Inflectional Morphemes

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Inflectional Morphemes in the English Language

According to Delahunty and Garvey (2010), Morphemes are the smallest forms in a
language that have meanings or grammatical functions. Morphemes can be either free or bound.
Free morphemes are lexemes that can occur on their own without being attached to any other
morpheme. For example, words like dog, chair can have meanings independently; they are also
called the root. Bound morphemes are word parts that always need to be attached to other root
words to create meanings. Bound morphemes are usually affixes, mostly prefixes and suffixes
but can sometimes be infixes. Those of which are not presented in the form of affixes are called
cranberry morphemes. Cranberry morphemes are a type of bound morphemes that cannot be
assigned a meaning nor a grammatical function, but nonetheless serves to distinguish one word
from the other. (Aronoff, 1976) For example, the bound morpheme -ceive originally from Latin
meaning to seize something can be found in words like receive, conceive, etc. A word can have
one or more bound morphemes. For example, the word walks contains one free morpheme walk
and one bound morpheme -s; The word surprisingly contains three morphemes, one free
morpheme surprise, which can occur on its own; and two bound morphemes -ing and -ly that
need to be attached to the root morpheme surprise to function as a signal of the inflection of a
noun surprise from adjective surprising to adverb surprisingly.
Furthermore, bound morphemes can be divided into two categories, inflectional
morphemes and derivational morphemes. Derivational morphemes are word parts that changes
the meaning or part of speech when they are attached to a root. For example, if a bound
morpheme -ment is attached to the root govern, it changes the part of speech from a verb govern
to a noun government. Inflectional morphemes are word parts that do not change the meaning or
the part of speech when they are attached to a root. For example, the plural mark -s does not
change the meaning or class when it is attached to the root dog and changing it into dogs, it only
signals the plural form of the root. Thus, the inflectional morphemes are implemented to signal
syntactical relationships in sentence constructions, the derivational morphemes are utilized to

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create new words related to the root words meanings. However, the notions of these two
categories are very often confused especially by ESL learners.
Therefore, in this morphology research paper, I will elaborate the definition,
classifications, and functions, of the morphological, phonological and semantic conditioning of
the inflectional morphemes in the English language in order to distinguish the utilization
especially in the aspect of the different entries in dictionary compilations as well as to raise
awareness for the fact of certain compounded development of inflectional morphemes and
derivational morphemes.

Types of Inflectional Morphemes in the English Language

In the modern English language, only eight inflectional morphemes are used and all of
them are suffixes (Quirk, et al., 1985):
1) Third person, singular, present tense of verbs: {-(e)s}
{-(e)s} is a third person singular present tense indicative of verbs. For example,
John walks to school every day. Note that if this third person singular present tense
indicative {-s} is after a sibilant, which is a manner of articulation of fricative or affricate
consonants that are higher in pitch such as /s, z, , , t, d/, the indicative will present in
an allomorph form as {-es}. Allomorphs are different realizations of a morpheme
depending on the phonological content without changing its meaning(s). For example,
The dog catches the ball.
2) Plural marker of nouns: {-(e)s}
In this case, {-s} is a grammatical structure that indicates the noun that it has
attached to is more than one count, that is to say, in its plural form. For example, the
plural form of the noun desk is desks. As mentioned above, if this plural marker is after a
sibilant, it will present in an allomorph form as {-es}. For example, the plural form of the
noun batch is batches.
3) Genitive of noun phrases: {-s}
Genitive is also known as the possessive case. It indicates the ownership or
possession pertaining of a noun phrase. For example, Johns car is red. Note that if a

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noun ends in the letter s, the genitive marker will present without {-s} but only as an
apostrophe {-} due to the phonological environment.
4) Regular past tense of verbs: {-ed}
This inflectional morpheme conjugates regular verbs to indicate the past time
frame. For example, John walked to school today.
5) Past participle marker of verbs: {-ed, -en}
Usually, this inflectional morpheme is utilized with have or passive be in the
present perfect, past perfect and future perfect tenses. For example, The seat was
taken./She has finished all the homework.
6) Comparative of short adjectives and adverbs: {-er}
A comparative is a form that expresses the greater or lesser degree. A short
adjective or adverb, in this case, is typically considered as adjective or adverb that
consists two or less syllables. That is to say, the comparative form of most of the short
adjectives or adverbs will be root+-er. For example, big/bigger, narrow/narrower. Note
that if a one-syllable adjective or adverb ends in the letter e, the comparative form only
need to add the {-s}. For example, nice/nicer. Moreover, if it ends in the letter y, the
comparative allomorph will present as {-ier}. For example, greasy/greasier.
7) Superlative of short adjectives and adverbs: {-est}
Superlative indicates the highest level. As mentioned above, if an adjective or
adverb consist two or less syllables, in most cases, the superlative form will be root+-est.
For example, bright/brightest, clever/cleverest. Note that if a one-syllable adjective or
adverb ends in the letter e, the superlative form only need to add the {-st}. For example,
nice/nicest. Moreover, if it ends in the letter y, the superlative allomorph will present as
{-iest}. For example, happy/happiest.
8) Progressive marker of verbs: {-ing}
This inflectional morpheme indicates the present continuous time frame of a verb.
For example, study/studying. Note that if a verb ends in the letter e, the progressive form
requires the verb to drop the e in order to attach the inflectional morpheme due to
phonological content. For example, leave/leaving.

Morphological, Phonological and Semantic Conditioning of Inflectional Morphemes

1) Morphological conditioning of inflectional morphemes

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Morphological conditioning refers to the allomorphs which occur without the

influence of the nearby phonological content. It can be further classified into two
situations: grammatical conditioning and lexical conditioning. Grammatical conditioning
mainly occurs when the past tense of a verb is an irregular form such as sleep/slept,
make/made, etc. Whilst lexical conditioning mainly occurs under the influence of
phonemic environment or morphological environment. For example, /z, s, iz/ are the
allophones of the plural marker {-s} due to phonemic influence. Lexical conditioning {ai, -i, -n, -e, -} only exist in certain words such as fish/fish, sheep/sheep.
2) Phonological conditioning of inflectional morphemes
The inflectional morpheme {-ed} of the past tense of regular verbs has multiple
allophones such as /t, d, id/. This depends on the coda of the root verb. For instance, if a
verb ends in a voiceless consonant other than /t/, the {-ed} will be pronounced as /t/, such
as walk ends in a voiceless consonant /k/, hence the coda of walked will be pronounced as
/kt/. In contrast, if a verb ends in a voiced consonant other than /d/, the {-ed} will be
pronounced as /d/, such as hug ends in a voiceless consonant /g/, hence the coda of
hugged will be pronounced as /gd/. Lastly, if a verb ends in consonants like /t, d/, the {ed} will be pronounced as /id/, such as haunt ends in a voiceless consonant /t/, hence the
coda of hugged will be pronounced as /id/, bend ends in a voiced consonant /d/, the coda
of bended will be pronounced as /id/.
3) Semantic conditioning of inflectional morphemes
The semantic conditioning mainly occurs in the morphemes that has both the
inflectional meaning and derivational meaning. For example, {-ed} is the inflectional
morpheme of regular past tense verbs, but it can also function as a signal of adjectives or
adverbs such as completed; {-ing} is the inflectional morpheme of present progressive
verbs, but it can also function as a signal of nouns like feeling.
To sum up, inflectional morphemes can, on one hand, not only be influenced by
morphological conditioning but also by the phonological and semantic content. On the
other hand, even if the same inflectional morpheme can express different meanings or has
different functions. Being able to understand the mutual interactions within different
linguistic aspects would greatly facilitate the memorization of the inflectional
morphemes.

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Inflectional Morphemes vs. Derivational Morphemes

According to Matthews (1991), inflectional morphology is defined as the branch of
morphology that deals with paradigms. It is therefore concerned with two things: on the one
hand, with the semantic oppositions among categories; on the other, with the formal means,
including inflections, that distinguish them. Although Lin (1997) did not directly point out the
difference between inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes, he consider that the
grammatical morphemes such as the plural marker {-s} and regular past tense verb {-ed} are
utilized according to the syntactic environment whilst lexical morphemes are utilized to create
new vocabulary. Jackson and Amvela (2000) also point out that inflection is a general
grammatical process which combines words and affixes to produce alternative grammatical
forms of words while derivation is a lexical process which actually forms a new word out of an
existing one by the addition of a derivational affix., that is to say, the application of inflection
leads to the formation of alternative grammatical forms of the same word, that of derivation
creates new vocabulary items. (Jackson and Amvela, 2000) Therefore, the difference between
inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes is certainly worth emphasizing. Take {-er}
for example: if we regard the {-er} as an inflectional morpheme, never will it changes the
meaning or part of speech of the adjectives or adverbs that is attached with it. Such as, both nice
and nicer, big and bigger, are adjectives and neither their meaning nor parts of speech change
accordingly by the addition of {-er}. However, if we regard the {-er} as a derivational
morpheme, it will change the part of speech when it is attached to a verb such as hang/hanger,
the verb hang becomes the noun hanger. Although the form in these two cases are exactly the
samebound morphemesthey function very differently.
Wang (2001) points out that numerous English dictionaries and Chinese-English
dictionaries did not strictly distinguish the differences between inflectional morphemes and
derivational morphemes. For instance, in the Collins Cobuild: Essential English Dictionary
(1991), care, careful and careless are listed under different entries, while happy, happiness and
happily are listed under the same entry of happy. In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English (1978), modern, modernism, modernistic, modernity and modernize are listed as
different entries as well as kind, kindly and kindness, happy, happiness, and happily are under
different entries. However, it categorized keenly and keenness under the same entry of keen,

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while it categorized carefully and carefulness under the careful entry but it also categorized
carelessly and carelessness under the entry of careless. Moreover, in the English-Chinese
Dictionary (1995) categorized modernly and modernness under the modern entry, while listing
modernity, modernize and modernization as different entries separately. It also categorized
happy, happiness and happily as different entries, whilst putting keenly and keenness under the
keen entry. These chaotic categorizations significantly indicate the arbitrariness and
inconsistency of dictionary compilations. In my opinion, due to the fact that a derivational
morpheme changes the meaning and part of speech of a root word that it is attached to, the root
word and the new vocabulary created by the addition of derivational morpheme should be
categorized under different entries. Accordingly, because an inflectional morpheme does not
change the meaning or the part of speech of a root word when the morpheme is attached to the
root, the root word and the new vocabulary created by the addition of an inflectional morpheme
to a root word should be categorized under the same entry.
It is very important to note that the development of both inflectional morphemes and
derivational morphemes are not just single-streamed, separated traces, instead, they sometimes
develop in a mixed way. In other words, inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes are
interchangeable and closely related. This depends on the addition of inflectional morphemes to
derivational morphemes. For example, if the noun computer is attached to a derivational
morpheme {-ize}, it becomes the derivational morpheme computerize; but if we attach an
inflectional morpheme {-ing}, the derivational morpheme will become the inflectional
morpheme computerizing. Or, if the verb mark is attached to an inflectional morpheme {-ed}, it
becomes an inflectional morpheme marked; we can also add a derivational morpheme {-ness} to
change marked into a derivational morpheme markedness. From here we can see that the
development of both inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes are mixed and
complicated, it changes pertinently according to the content.
Conclusion
Although the inflectional morphemes in the modern English language only exist in eight
forms, they can be influenced and be developed in many different ways. These confusing notions
may level up the difficulty of the language acquisition process of ESL leaners. Hence, it is
necessary for ESL teachers to thoroughly understand the definition, classification and utilizations

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of inflectional morphemes as well as to know the morphological, phonological and semantic

conditioning circumstances so they may explain and distinguish the complicated, mixed
development of both inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes. Also, understanding
the characters of inflectional morphemes can help ESL teachers to choose well-organized
English dictionaries that are categorizing the word entries reasonably in order to better improve
students academic performance. Moreover, though differentiating the usage of inflectional
morphemes and derivational morphemes are highly demanded, it is also necessary to related
these two morpheme categories because they sometimes share a mixed, interacting development
that seem to be the interchangeable process of either the inflectional morphemes or derivational
morphemes of a root word.

References:
Aronoff, M. (1976). Word Formation in Generative Grammar. MIT Press.
Delahunty, G. P, and Garvey, J. J. (May 21, 2010). The English language: From Sound to Sense.
Perspectives on Writing. The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press. pp. 76-77
Jackson, H., and Amvela E. Z. (2000) Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to
Modern English Lexicology. A&C Black.
Lin, C. (1997). An Introduction to English Lecicology. Wuhan University Press.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. (1978). Longman Group limited.
Lu, G. (1995). The English Chinese Dictionary. Shanghai Translation Publishing House.
Matthews, P. H. (1991). Morphology. Cambridge University Press.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., and Svartivk, J. (May 1, 1985). A Comprehensive
Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman.
Sinclair, J. (1991). Collins COBUILD Essential English Dictionary. William Collins Sons & Co
Ltd..
Wang, W. (2001). English Lexical Semantics. Zhejiang Education Publishing House.