§2 Basic concepts in inflectional morphology^265Lexical morphology deals with the vertical dimension in [I]: the structure of, and
relation between, the different lexical bases. In this example, the noun base friend is
morphologically simple, while the adjective base friendly is formed from it by the
addition of ·ly.
The reason we treat the relation between the formsfriendly,fr iendlier,friendliest
differently from that between friendly and friend is that there are rules of syntax
that determine where the various inflectional forms of a lexeme may or must appear.
Suppose, for example, that we want to insert the noun lexemefriend in the contexts
shown in [2i] and the adjective lexemefriendly in those shown in [2ii]:[^2 ] i a. She 's been a good __.
ii a. He 's than his brother.b. Their own car was a vw.
b. He 's the __ of them all.If you want to use friend to fill the gaps in [i], you must use the plain singular form
friend in [ia], and you must use a genitive form in lib] - either singular (their
friend's own car) or plural (theirfriends' own car). And if you want to fill the blanks
in [ii] withfriendly, you need the comparative formfriendlier in [a] and the superla
tive form friendliest in [b] - no other choices are allowed.
These rules apply quite generally: context [ia] requires the plain singular form of
any noun you might want to substitute for the blank; rib] needs a genitive, [iia]
needs a comparative, and [iib] needs a superlative.
But there is no rule of syntax saying that an adjective appearing in [ii] must be
formed from a noun, in the way that the base friendly is formed from friend. The
blanks in [iia-b] could just as well be filled by older and oldest, respectively, forms
whose lexical base is morphologically simple, not formed from anything else.
Nor is there a rule saying that the lexical base of nouns filling the blanks in [i]
must be morphologically simple, like friend. We could fill the blank in [ia], for
example, with teacher (which is derived from the verb teach by adding ·er). It
doesn't matter how the lexical base of the lexeme is made up internally. All that
matters is whether you have picked a syntactically admissible inflectional form of
the lexeme you decide on.
So, to summarise, inflectional morphology ties in mainly with syntax, while
lexical morphology is mainly relevant to the content of the dictionary. Inflectional
forms matter for rules of syntax, whereas lexical morphology relates only to the
structure of the words in the dictionary and the formation of new words added to it.
Most of this chapter will concern inflection, in keeping with the focus throughout
the book. Our main concern is with the syntax of English, not the dictionary -
explaining how sentences are built rather than how lexemes are constructed or
related to each other.
2 Basic concepts in inflectional morphology
In this section we introduce the basic concepts and terminology needed
in the description of English inflection.