my mother, Kamlah Alhalalmeh, for everything
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Table of Contents
Dedication ............................................................................................................................................ i
List of Standard Abbreviations and symbols ................................................................................. iv
Transcriptions and other conventions............................................................................................. vi
Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ viii
Chapter one: Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1
1.1. Defining morphology ........................................................................................................................ 1
1.2. Types of Affixes ................................................................................................................................ 1
1.3. Roots, stems and morphemes ............................................................................................................ 5
1.4. Lexemes and words ........................................................................................................................... 6
Chapter two: Inflection and derivation ........................................................................................... 7
2.1. Overview ........................................................................................................................................... 7
2.2. Unclear boundaries............................................................................................................................ 8
2.3. The significance of the research ........................................................................................................ 9
2.4. Topic choice .................................................................................................................................... 10
Chapter three: Methodology ........................................................................................................... 12
3.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 12
3.2. Concatenative morphology ............................................................................................................. 12
3.3. Non-concatenative morphology ...................................................................................................... 14
Chapter four: Investigating criteria ............................................................................................... 17
4.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 17
4.2. Inflectional and derivational criteria ............................................................................................... 17 4.2.1. Inflection is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as person,
tense, voice, aspect, case, gender and number. ....................................................................................................... 17
4.2.2. Inflection is fully productive and derivation is semi-productive ............................................................. 25
4.2.3. Inflection does not change the lexical category ....................................................................................... 28
4.2.4. Inflection is relevant to syntax ................................................................................................................ 28
4.2.5. Derivational affixes are nearer to the root than inflectional ones ............................................................ 32
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4.2.6. Derivational affixes may change the stress or the pronunciation of the word ......................................... 35
4.2.7. Inflection is obligatory ............................................................................................................................ 36
4.2.8. Inflectional affixes have regular meaning ............................................................................................... 38
4.2.9. Inflection is paradigmatic ........................................................................................................................ 41
4.2.10. Inflection is not replaceable by a simple word unlike derivation ............................................................ 42
4.2.11. Inflection has the same concept as the base ............................................................................................ 43
4.2.12. Inflection has a relatively abstract meaning ............................................................................................ 44
4.2.13. Inflection is semantically regular (regularity in meaning) ....................................................................... 44
4.2.14. Inflection exhibits less base allomorphy ................................................................................................. 46
4.2.15. Inflection may have cumulative expression ............................................................................................ 47
4.2.16. Inflection is not iterable ........................................................................................................................... 48
4.2.17. Inflection uses a closed set of affixes ...................................................................................................... 49
4.3. Summary ......................................................................................................................................... 51
Chapter five: Findings and conclusion........................................................................................... 52
5.1. Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 52
5.2. Findings and discussion .................................................................................................................. 52
5.3. Conclusion and recommendations .................................................................................................. 53
References ......................................................................................................................................... 55
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List of Standard Abbreviations and symbols
1 first person
2 second person
3 third person
ACT active
AP active participle
ART article
BP broken plural
DAT dative
DEF definite
DET determiner
F feminine
FUT future
GEN genitive
IMP imperative
IND indicative
INDF indefinite
INF infinitive
IPA International Phonetic Alphabet
JSA Jordanian Spoken Arabic
M masculine
MSA Modern Standard Arabic
NMLZ nominalizer/nominalization
PASS passive
PL plural
POSS possessive
PRS present
PROR progressive
v
PST past
PTCP participle
SG singular
SP sound plural
* Ungrammatical sentence
ˈ preceding a stressed syllable.
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Transcriptions and other conventions
Arabic consonants/vowels Symbols Description ʔ voiceless glottal stop ء
b voiced bilabial stop ب t voiceless dento-alveolar stop ت th voiceless inter-dental fricative ث j voiced post-alveolar affricate ج h voiceless pharyngeal fricative ح x voiceless uvular fricative خ d voiced dento-alveolar stop د ð voiced alveolar fricative ذ r voiced alveo-palatal trill ر z voiced alveolar fricative ز s voiceless alveolar fricative س ʃ voiceless alveo-palatal fricative ش
s voiceless alveolar emphatic fricative ص d voiced alveolar emphatic stop ض t voiceless dento-alveolar emphatic stop ط ð voiced alveolar emphatic fricative ظ ʕ voiced pharyngeal fricative ع
gh voiced uvular fricative غ f voiceless labio-dental fricative ف q voiceless uvular stop ق k voiceless velar stop ك l voiced alveolar lateral ل m voiced bilabial nasal م n voiced alveolar nasal ن h voiceless glottal fricative ه w voiced labio-velar glide و y voiced palatal glide ي
/َ / a low short central unrounded /ُ / u high short back rounded /ِ / i high short front unrounded aa low long central unrounded آ uu high long back rounded وو ii high long front unrounded يي o: mid long back rounded و aw low short front unrounded + labio-velar او
glide ay low short front unrounded + palatal glide اي ee mid long front unrounded يي
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Abstract
This study aims at contributing to a clarification of the distinction between
derivational and inflectional morphology. Examples from dictionaries, lexicons and
corpuses, were taken and analysed in order to find whether a certain morphological
process belongs to the domain of inflection or derivation. Much of the data is taken
from English and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), with other data drawn from
French, German and Dutch. The study consists of a morphological analysis of these
languages based on two important phenomena in morphology, namely, concatenative
morphology and non-concatenative morphology. Through qualitative analysis,
inflection and derivation are shown to not be clear-cut categories in both English and
MSA. There are no sharp boundaries between these two important areas despite the
fact that researchers have been trying to differentiate between them. It is hoped that
investigations for each criterion will help morphologists and other linguists to take
into consideration the problematic interfaces that exist between these two main fields
in morphology.
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Acknowledgements
This work has been carried out under the supervision of Professor Janet Watson, who
played a crucial role in the completion of this work. I am extremely grateful to
Professor Janet for her effort and support during the study.
Thanks also to my sister, Shifa Altakhaineh, who has supported me and checked the
Arabic data.
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Chapter one: Introduction
1.1. Defining morphology
Morphology is the study of word formation/structure of words (Anderson 1992: 7).
Aronoff and Fudeman (2005: 1-2) also define morphology as “the mental system
involved in word formation or … the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their
internal structure, and how they are formed.” Thus, the essence of morphology is to
study the means by which words are coined as well as the morphological processes
involved in creating new lexemes and words. Ultimately, researchers have agreed that
derivational morphology, inflectional morphology and compounding are three
different branches in morphology, which are responsible for creating new words and
lexemes (Anderson 1992: 73). Katamba (2006: 224) claims that morphological
processes fall into two broad categories, which are inflection and derivation. Before
investigating the dichotomy between inflection and derivation, it is essential to
distinguish between different important notions, namely, affix, root, stem, bound
morpheme, free morpheme, lexeme and word.
1.2. Types of Affixes
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word root to form a new word or lexeme
(Jensen 1990: 2). Affixes may be derivational, like English -able, -hood and pre-, or
inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. Based on the definition above,
they are bound morphemes because they cannot stand alone. Therefore, it is clear that
affixation is a linguistic process used to form neologisms, new words, by attaching
affixes at different points to the root. In general, there are several types of affixes,
such as:
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1. A prefix is a bound morpheme that occurs at the beginning of a root to adjust
or qualify its meaning such as re- in rewrite, tri- in triangle and mis- in
misunderstand (Spencer 1991: 5).
2. A suffix is a bound morpheme that is placed at the end of a root to form a
derivative or inflected word such as -ance in acceptance, -ly in quickly, -ed in
cooked -ing in waiting, frequently one that converts the root into another part
of speech (Spencer 1991: 5).
3. An infix is a bound morpheme that is placed within a word. It tends to occur in
the middle of the word. In English, infixes are very unique such as -o- in
biology (Jensen 1990: 64). In Arabic, the diminutive infix -y- can be found in
words such as kulayb ‘small dog’, rujayl ‘small man’, and mukaytib ‘small
office’ (Watson 2006: 3).
4. A circumfix is a prefix and suffix that act together to surround a root. These
affixes, neither of which can be used in isolation, have to realise a single
morpheme which provides a meaning. In German, ge- ... -t is a circumfix that
denotes the past tense as in the example below (Bauer 2003: 29-30).
1. lob-en ‘to praise’ ge-lob-t ‘praised’
2. frag-en ‘to ask’ ge-frag-t ‘asked’
5. An interfix is a special kind of affix in which a linking portion is used to link
two elements of a compound. It is common in German, such as :
a) Liebe brief Liebe-s-brief ‘love letter’
b) Arbeit anzug Arbeit-s-anzug ‘work clothes’
Examples are cited in Bauer (2003: 29-30) and Collins German dictionary
(2007).
6. A disfix is a rare phenomenon, in which an element of a root is omitted. In
English, the removal of the segment n, to form the plural form, could be an
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example of disfix, such as phenomenon > phenomena, criterion > criteria,
evacuate > evacuee and datum > data. It is clear that there is a change of the
letter o into a in the previous examples. The author hopes that this term will be
commonly used after providing several examples from different languages.
7. A transfix is also a special kind of affix that involves both discontinuous
affixes and discontinuous bases (Bauer 2003: 30-31). These affixes are called
transfixes as they occur throughout the root. They are commonly used in
Arabic as in the examples below.
q-t-l ‘ kill’ qaatil ‘killer’
qatal ‘he killed’ qutil ‘he was killed’
ya-qtul ‘he kills’
8. A duplifix is a rare type of affix in which an element is placed to the stem that
consists of both copied segments and fixed segments. Examples from Somali
plurals are (cited in Haspelmath 2002: 24):
1) buug ‘book’ buug-ag ‘books’
2) koob ‘cup’ koob-ab ‘cups’
Furthermore, there are some morphological processes that are associated with
derivation and inflection. Jensen (1990: 72) explains two important notions, which
are umlaut and ablaut. The term umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced
more like a following vowel or semivowel. It was originally coined and is principally
used in connection with the study of Germanic languages. The main feature is that a
back vowel changes to the associated front vowel or a front vowel becomes closer to
[i] when the following syllable contains [i], [iː], or [j]. Watson (2002: 124) states that
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this process can be found in English in a number of plurals such as the plural of goose
is geese, tooth is teeth, and foot is feet.
With regard to the term ablaut, it selects a system of vowel gradation. An example of
ablaut in English is the strong verb sing, sang, sung. Other examples cited such as
ring, rang and rung, drink, drank and drunk, and begin, began and begun.
Ablaut can also appear in a number of plurals in English by changing one of the
vowels of the singular (Watson 2002: 124). Some examples cited in English are:
1) Singular Plural
man men
woman women
oasis oases
analysis analyses
crisis crises
With respect to the definition above, it seems that the noun song is derived from the
verb sing. Thus, it may be said that ablaut could be both a derivational and an
inflectional process.
Finally, conversion is the change in the part of speech of a form without any overt
affix marking the change. In other words, it is a word-formation process that changes
the lexical category of a word without changing its phonological shape. For example,
the creation of verb to tax is from the noun tax. Other examples, hammer
(noun>verb), book (noun>verb) and spoon (noun>verb) (Bauer, 2003: 38).
Conversion is also called zero-derivation in Aronoff and Fudeman (2005: 109). As
explained above, this operation is considered a derivational one in spite of the fact
that it could actually be an inflectional one. If we take the noun fish, which forms the
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verb fish, we can create the plural form, which is fish, from the noun fish without the
use of an overt affix. Another example is the noun cut, which forms the verb cut, and
past simple and participle forms, which are cut. Therefore, there are exceptions for
this definition.
1.3. Roots, stems and morphemes
Matthews (1991: 127) defines a root as “a form which has at least one paradigm or
partial paradigm, and is itself morphologically simple. So, in seas, the operation adds
[z] to the root [siː].” Matthews (ibid) also defines a stem as a form that underlies at
least one paradigm or partial paradigm, but is itself morphologically complex. For
instance, in generations, the operation adds [z] to the stem [ˌdʒenəˈreɪʃ(ə)n].” As
mentioned above, the primary difference between these notions is that the first one is
morphologically simple, whereas the second one is complex. He means by ‘complex’
that generalise can be further analysed into general and –ise, which are two separate
morphemes. Spencer (1991: 5) also agrees with Matthews in his differentiation
between root and stem by claiming that agree is a root whereas agreement
/agree.ment/ is a stem. The stem is also called the base (Haspelmath 2002: 19). Here,
it is necessary to explain what is meant by a morpheme. A morpheme can be defined
as the minimal meaningful unit that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts
(Aronoff and Fudeman 2005: 239). There are two types of morphemes, namely, free
and bound morphemes. Booij (2004: 9) defines these two kinds of morphemes as
follows: A free or lexical morpheme can stand alone by itself such as write, cat, play,
clever and nice, whereas a bound morpheme is one that is prosodically separate to its
host and cannot stand alone, such as -er, -ness, re-, -ly and -ment in words like buy-
er, kind-ness, re-write, hard-ly and agree-ment.
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1.4. Lexemes and words
Booij (2006: 654) points out that a ‘lexeme’ is a word that has its own lexical entry in
a dictionary. For instance, in English dictionaries, any separate lexical entries are
considered as lexemes. We can find the verbal lexeme WRITE. On the other hand,
the noun WRITER is not considered as a form of the lexeme WRITE. The noun is
treated as a different lexeme, with a different meaning and a different lexical category
as it is a noun. The lexeme WRITER is considered to be the product of derivation, the
creation of a new lexeme through using a morphological process of affixation which
is the attachment of the suffix -er to a base lexeme. In terms of the notion of ‘word’,
Lieber’s (2010:3) narrow definition of the word ‘word’ is “one or more morphemes
that can stand alone in a language.” Lieber (Ibid) divides words in two categories:
those words that are combined of one morpheme, like the words tiger, despite and
humour, can be called as simple words and those consist of more than one
morpheme, like rewrite, greenhouse, information and slowly, are termed complex
words. I propose a more accurate definition of the word ‘word’, it is a single sound or
a mixture of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, which symbolises and
communicates a meaning and may consist of a single free morpheme or of a
combination of morphemes such as agree, agreement, agrees, agreeable, agreed,
greenhouse, brother-in-law and constitutionalization. A ‘word’ includes a root, a
stem, a lexeme, free morphemes, compound and any inflected forms of a word such
as visit, visits, visiting.
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Chapter two: Inflection and derivation
2.1. Overview
Researchers in morphology, such as Haspelmath (2002), Bauer (2003), Booij (2004,
2006), Aronoff and Fudeman (2005), Watson (2002, 2006), Stump (2001), McMahon
(2002) and Beard (2001) discuss inflection and derivation. There are three aspects of
morphology, which are derivation, inflection and compounding (Jensen, 1990: 5).
Traditional grammarians often differentiate between two main types of
morphological operations: inflection and derivation. Spencer (1991: 9) explains
derivation by taking an example from English. The verb institute forms a noun
institution by suffixation of -ion and from the noun institution we can form the
adjective institutional. Spencer (ibid) emphasises that derivation typically, but not
always, induces a change in syntactic category. On the other hand, inflection cannot
cause a word to change its syntactic category since it is inflected into new forms of
the same word such as visiting, visits, visited from the verb visit. Also, Jensen (1990:
5-6) explains that derivational morphology derives one lexeme from another. For
instance, the adjective constitutional is derived from the noun constitution through
adding the suffix -al, whereas inflectional morphology is the one that indicates
agreement with other sentence constituents or it is required by other sentence
elements, which govern them. Overall, he agrees with Anderson’s (1982) point of
view by stating that inflection is relevant to syntax.
Furthermore, inflectional morphology serves to produce new forms of the same word
rather than creating new word categories/lexical entries (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and
Schlesewsky 2009: 39-40). Booij (2004: 112) also points out that the primary
distinction between inflection and derivation is a functional one, since derivation
creates new lexemes and inflections form new forms of the same lexemes. Booij
(ibid) adds that this is not enough to determine for certain to which domain a
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particular morphological form belongs. Moreover, Katamba (1993: 205) states that
“inflectional morphology is concerned with syntactically driven word formation.
Inflectional morphology deals with determined affixation processes, while
derivational morphology is used to create new lexical items”. Yet, in terms of the
classification of processes between derivational morphology and inflectional
morphology, there is no unanimity. Perlmutter (1998, as cited by Janssen, 2006: 3)
states that inflectional morphology and derivational morphology are two traditionally
distinct fields, credited with many types of differences, such as the claim that
derivation is pre-grammatical, whereas inflection is part of the grammar itself.
Moreover, Beard (2001: 44) claims that if inflection is relevant only to syntax, then
the output of inflectional rules cannot be listed lexically. On the other hand,
derivation is purely lexical so the output of a derivational rule is a new word, which is
subject to lexical listing. Listing allows lexical but not inflectional derivation to
semantically idiomatise or lexicalise. Even though went has been phonologically
lexicalised, semantically it has remained no more than the past tense of the verb go.
Terrific, on the other hand, has lost all semantic contact with its derivational origins
in terror and terrify, despite its residual phonological similarity. Overall, researchers
in morphology agree that inflection is the process by which a word is modified to
indicate grammatical information such as case, number, person, gender or, mood,
tense, or aspect. Derivation is the process by which a new word is created from an
existing word, sometimes by simply changing the grammatical category, such as
changing a verb to a noun in words like move(v) to movement(n) and create(v) to
creation(n), or changing the meaning in words such as hard and hardly.
2.2. Unclear boundaries
Based on the definitions above, the morphological process of the word inqatal ‘he
was killed’ from the word qatal ‘he killed’ should be an inflectional process because
it implies grammatical information, namely, voice. However, we find the word
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ʔinqatal as a separate lexeme in the MSA dictionaries, which suggests that it has
resulted from a derivational process. As a consequence, it is sometimes difficult to
determine if a certain morphological process belongs to the domain of inflection or to
that of derivation. It is therefore unclear whether there is a sharp boundary between
the two categories or not. The hypothesis is that derivation and inflection are not
distinct categories and that evidence for this can be seen in English. Some examples
from English will be given to test this hypothesis. Examples used from these
languages cover all the criteria with regard to the differences between inflection and
derivation. The data collected will test whether inflection and derivation are distinct
categories or not. For this, textual examples taken from established data banks will be
used to test the hypothesis. The resources used are corpora, dictionaries, lexicons and
online corpora that discuss this issue. For English, data has been collected from
British National Corpus (BNC), Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), The
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (2007), Collins English Dictionary (2007),
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003) and Cambridge Advanced
Learner's Dictionary (2005). For MSA, Al-Muheet lexicon (1993) and A dictionary of
modern written Arabic (1994) are used. French data are checked from Collins French
Dictionary plus Grammar (2000), and finally for German, Collins German
Dictionary (2007) is used.
2.3. The significance of the research
Although many linguists state that the division between inflectional morphology and
derivational morphology is not always clear-cut, no single study has investigated all
criteria suggested to differentiate between derivation and inflection. For instance,
Stump (1998: 14) points out that "however clear the logic of this distinction [between
inflection on the one hand and derivation and compounding on the other] might be, it
can be difficult, in practice, to distinguish inflection from word formation,
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particularly from derivation". Additionally, Fabregas and Scalise (2012: 66) posit that
it is difficult to categorise and mark something out as inflection or derivation.
Spencer (1991: 9) points out that it is very difficult to draw the line between
inflection and derivation, especially in a way that provides sensible answers cross-
linguistically. Thus, this research is done to shed light on this controversial issue in
detail. Additionally, it provides insightful discussion of MSA morphology, which is
original and useful for those who are interested in Arabic morphology.
2.4. Topic choice
In addition to the significance outcomes of the study, I have chosen to focus on MSA
and English because I am fluent in both of these languages. My mother tongue is
Jordanian Spoken Arabic (JSA), which is the dialect spoken in Jordan, whereas MSA
is the official form of Arabic taught at schools. As for English, it is my second
language. Additionally, these two languages are rich sources of data that contribute
substantially to the investigation. Furthermore, Arabic morphology differs from
English morphology as it is to a large extent based on discontinuous morphemes, a
type of word-formation which does not involve stringing morphemes together to form
new words. It primarily consists of a system of consonant roots which interconnect
with patterns of vowels. In other words, the root is modified in many cases in order to
coin new words. An example from MSA is the root /k-t-b/, which has the underlying
sense of ‘write’, based on which many words can be formed, such as katab ‘he
wrote’, kitaab ‘book’, maktuub ‘written’ kaatab ‘he corresponded’, maktab ‘office’
and kaatib ‘writer’. Examination of these two languages also provides an opportunity
to compare and contrast two different morphological systems. Moreover, it helps to
shed light on an important issue in morphology that is still open to debate. This
research will contribute to understanding how words are formed in languages in
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terms of the morphological process that belongs to the domain of inflection or
derivation.
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Chapter three: Methodology
3.1. Introduction
The criteria that distinguish between inflection and derivation in relation with syntax,
semantics, morphology and phonology will be listed. The study consists of a
morphological analysis of these languages based on both concatenative and non-
concatenative morphology. I am using the Leipzig Glossing Rules as cited from
http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/pdf/LGR09_02_23.pdf. The analysis, if necessary,
includes the transcription of the word, morpheme-by-morpheme gloss and idiomatic
translation into English. Data from MSA will be analysed based on McCarthy’s
(1981) framework, which provides an analysis of non-concatenative morphology.
Therefore, it is necessary to explain both concatenative and non-concatenative
morphology. The following section discusses concatenative morphology
3.2. Concatenative morphology
Concatenative morphology can be defined as a type of morphological analysis, which
involves stringing morphemes together such as suffixation and prefixation (Aronoff
and Fudeman, 2005: 47). Consequently, morphemes are discrete elements connected
to the root or stem of the morphological operation. This type of morphology can be
analysed by a simple procedure. Given an adequate phonological representation,
concatenative morphemes can be gained by a left-to-right or vice versa parse of
words searching for invariant recurrent partial strings with likely constant meaning or
function.
In English, for instance, the formation of the plural is generally carried out by adding
the suffix -s as in the following examples:
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1) a) cat ↔cats
b) boy ↔ boys
c) door ↔ doors
Additionally, the past tense is often formed through attaching the suffix -ed as
follows:
2) a) play ↔ played
b) record ↔ recorded
c) vanish ↔ vanished
MSA, which is well known for non-concatenative morphology, shares some
characteristics with the concatenative type. For instance, the sound plural in Arabic
morphology is formed by adding the suffixes -uun or –aat, which mark masculine
and feminine plurals respectively, as in the following examples:
3) muslim-uun
Muslim-M.PL
‘Muslims’
4) taalib-aat
student-F.PL
‘students’
In the examples above, strings of morphemes are attached so that, they may function
as a single unit. They provide us with the grammatical information of number and
gender.
With respect to prefixation, the prefix mis- in English is attached to the beginning of
nouns and verbs to mean ‘bad, badly’ or ‘wrong, wrongly’ respectively, as follows.
5) a) misbehaviour ‘bad behaviour’
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b) misuse ‘use wrongly’
c) misunderstand ‘understand wrongly’
In MSA, the prefix in- is added to the beginning of the verb active stem to indicate
passive voice, as in the example below.
6) 1n-qatal
PASS- kill.PST.M.SG
‘he was killed’
3.3. Non-concatenative morphology
Non-concatenative morphology can be defined as a type of word-formation, in which
the root is modified but it does not involve stringing morphemes together (Anderson
1992: 58). This kind is also known as discontinuous morphology, which is well
known in languages such as MSA, Ethio-Semitic and Hebrew. For example, the
consonantal root /k-t-b/ can have different forms but semantically-related meanings
as in katab ‘he wrote’, kitaab ‘book’ and kaatib ‘writer’.
McCarthy (1981: 387-388) provides an analysis of non-concatenative morphology. It
is comprised of three discontinuous morphemes, as follows:
(a) The consonantal root, which is the basic lexical part of the language
(McCarthy and Prince 1990a: 2), is assigned to one level.
(b) The prosodic pattern, which adds meaning to the consonantal root, to
another level.
1 It is worth noting that nfaʕal and ftaʕal are usually pronounced as ʔinfaʕal and ʔiftaʕal where the ʔi is added to avoid
having two consonants word-initially.
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(c) The vocalic melody, which provides us with variations, such as voice
(active or passive).
The following figure illustrates the previous analysis as cited in Watson (2002: 127).
7) k t b the consonantal root (level one)
C V C V C the prosodic pattern (level two)
a the vocalic melody (level three)
If this analysis is applied to the consonantal root /k-t-b/ in terms of expressing the
voice (active or passive) in verb, the figures (8) and (9) will appear:
8) k t b {‘write’}
C V C V C {perfect}
a {‘active’}
In comparison with
9) k t b {‘write’}
C V C V C {perfect}
u i {‘passive’}
The vocalic melody of active verbs is /a-a/, whereas the vocalic melody of a passive
verb is /u-i/. The single tier, in which both C and V melodies are folded, will be for
each of the examples above as in (10) and (11) respectively.
10) C V C V C
k a t a b {‘he wrote’}
11) C V C V C
k u t i b {‘was written’}
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The criteria that distinguish between inflection and derivation in terms of form (the
structure of the words), function (the role of the words) and meaning (the idea that
they convey) will be listed.
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Chapter four: Investigating criteria
4.1. Introduction
The main distinction between inflection and derivation is functional, as derivation
coins new lexemes, and inflection creates different forms of the same lexemes (Booij
2004: 112). Nevertheless, Booij (2004: 112) points out that we still cannot decide in
concrete cases of morphology if a particular morphological form belongs to the
domain of inflection or that of derivation. Bauer (2003: 92-105), Haspelmath (2002:
71-76), Aronoff and Fudeman (2005: 160-163), Booij (2004: 112-115), Gregory
(2001: 13-19) and Jensen (1990: 115-120) provide a good summary of the
dichotomies between inflection and derivation in terms of form, function and
meaning. The criteria given by these linguists and by me are discussed in detail, as
follows.
4.2. Inflectional and derivational criteria
4.2.1. Inflection is the modification of a word to express different grammatical
categories such as person, tense, voice, aspect, case, gender and number.
Inflectional morphology marks grammatical categories such as gender, number, case
and tense because of their interaction with syntax (Ryding 2005: 44). Also, Spencer
(1991: 21) states that inflectional operations add elements of meaning such as tense,
aspect, mood and negations as well as grammatical function, such as turning an
intransitive verb into a transitive one or an active verb form into a passive one.
Generally, verbal conjugation for some verbs, in English and MSA, may explain most
grammatical categories, such as tense, aspect (perfect and imperfect), person, number
and gender as follows.
18
The verb conjugation of the copula verb be in English is:
12) Verb be
Person/number Pronoun Present Past
1S I am was
2S you are were
3S He/she/it is was
1PL we are were
2PL you are were
3PL they are were
As well as the infinitive be, the present participle being and the past participle been.
Other regular and irregular lexical verbs are:
13) Lexical verbs
Present Past Present
participle
Past
participle
Third
person
singular
Regular verb play played playing played plays
Irregular verb write wrote writing written writes
In MSA, the verb conjugation for the root /k-t-b/ is clarified in the tables below.
19
14) Perfect mood
person
number
first person second person third person
masculine feminine masculine feminine
singular katabtu katabta katabti kataba katabat
dual katabna katabtuma katabtuma katabaa katabataa
plural katabna katabtum katabtunna katabuu katabna
15) Imperfect mood
person
number
first person second person third person
masculine feminine masculine feminine
singular aktubu taktubu taktubiina yaktubu taktubu
dual naktubu taktubaani taktubaani yaktubaani taktubaani
plural naktubu taktubuuna taktubna yaktubuuna yaktubna
The inflected forms of verbs are not listed in the dictionary. They do not change the
syntactic category; they only add elements of meaning, such as tense and aspect even
though the modifications of inflected forms are close to the root. This is especially
evident in MSA, such as closeness to the root criterion which will be discussed in
detail later.
In MSA, voice, which refers to whether a verb or participle is active or passive, is
another case. Here, it is important to point out that active and passive participles are
listed separately in the lexicons and dictionaries and they also change the syntactic
category from the verb. Owing to this, they have to be treated as a derivational
process as in (16) and (17).
20
16) s r q {‘steal’}
C V V C V C {noun}
a i {active participle}
C V V C V C
s a a r i q {‘thief’}
17) s r q {‘steal’}
C V C C V V C {noun}
m a u {passive participle}
C V C C V V C
m a s r u u q {‘stolen’}
Here, it is essential to explain that the vocalic melody of active participle, which is
/aa-i/, does not always derive an active participle, as in (18) and (19), in which both
examples do not indicate active participle. Additionally, they have been listed in
Baalbaki (2008) and Wehr (1994).
18) j m ʕ {‘collect, gather’}
C V V C V C {template}
a i {vocalic melody}
C V V C V C
j a a m i ʕ {‘mosque’}
Here, the combination of consonantal root, template /CVVCVC/ and the vocalic
melody /aa-i/ gives a noun of place i.e. ‘mosque’.
21
19) b r d {‘freeze’}
C V V C V C {template}
a i {vocalic melody}
C V V C V C
b a a r i d {‘cold’}
Here, the combination of consonantal root, template /CVVCVC/, and the vocalic
melody/aa-i/ gives an adjective.
Furthermore, some MSA active and passive verb pairs are listed in the dictionary
despite the fact that they change the syntactic category. The most common vocalic
melody of active verb is /a-a/, and the passive verb is /u-i/. However, there is another
pattern that may yield passive voice in MSA. There are some passive examples that
do not follow the standard pattern /u-i/ as the standard one is not lexically listed in
lexicons and dictionaries, as follows:
20) k s r {‘break’}
C V C V C {perfect}
a {active}
C V C V C
k a s a r ‘he broke’
21) k s r {‘break’}
C V C V C {perfect}
u i {passive}
22
C V C V C
k u s i r ‘was broken’
22) k s r {‘break’}
C C V C V C V {perfect}
a {vocalic melody}
n2 {passive}
C C V C V C V
n k a s a r a ‘was broken’
Other passive examples are:
23) h b s {‘imprison’}
C C V C V C V {perfect}
a {vocalic melody}
t {passive}
C C V C V C V
h t a b a s a ‘was imprisoned’
24) x b z {‘bake’}
C C V C V C V {perfect}
a {vocalic melody}
t {passive}
C C V C V C V
x t a b a z a ‘was baked’
2 For the reader’s convenience, it should be noted that nfaʕal and ftaʕal are usually pronounced as ʔinfaʕal and ʔiftaʕal
where the ʔi is added to avoid having two consonants word-initially.
23
Examples (22), (23) and (24) can be found as separate entities in MSA lexicons and
dictionaries, such as Al-Lajami et al. (1993) and Abo-Alazaym (n.d.).
With respect to plurality in MSA, there are sound plural (SP) and broken plural (BP).
The major difference between them is that SP employs suffixation, while BP involves
internal vowel manipulation and, sometimes, affixation (Abd-Rboo 1990: 56-57).
Essentially, in BP, the syntactic category of the stem is not changed, the element
(number) of meaning is added but the affixation is near to the root and in some
lexicons and dictionaries is listed separately, such as Abo-Alazaym (n.d.) and Wehr
(1994). Examples of broken plural in MSA are:
Singular Plural
maktab ‘office’ makaatib ‘offices’
kitaab ‘book’ kutub ‘books’
buuq ‘trumpet’ ʔabwaaq ‘trumpets’
kalb ‘dog’ kilaab ‘dogs’
rajul ‘man’ rijaal ‘men’
‘child’ flit ‘children’ faaltaʔ
, holes’‘hollows ufrah , holes’‘hollows ufarh
In the previous examples, it is clear that affixation is very close to the root.
Additionally, if we take the last two examples from the table above, we will notice
that they have a broken plural of BP, as follows:
‘children’ faaltaʔ n’ ‘small childre 3
aafiiltaʔ
, holes’‘hollows ufarh ’/fossils‘small holes aafiirhaʔ
3 ʔataafiil, which denotes ‘small children’, is not listed in the lexicons, but it is commonly used in JSA.
24
Moreover, the broken plural of BP denotes diminutive meanings in the two previous
examples. The first example denotes ‘endearment’ and the second one denotes
‘smallness’. These meanings are always yielded by a diminutive process as cited in
Watson (2006) and Al-Rajhi (2008: 116). Meanwhile, the process of the last two
examples could occur for the words ʔiʕsaar ‘whirlwind, tornado’ and ʔaʕaasiir
‘whirlwinds, tornados’, and ʕasfuur ‘bird’ and ʕasaafiir ‘birds’ without any
indication of diminutive. This issue is unclear since we cannot determine if this
process belongs to plurality (inflectional process) or diminutive (derivational
process).
Finally, if we add the feminine suffix -at to a masculine noun in MSA, we normally
have feminine forms of the same noun such as:
25) kaatib ‘writer’ and kaatibat ‘female writers’
26) mudarris ‘teacher’ and mudarrisat ‘female teachers’
Moreover, the feminine suffix -at still indicates gender in the examples below, but
with slightly different meanings from the stem as follows:
27) maktab ‘office’ and maktabaat ‘libraries’
28) jaamiʕ ‘mosque’ and jaamiʕaat ‘universities’
Here, it can be argued that inflection may slightly change the meaning rather than just
adding elements of meaning, such as tense, gender, aspect, mood and negations, as
indicated by Spencer (1991: 21). Additionally, many passive voice and BP examples
are listed as separate lexemes in the dictionaries and lexicons regardless of the
grammatical or derivational information they both carry.
25
4.2.2. Inflection is fully productive and derivation is semi-productive
Bauer (2003: 99-105) claims that inflections are obligatory and fully productive.
Katamba (1993: 207) gives a good illustration of this, namely, tense marking the
verb. He states that every verb in English takes the inflectional category of past tense
(usually known as -ed). On the other hand, it is accidental whether a verb will take
the -ant derivational agentive nominal forming suffix. For example, apply takes the
derivational agentive nominal suffix -ant, to give applicant but *donant cannot be
formed from the verb donate. Katamba (1993: 207), however, points out that there
are some very regular derivational processes, such as the suffixation of the English
adverb forming -ly suffix as in quickly, rapidly and suddenly, adding -ly to adjectives
to form adverbs.
According to Gregory (2001: 16), every non-modal verb, which is not the type of
auxiliary verb that is used to indicate modality, has a gerund (a nominal derivative
identical in form to the present participle). Thus, derivation is also productive in this
case. Stump (1998: 16) adds that the paradigm of the French verb frire lacks a
number of expected forms including those of the subjunctive, the imperfect, the
simple past, the plural of present indicative and the present participle.
Additionally, all lexemes of any language always have the relevant agreement and
case marked forms in order to function in every syntactic context (Haspelmath 2002:
75). Generally, verbs in many languages tend to have morphosyntactic features such
as tense, aspect and mood forms. Also, all adjectives have a comparative form. Here,
we have to point out that there are some exceptions for the previous statements.
Haspelmath (2002: 75) explains that the incompatibility of inflectional meaning and
base meaning can explain these exceptions. Examples of these exceptions are stative
verbs as follows:
26
29) *Helena is not believing the news.
30) *Alex is agreeing with me.
The sentences are ungrammatical as stative verbs do not accept this aspectual form
(Eastwood 1999: 14-15). Furthermore, non-gradable adjectives do not have a
comparative form because of semantic reasons (Huddleston and Pullum 2005: 118) as
follows:
31) *Mark is deader than Alex.
32) * This solution is perfecter than the previous one.
Also, the derivational suffix -ess in English is used to produce female nouns such as
heiress, tigeress, lioness and princess, but it is not possible to say *teacheress
‘female teacher’ and *driveress ‘female driver’ although these would make sense
semantically.
Although it is considered a derivational process as explained in the criterion above, in
MSA, active and passive participle formation is productive. For example, if we insert
aa-i within the root, we often have the active participle of the basic verb as follows:
33) k t b {‘write’}
C V V C V C {noun}
a i {active participle}
C V V C V C
k a a t i b ‘writer’
27
34) l ʕ b {‘play’}
C V V C V C {noun}
a i {active participle}
C V V C V C
l a a ʕ i b ‘player’
Moreover, if we add ma- before the root and -uu- inside the root, we often have the
passive participle of the basic verb as follows:
35) k t b {‘write’}
C V C C V V C {noun}
m a u {passive participle}
C V C C V V C
m a k t u u b ‘written’
36) l ʕ b {‘play’}
C V C C V V C {noun}
m a u {passive participle}
C V C C V V C
m a l ʕ u u b ‘played’
28
Taking these points into consideration, this implies that derivational morphology can
be fully productive as much as inflectional morphology.
4.2.3. Inflection does not change the lexical category
A derivational process may change the part of speech. By contrast, an inflectional
process does not change the part of speech. For instance, help is a verb and helpful is
an adjective. On the other hand, an inflectional process does not change the
morphological category, for example visit and visited are both verbs, and foot and
feet, ox and oxen are all nouns.
Nevertheless, many derivational processes do not cause a change of category. For
example, child is a noun and childhood is also a noun. King and kingdom are nouns,
write and rewrite are verbs, and happy and unhappy are adjectives. In MSA, the word
rujayl ‘small man’ is a diminutive noun derived from the word rajul ‘man’, and both
of these words are nouns. Thus, we have a derivational process without changing the
part of speech. However, this does not render the criterion correct. This may lead to
confusion when it comes to determine whether these words, with no change in the
lexical categories, are a production of inflection or derivation.
4.2.4. Inflection is relevant to syntax
Inflection is the part of morphology which is relevant to syntax (Anderson 1992:
102). Syntactic context could require specific word forms, such as the case for
syntactic configurations in which constituents need agreement. Booij (2006: 655)
explains that the rule of subject–verb agreement in English, for example, indicates
that a certain verb form is required by the subject of the sentence, so the form of the
29
verb must have the same properties for the categories number and person. In English,
we have to say:
37) a) She play-s a crucial role in the fight for justice
b) * She play a crucial role in the fight for justice
Sentence (a) is acceptable as it reflects the operation of the subject–verb agreement.
She is a 3SG, which has to be followed by V -s/-es. Otherwise, it would be
grammatically incorrect.
In MSA, a pre-nominal adjective must agree in gender, number and definiteness with
the noun with which it forms a noun phrase, as follows:
38) l-kaatib-a l-jamiil-a
DEF-writer-F.SG DEF-beautiful-F.SG
‘the beautiful writer’
Another example from MSA shows that the BP affects verb inflection, as in the
following examples:
39) l-walad ya-drus-u
DEF-boy.SG 3M.PRS.ACT-study-IND.SG
‘the boy studies’
40) l-ʔawlaad ya-drus-uun
DEF-boy.PL 3.PRS.ACT-study-IND.PL.M
‘the boys study’
30
Noun phrases may have to carry a specific case depending on their syntactic function
(Booij 2006: 655). In case languages, the subject is marked by nominative case and
the direct object by accusative case. In the case of government, words require a
specific form of the word in the phrase that they govern.
Nonetheless, it should be recognised that derivation has relevance to syntax because
it may show a change of syntactic category as discussed above, and this fact in itself
is already of relevance to syntax. In the case of derivation of verbs, the derived verb
may also have a specific syntactic valency. For instance, the derivation of causative
verbs leads to the creation of transitive verbs that indicate the obligatory presence of
a direct object, as in Janet whitened the walls. Hence, the derivation of causative
verbs has syntactic relevance (Booij 2006: 655-6).
Also, if inflection is relevant only to syntax, the output of inflectional rules cannot be
listed lexically. On the other hand, derivation is purely lexical so the output of a
derivational rule is a new word, which is subject to lexical listing (Beard 2001: 44).
Listing allows lexical but not inflectional derivates to semantically idiomatise or
lexicalise. Even though went has been phonologically lexicalised, semantically it has
remained no more than the past tense of go. Terrific, on the other hand, has lost all
semantic contact with its derivational origins in terror and terrify, despite its residual
phonological similarity (Beard ibid).
Moreover, affixes are classified as inflectional affixes, which serve a syntactic
function, or derivational affixes, which create new lexical items (Katamba 2006: 225-
226). Unfortunately, the line between what is or is not syntactically motivated is often
undetected. The nature of the problem is clear when we consider English verbal
forms ending in -en or –ed, which are frequently abbreviated to V-en and V-en. In
English, V -en /V -ed forms are sometimes on the borderline between verbal past
31
participles and participial adjectives. Katamba (2006: 225-226) notices that in some
phrases, such as a complicated question, the word complicated can be correctly
classified as a participial adjective since it can appear as an adjective in the frame a
very____Adj N. A very crowded room is syntactically parallel to a very difficult/
unclear/ easy question. This contrasts with the V -ed form completed in a completed
sheet where completed is a verbal past participle. Putting completed in a position
which can only be filled by an adjective, for instance following very in *a very
completed sheet results in ungrammaticality4. Thus, the same suffixes -en and -ed
can represent either an inflectional suffix when they mark the past participle of a verb
as in he has completed the sheet and not *he has complete/completes/completing/ the
sheet, or a derivational suffix when they mark the change of a verb into a participle
adjective, as in a very complicated question.
Furthermore, the verbal forms ending in -ing are usually on the borderline between
verbal present participles, gerunds and participial adjectives as in the following
examples respectively.
41) Helena is working hard.
42) Smoking is a bad habit.
43) It was a very interesting trip.
4 Instead of assuming that there are two homophonous suffixes for -ed and –ing in English, one inflectional
and the other derivational, the rationale here is to assume that there is only a single suffix. Bearing in mind
that arguments which support the unity of two types of participle in English have been established in the
relevant literature, the idea that there are two different suffixes is completely plausible. However, more
arguments have been supplied to support the existence of two homophonous suffixes. For instance,
historically in Germanic and Romance, the periphrastic verbal passive resulted from the reanalysis of an
adjectival participle construction, which is older, after the loss of the synthetic passive (Wasow, 1977).
Interestingly, the adjectival construction remained as a part of the grammar leading to a situation in which
there are two different participles. Thus, I offer no support for the distinction between a derivational -ed and
an inflectional -ed in this paper. Also, not accepting "very" does not necessarily mean that something is not
an adjective since not all adjectives are gradable, in other words, the "very" test does not always work.
32
The same suffix -ing can indicate an inflectional process, present participial, and
derivational ones, such as gerunds and participial adjectives. In conclusion, this
criterion has little value to differentiate between derivation and inflection.
4.2.5. Derivational affixes are nearer to the root than inflectional ones
Derivational affixes typically occur closer to the root than inflectional affixes (Bauer
2002: 99). In other words, inflection closes words to further derivation while
derivation does not, as follows:
44) real-ise
Here, we change the word real, which is an adjective, to realise, which is a verb.
And in the word:
45) realise-s
We change the stem realise, which is a verb, to realises, which is still a verb but
denotes that she, he or it does the action.
Other examples from English:
46) legal-ise-d root- factitive (D) - past tense (I).
47) health-i-er root- proprietive (D) - comparative (I).
Another example from German as cited in Bauer (2002: 100) is:
33
48) Forsch-ung-en
Research-NMLZ-PL
‘researches’
In MSA, however, this is not always the case. Watson (2002: 130-131) gives
examples where the inflectional affix is very close to the root too. For instance, if we
take the MSA root /k-t-b/, which has the underlying sense of ‘write’, the following
points may be observed:
49) k t b {write}
C V V C V C {noun}
a i {active participle}
C V V C V C
k a a t i b ‘writer’
50) k t b {write}
C V C C V V C {noun}
m a u {passive participle}
C V C C V V C
m a k t u u b ‘written’
and
34
51) k t b {write}
C V C V C {perfect}
a {active}
C V C V C
k a t a b ‘wrote’
52) k t b {write}
C V C V C {perfect}
u i {passive}
C V C V C
k u t i b ‘was written’
In the two previous examples, it is evident that the derivational infixation in (49) and
(50), and the inflectional infixation in (51) and (52) are both close to the root. Thus,
derivational affixes are not necessarily closer to the root than inflectional ones. Here,
it is worth pointing out that transfix, which is a special kind of affix, is commonly
used in MSA. It involves both discontinuous affixes and discontinuous bases, these
affixes are called transfixes as they occur throughout the root (Bauer 2003: 30-31).
Additionally, in Dutch, plural suffixes can appear word-internally before suffixes
such as -achtig ‘-like’ because the stem of such suffixes forms a prosodic word of its
own, as in boeken-achtig ‘books-like, ‘bookish’, which consists of the prosodic
words boeken and achtig (Booij 2006: 660). However, it could be argued that -en in
the example is a spelled form but not a correct reflection of the pronunciation. There
is no [n] present in boeke-achtig. However, it seems that there is no difference in
meaning between boek-achtig and boeke-achtig, suggesting that the schwa might be a
35
linking phoneme as it is in compounds with boek such as boekekast 'book-cupboard',
boekeplank 'book-shelf'. Interestingly, it could be the idea that we are dealing with a
linking morpheme by analysing another example in -achtig. In stads-achitg, the noun
stad gets the suffix -s which is not its plural affix. Again, both stad-achtig and stads-
achtig sound fine to a native speaker, who would not be able to tell the semantic
difference5. Thus, it is still controversial if the plural noun boeken ‘books’ can appear
before the suffix -achtig. However, another example that refutes this criterion is taken
from Breton. The plural of the diminutive noun bagig ‘little boat’ is baoùigoù, where
one plural suffix -ou occurs before the diminutive suffix -ig and the other appears
after it (Stump 1998: 18). This criterion is worthy of further investigation.
4.2.6. Derivational affixes may change the stress or the pronunciation of the word
Based on McMahon (2002), Pennington (1996: 184-5) and Ashby (2005: 64-66), it
can be seen that if we relate inflection and derivation to phonology we can notice
that, derivational affixes may change the stress or the pronunciation of the word but
inflectional affixes do not as shown in the following examples:
53) a) Horizon /həˈraɪz(ə)n/
b) Horizontal /ˌhɒrɪˈzɒnt(ə)l/
54) a) Advantage /ədˈvɑːntɪdʒ/ in British English, and /əd ˈvæn.t ɪdʒ/ in American
English.
b) Advantageous /ˌædvənˈteɪdʒəs/
55) Migration /maɪˈɡreɪʃ(ə)n/
Immigration /ˌɪmɪˈɡreɪʃ(ə)n/
5 This argument is based on a formal feedback from a native speaker of Dutch. He is a subject expert in
linguistics.
36
In MSA, another example is cited as follows:
56) ̍ maktab ‘office’
muˈkaytib ‘small office’
Nevertheless, a derivational process does not necessarily change the pronunciation or
stress of the word, as shown in the following example:
57) Help /ˈhelp/
Helpless /ˈhelpləs/
Although this criterion may be helpful since all cases of stress-shift will involve
derivation, it does not help in differentiating between the derivational and inflectional
process if we encounter some examples like (57).
4.2.7. Inflection is obligatory
Inflection is obligatory in comparison with derivation which is optional (Booij 2006:
655). For instance, every English noun must be marked as either singular or plural.
As a result, the category number is an obligatory category of English, so it is
inflectional. Similarly, in languages with case systems, each noun must be marked
for a specific case. In most languages, verbs are marked obligatorily for a specific
tense and often for person and number to agree with the subject of the clause. Note
that this is true even if there is no overt marking for a particular inflectional feature.
For instance, there is no overt number marking for English singular nouns. There are
also nouns that, for semantic reasons, do not have plural forms, such as milk, sand,
oil, attention, and abstractness. These nouns must nevertheless be considered
37
singular nouns because they trigger singular number agreement with verbs6. In
contrast, no obligatory morphological expression is involved in using the agent noun
for the verb drive, that is, the word driver, with the suffix -er that creates de-verbal
agent nouns. The use of this word is a choice made by the language user for purely
semantic reasons. As a result, the word driver is considered to result from a
derivational process.
Booij (2006: 656) states that “inflection is used cross-linguistically for a number of
categories: Nouns: number, gender, definiteness, case. Verbs: valency, tense, aspect,
mood, person, number, gender. Adjectives: degree, number, gender, case,
definiteness”. However, the gender category is not obligatory in English, whereas,
gender is an obligatory category in verbs, nouns and adjectives in MSA. In French, it
is obligatory to specific word forms which are nouns and adjectives such as:
58) Le pantalon blanc
the.ART. DEF.M.SG trousers.M.SG white.M
'the white trouser’
Not as
59) *Le pantalon blanche
the.ART. DEF.SG.M trousers.M.SG white.F
'the white trouser’
Since the word pantalon ‘trousers’, in french, is treated as a masculine noun, the
masculine adjective blanc ‘white’ must describe it rather than the feminine one
blanche ‘white’ (Bissar et al. 2008: 49).
6 It is worth pointing out that some linguists may claim that there are zero-affixes marking the singularity.
Also, many linguists assume that the singularity is a default interpretation that results from the fact that there
is no overt number marking present. Therefore, these forms are 'marked' for singularity although this
marking is a little more abstract than an overt phonological affix. These ideas are worthy of further
investigation.
38
Nonetheless, the use of the word employer could not be a choice made by the
language user for purely semantic reasons. For example, if we take the following
sentences, we can see that using the agent noun for the verb employ is obligatory. As
a result, the word employer must not be considered a deviational case as mentioned
above.
60) a) The employer hired the employee.
b) *The employee hired the employer.
The suffix -ee is used here to tell us that someone is affected by an action ‘patient’. In
comparison, the suffix -er is used in the previous sentence to refer to someone who
performs an action ‘agent’. Thus, it can be stated that the user of the language is
forced to follow the structure of sentence (60a); otherwise, it will not make sense.
Here, it is worth noting that some linguists may argue that the sentence is perfectly
correct as there is no wrong agreement marked on the verb. Also, they may suggest
that in certain situations, for instance, an employee in a financial firm may hire his
employer to help filling in his tax return. However, I feel that this interpretation is
unlikely to happen and the speaker is still forced to use (60a)7.
4.2.8. Inflectional affixes have regular meaning
All inflectional affixes have regular meaning, whereas all derivational ones do not
(Bauer 2003: 96). Bauer suggests a good example for the derivational suffix –ette,
which can be added to the following words.
7 After consulting ten native speakers, they confirmed that the situation is unlikely to happen. Thus, I
reached the conclusion above.
39
61) a) kitchenette ‘ a small area used as a kitchen’
b) usherette ‘ a woman whose job is to show people where to sit in a cinema or
theatre’
c) flannelette ‘light cotton flannel’
Another example is the derivational suffix -er. If we take into account the examples
below, we can observe that the suffix -er has four slightly different meanings as
follows:
62) a) driver ‘someone who performs the action’
b) cooker ‘ something performs the action implied in the verb’
c) Londoner ‘someone who is from a specific place’
d) philosopher ‘someone who is involved with something, especially as a job’
In the examples above, the suffix -ette has different meanings, namely, ‘small’,
‘female’ and ‘mock material’ respectively, and the suffix -er means a performer of an
action, something performs the action implied in the verb, a nationality and a job title.
On the other hand, the prefixes re- and un-, and the suffixes -ness have regular
meanings. The prefix re- means ‘again’ as in the following words: reheat, re-elect,
reapply, rewrite and redecorate. The prefix un- is used with some adjectives, adverbs
and verbs to give the opposite meaning, such as unable, unhappy, uncooked, unzip,
unhurriedly. The suffix -ness always means ‘state or quality’ as in words like
completeness and politeness. As a result, if an affix with irregular meaning ‘has more
than one meaning’, it must be derivational; otherwise it could be either derivational
or inflectional. Thus, this criterion is of little value.
Here, I should point out that the term ‘semantic relevance’ is used in order to
distinguish between inflection and derivation (Bybee 1985: 13). Bybee (ibid)
40
indicates that ‘a meaning element is relevant to another meaning element if the
semantic content of the first directly affects or modifies the semantic content of the
second’. Also, Bybee (ibid) argues that there are two factors that determine whether a
certain notion is expressed inflectionally or derivationally, namely, relevance and
generality. If the category is more general and less related to the root, this lends itself
to inflectional expression. The opposite of this applies to derivation. For example, the
meaning of tense is usually expressed by inflectional means since the nature of an
action is a temporal relation to the time of speaking. Booij (2006: 656) explains that:
Tense does not modify the meaning of the verbal stem and has a deictic function instead.
Correlating with this semantic distinction, we see that the morphological expression of tense
in paradigms is quite general, whereas the morphological expression of causative may be
possible for a restricted number of verbal roots only.
Moreover, agreement and case express the relation of the word to other words in its
syntactic context. Hence, this kind of contextually determined morphology is the
prototypical case of inflection.
According to Bybee (1985: 14), the semantic divergence between derivation and the
different kinds of inflection elements is that derivational morphemes are closer to the
root than inflectional morphemes because they have a higher semantic relevance.
Additionally, the order of inflectional elements plays a crucial role as it reflects
different degrees of relevance in an inflectional word form. For instance (cited in
Bybee ibid):
Since the category of aspect is more relevant to the meaning of the stem than tense, tense
morphemes tend to be peripheral to aspectual morphemes. Person and number markings on
verbs (necessary for reasons of agreement only) are peripheral to tense marking.
41
Nonetheless, Haspelmath (2002: 75) argues that the notion of relevance is unclear but
it seems to some extent to capture a semantic distinction between derivation and
inflection.
4.2.9. Inflection is paradigmatic
First of all, it is necessary to discuss what is exactly meant by paradigm. Stump
(2001: 33) and Andrew (1991: 11) define a paradigm as the complete set of the
various inflected forms of a word, for instance girl, girls, girl’s and girls’. Booij
(2006: 656) expands the definition by stating that:
A paradigm is an abstract pattern of cells, with each cell having a particular value for one or
more inflectional categories such as number, case, tense, or aspect. For each lexeme of a
particular lexical category, the cells of the paradigm are filled with particular word forms.
Inflection is always related to paradigms. This paradigmatic organisation of the
inflectional forms of a lexeme reflects the idea that inflection is obligatory in the
sense discussed above (Booij 2006: 656). Yet, many verbs in MSA do not have a full
paradigm such as ðahab ‘he went’ where there is no past participle *maðhuub ‘gone’
for it due to semantics reasons.
In addition, Stump (1998: 16) adds that the paradigm of the French verb frire, which
denotes ‘fry’, lacks a number of expected forms including those of the subjunctive,
the imperfect, the simple past, the plural of present indicative and the present
participle.
Nevertheless, Booij (2006: 656) claims that researchers could organise the set of
derivationally related lexemes into a paradigm. For example, for English verbs,
‘agent noun’ could be assumed to have a paradigmatic cell. However, some verbs in
42
English might not have to fill agent noun cells, such as die and to fall. This stands in
contrast with inflection where the cells of paradigms are (almost) always filled. An
exception to this generalisation is that nouns may lack plural forms, mainly for
semantic reasons. Moreover, some adjectives do not have comparative, such as awful,
unique and alive due to semantic reasons as well.
4.2.10. Inflection is not replaceable by a simple word unlike derivation
In a certain syntactic construction, inflected words cannot be replaced by simple
words when an inflectional category is changed exactly due to that construction
(Haspelmath 2002: 73). The examples below explain this argument:
63) a) The Nile is longer than the Tigris
b) *The Nile is long than the Tigris
And
64) a) Helena helps the poor
c) *Helena help the poor.
But nominal plurals can be replaced by singulars when nothing agrees with them as
follows:
65) The lion(s) ate the sheep.
In terms of derivation, it is likely to replace derived words in a sentence with
monomorphemic form, and the sentence will still make sense. However, it is
impossible to do the same with an inflected form (Bauer 2003: 101). For example:
43
66) a) I failed to win the lead-er-ship of the party.
b) I failed to win the trust of the party.
On the other hand:
67) a) Helena has accomplished what she set out to do.
b) *Helena has achieve what she set out to do.
However, Bauer (2003: 102) also disputes this fact as it sometimes does not work as
in the examples below:
68) a) They always arriv-ed on time.
b) They always come on time.
As mentioned above, both the inflected and the derived word can be replaced by a
simple word.
4.2.11. Inflection has the same concept as the base
With regard to concept, Haspelmath (2002: 73) suggests that the same concept is
expressed in write and writes. On the other hand, he states that this is less clear with
singular-plural pairs. Regarding derivation, employer is a clearly different concept
from employ. However, it is unclear whether kindness is a different concept from
kind. Other examples from English are leader ‘a person in control (in charge) of a
group, country or situation’ and leadership ‘the position of being the leader’, agree
‘hold the same idea, opinion or suggestion’ and agreement ‘state of agreeing’, and
shy ‘nervous and timed in company’ and shyness ‘the state of being shy’, in which
each pair has the same general (abstract) idea.
44
4.2.12. Inflection has a relatively abstract meaning
All inflectional meanings are highly abstract (in some intuitive sense), whereas many
derivational meanings are quite concrete, such as -ier in French which denotes ‘a
kind of tree’ (Haspelmath 2002: 73). Examples from French are pommier ‘apple
tree’, bananier ‘banana apple’, olivier ‘olive tree’, mandarinier ‘mandarin tree’ and
citronnier ‘lemon tree’ as cited in Collins French Dictionary plus Grammar (2000). In
English, we can consider -shire which sometimes denotes the name of a province in
the UK, such as Yorkshire, Lancashire, Oxfordshire, Nottinghamshire and
Derbyshire.
Nevertheless, some derivational meanings are just as abstract as inflectional
meanings, such as the meaning of -hood ‘status’ in words like childhood, boyhood,
bachelorhood (Haspelmath 2002: 73). Other derivational meanings that are abstract
are –ship ‘skill’ in leadership, workmanship, scholarship, salesmanship, courtship
and swordsmanship , -ism ‘set of beliefs’ in socialism, capitalism and communism,
and -ness ‘quality or state’ in politeness, shyness and completeness. Here, it is
essential to point out that the suffix -ship could also denote ‘a specific group of
people’ and ‘a certain position’, such as readership and chairmanship respectively.
4.2.13. Inflection is semantically regular (regularity in meaning)
In terms of regularity in meaning, Aronoff and Fudeman (2005: 45) posit that
inflection does not change core lexical meaning. For instance, the regular plural (s)
that is attached to most English nouns, such as boy and boys, does not change the
core lexical meaning. We have only changed the number. But in derivation, the
45
words use and useless, king and kingdom, and hard and hardly do not have the same
core meaning.
Another example from MSA:
69) katab
write.PST.3MSG
‘he wrote’
And
70) ya-ktub-u
PRS.3M-write.PRS-IND
‘he writes’
Haspelmath (2002: 74) also to some extent agrees with Aronoff and Fudeman in that
derived lexemes cannot be predicted from the meaning of components, for example,
the meaning of both ignorance and reparation are just historically associated with
ignore and repair.
On the other hand, if we take for example the root /r-k-b/ in MSA, which has the
underlying sense of ‘ride’, rakab ‘he rode’, and irtakab ‘he committed’, we can still
observe that there is a derivational process since it changes the meaning drastically as
follows:
71) r k b {‘ride’}
C C V C V C V {perfect}
a {vocalic melody}
t {active}
46
C C V C V C V
r t a k a b a ‘he committed’
By contrast with the root /h-b-s/ in MSA, which has the underlying sense of
‘imprison’, habas ‘he imprisoned’, and htabas ‘he was imprisoned’ has the same
process, but the infixation of /t/ provides the intransitive of a transitive base, which is
considered an inflectional process as discussed in the first criterion.
72) h b s {‘imprison’}
C C V C V C V {perfect}
a {vocalic melody}
t {passive}
C C V C V C V
h t a b a s a ‘was imprisoned’
The infixation -t- shows the same form but a different function and meaning.
Example (71) provides a different lexeme whereas example (72) shows a different
grammatical category although it is found as a separate lexeme as explained in the
criterion 1. Thus, the infixation -t- shows the irregularity in meaning in inflection.
Both derivation and inflection are semantically irregular.
4.2.14. Inflection exhibits less base allomorphy
Haspelmath (2002: 76) explains that derivation is best illustrated with roots that show
base allomorphy in derived lexemes, but not in comparable contexts in inflected word
forms.
47
73) Examples of less base allomorphy from MSA and English:
Language Root Inflectional process Derivational process
MSA rakaba ‘he rode’ rakab-at ‘she rode’ raakib ‘rider; passenger’
English destroy destroy-ed destruct-ion
On the other hand, in French, the word facilement ‘easily’ does not indicate base
allomorphy although it has a derivational process from the root facile ‘easy’. Many
examples from English can be found, such as sick and sickness, real and realism,
move and movement, and champion and championship do not result in a change in
base allomorphy. Based on examples above, derivational forms may not have any
change in the root. Thus, this criterion is invalid as it is difficult to determine if the
derivational words with less base allomorphy are derivational or inflectional. It is
important to point out that a question may arise here about how we measure ‘less’.
4.2.15. Inflection may have cumulative expression
A single affix might express more than one inflectional category as in Latin
insularum ‘of the islands’ (Haspelmath 2002: 76). The suffix -arum shows ‘genitive’
and ‘plural’ (Haspelmath ibid). More examples are:
74) aux émaux
to.ART.PL enamel.PL
‘to the enamels’
48
Another example from German is:
75) unser-n Väter-n
our-DAT.PL father.PL-DAT.PL
‘to our fathers’
The last example from MSA is:
76) ya-ktub-u
3M.PRS.ACT-write-IND
‘he writes’
The prefix ya- expresses ‘person’, ‘gender’, ‘voice’ and ‘tense’. On the other hand, in
derivation, it seems very rare to have one affix which expresses several derivational
categories. Haspelmath (2002: 76) gives an example from Dutch, which is the suffix
–setr; it means ‘agent’ and ‘feminine’. Another example from English is the suffix –
ess, which may also mean ‘agent’ and ‘feminine’ in words such as hostess, countess
and actress. It is worth noting some Dutch morphologists have argued that this
involves in fact a type of haplology. Put differently, one affix is deleted in the
presence of the other. However, I am still in favour of Haspelmath’s argument.
Overall, based on the previous examples, a single affix expresses more than one
derivational or inflectional category.
4.2.16. Inflection is not iterable
According to Haspelmath (2002: 76), inflectional affixes cannot be repeated. Thus,
although it would make sense logically to have an iterated plural (e.g. *cat-s-es ‘sets
of cats’), such double plurals are virtually non-existent. Or one could imagine a past
tense affix to be repeated to give a sense of remote past *dided ‘had done’. With
49
derivational formations, iteration is not common either but it is possible, as in English
post-postmodern.
In German, we can see that derivational affixes could be iterated as shown in the
following example:
77) Ur-ur-ur-großvater
Great-great-great-grandfather
In comparison with MSA, this is not the case. In BP, double plurals (plural of the
broken plural) are attested. For example, the plural of the word qawl, which denotes
‘conversation’, is ʔaqwaal which denotes ‘conversations’, and the broken plural of
ʔaqwaal is ʔaqaawiil that denotes ‘unimportant conversations’ (Alrajehi 2008: 114).
The plural of the broken plural, in the previous example, shows one derivational
characteristic, which is drastic change in meaning. The word ʔaqaawiil has the
underlying sense of ‘unimportant conversations’, which to some extent, provides a
diminutive connotative meaning of ‘contempt’. Cross-linguistically, the main
characteristics of diminutives are the basic denotative meaning which is ‘dimensional
smallness’, and many connotative meanings, such as ‘endearment’ and ‘contempt’
(Watson 2006). Thus, it might be said that the previous example illustrates
derivational characteristics.
4.2.17. Inflection uses a closed set of affixes
It is awkward to add a new inflectional affix to a language or to delete one (Bauer,
2003: 102). It is very difficult to start using in English or French a dual marker such
as the one found in MSA and Greek. Meanwhile, it is impossible to stop using the
singular/plural distinction. Bauer (2003: 102) states that the derivational suffix -
nomics has been successful in words like thatchernomics and nixonomics.
50
Nevertheless, in JSA, people ignore using the standard form to derive passive voice.
In general, the standard apophonic passive, in MSA, displays the vowel sequence /u-
i/ within the root (Agameya 2006: 552). For example:
78) q t l {‘kill’}
C V C V C {perfect}
u i {passive}
79) q t l {‘kill’}
C C V C V C V {perfect}
a {vocalic melody}
n {passive}
As mentioned above, Jordanians follow another pattern that carries the same meaning
as the one in MSA. Nowadays, they rarely use the standard one.
Furthermore, it is not obvious if all languages are able to add derivational affixes
(Bauer 2003: 102). For instance, Bauer (ibid) states that:
Maori is a language which does not appear to be adding new derivational affixes, although
this could be a result of the fact that there are very few monolingual speakers of Maori left
alive or even speakers for whom Maori is a first language.
Also, he states that inflectional affixes are less than derivational ones as in English,
but it is not clear whether the number of inflectional affixes is less or equal to
derivational ones in all languages.
51
In comparison to English, in MSA, there are thirty-one patterns of the BP, which can
be divided into just four shape-defined categories in MSA (McCarthy 1990b: 213).
There are two patterns of the SP, which are masculine and feminine plurals as well.
In terms of the dual of a noun, which is made from the singular by dropping the ( ٌ
/tanwiin/) and adding the suffix -aan, Jordanians do not use it except with measuring
and accounting. In fact, they use plural forms instead while talking with a couple of
people. This implies that some inflectional affixes have disappeared in certain areas
of a language. Thus, it may be argued that inflectional affixes do not form an
inalterable closed set. It could be an increase or decrease of inflectional ones as
explained above. It might also be said that this criterion does not work for all
languages in terms of the number of inflectional and derivational affixes.
4.3. Summary
The criteria investigated do not show a clear dichotomous classification of derivation
and inflection. Proponents try to concentrate on the first four properties to
discriminate between these two classes. Yet, the boundaries that these criteria entail
do not coincide to a perfect degree. Evidence from a variety of languages suggests
that these criteria cannot be maintained. Each language may have some criteria in
order to differentiate between derivation and inflection but rarely a perfect set of
concrete rules. In English, the criterion that inflection closes words to further
derivation may work due to the lack of examples to refute it. On the other hand, in
Dutch, Breton and MSA, this is not the case as derivation can occur after inflection.
In Dutch, the word boeken-achtig ‘books-like’, ‘bookish’ is an example of a
derivational process after an inflectional one as explained above.
52
Chapter five: Findings and conclusion
5.1. Overview
Several examples from a variety of languages have been examined to determine
whether a specific morphological process belongs to the domain of inflection or that
of derivation. It is very difficult to decide whether a particular morphological form
resulted from derivation or inflection. Undoubtedly, the most obvious observation is
that inflectional and derivational processes overlap in many of the cases examined.
There are no sharp boundaries between them.
5.2. Findings and discussion
Properties do not coincide to a perfect degree between these two domains. For
example, if we take the noun fish which forms the verb fish, we can form the plural
fish from the noun fish without the use of an overt affix. Therefore, it is difficult to
determine if the form of the word fish belongs to derivation or inflection. Another
example is the noun, verb, past simple and past participle of cut. The conversion can
be an inflectional and a derivational process.
Moreover, the suffixes -en and -ed can be used either to form verbal past participles
or participial adjectives as in completed sheet and complicated issue respectively.
Also, the suffix -ing can be used either to form verbal present participles, participial
adjectives or gerunds as in as he is studying maths, an interesting point and swimming
is my hobby respectively.
In MSA, the vocalic melody of active participle, which is /aa-i/, does not derive the
active participle in words, such as baarid ‘cold’ and jaamiʕ ‘mosque’. Also, the
53
feminine suffix -at still indicates gender in the examples below but with slightly
different meanings from the stem as well as separate lexemes in the lexicons, such as
maktab ‘office’ and maktabaat ‘libraries’, and jaamiʕ ‘mosque’ and jaamiʕaat
‘universities’. Thus, it is impossible to decide if the previous processes belong to the
domain of derivation or that of inflection, especially the second process. It is clear
that gender is an inflectional category in MSA. The previous examples refute the
claim that inflection does not change the meaning.
Furthermore, some verb forms in MSA like htabas, xtabaz have grammatical
information, voice, and they are listed in the lexicons. The process can be applied
also to form many words to yield new lexemes, such as ktatab ‘he underwrote’ and
mtanaʕ ‘he refused’. Additionally, the BP of BP denotes diminutive meanings in
words such as ʔataafiil ‘small children’, ʔahaafiir ‘small holes’ and ʔaqaawiil
‘unimportant conversations’. Meanwhile, the same process, for some of the previous
examples, occurs for the words like ʔiʕsaar ‘whirlwind, tornado’ and ʔaʕaasiir
‘whirlwinds, tornados’ without any indication of the diminutive. It is important to
point out that the BP of BP is lexically listed in the lexicons and dictionaries such as
Wehr (1994), and online lexicons, such as Abo-Alazaym (n.d.) and Al-Lajami et al.
(1993) despite having grammatical information, namely, number.
5.3. Conclusion and recommendations
To conclude, derivation and inflection are not clear cut categories and this can be
seen in both English and MSA based on the examples analysed above. There is an
overlap between these two aspects of morphology. A lot of processes can be used to
derive new lexemes as well as new forms of the same lexemes. This means that one
process provides us with new lexemes and inflected forms. Overall, to define
derivation as the process that creates new lexemes and inflection as the one that
54
forms new forms of the same lexemes which cannot be listed lexically, as Beard
(2001: 44), Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and Schlesewsky (2009: 39-40) and Katamba
(1993: 205) claim, is not accurate since it is not clear what the term inflected form
refers to. If it refers to those which have grammatical information, some examples in
MSA like htabas and xtabaz have grammatical information, voice, and they are listed
in the lexicons. The BP of BP has been found as a separate entity in the lexicons as
well. Thus, there is a clear overlap between these domains of morphology in light of
on the examples that have been investigated in this study. Though it may be possible
to identify some properties to distinguish between these two domains in a specific
language, they cannot be used for all. For example, closure to the root criterion may
work in English, but it does not work in MSA or Dutch at all.
Thus, it might be suggested that researchers in morphology have to redefine
derivation and inflection and suggest clear criteria to distinguish between them. In
addition, it is difficult to determine whether a certain process belongs to the domain
of inflection or that of derivation as there are no sharp boundaries between these
domains. Researchers have to shed light on this issue because some aspects are
shared by these two kinds of morphology and based on subtle observations, there are
no absolute distinctions between inflection and derivation. In fact, the process
described as inflection and derivation appear to lie on a continuum.
Finally, based on the observations above, if the word ʔahaafiir ‘small holes/fossils’ is
the BP of BP hufar ‘hollows, holes’ so the question that may arise is: what the
diminutive of the word hufar ‘hollows’ could be? This is a question that could be
answered in further studies.
55
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