A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

§ 7.1 The structure of words^281

Inflectional and non-inflectional marking of grade

The comparative and superlative categories differ from those discussed in §§4-5
above in that they can be marked by the separate words more and most as well as by
means of inflection. Some lexemes have only inflectional comparatives and superla­
tives, others have only the non-inflectional type, while others accept both. These
comparative examples illustrate:

[28] INFLECTIONAL COMPARATIVE

i INFLECTIONAL ONLY This is better than that.

ii NON-INFLECTIONAL ONLY *This is use fuller than that.

iii EITHER TYPE This is gentler than that.

NON-INFLECTIONAL COMPARATIVE

*This is more good than that.

This is more useful than that.

This is more gentle than that.

Very few lexemes accept only the inflectional type. The clearest examples are the

determinative few from [26] and the irregular lexemes given in [2 7].

The ·ly suffix is never compatible with grade inflection: neither *clearlier nor

*clearerly is possible. That means grade for ·ly adverbs must always be

expressed in the non-inflectional way (You should speak more clearly).

Lexemes with monosyllabic bases nearly always prefer the inflectional type,

but with some such as fa ke, ill, right, and wrong the inflected forms are very

rare.

Adjectives with two-syllable bases accept non-inflectional grade marking, but

inflected forms are often not available, especially for the ones that do not have

final stress. Bases of this kind formed with 'y do take inflection (sticky, stickier,

stickiest), but examples of adjectives that do not accept inflection include brutish,

careful, legal, jealous, public, and others formed with the suffixes ·ish, jul, ·al,

'ous, and ·ic.

7 Lexical morphology

Lexical morphology is concerned with the formation and structure of
the lexical bases of lexemes. It is complementary with inflectional morphology: it
deals with those aspects of the formation and structure of words that are NOT a mat­
ter of inflection.

7.1 The structure of words

Words may be morphologically complex or simple:

[29] COMPLEX WORD:

ii SIMPLE WORD:

a word that can be analysed into a sequence of

smaller morphological units, such as un· usual,

gentle·man·ly, luck·y

a word that is not complex, such as usual, gentle,

man.luck