Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Exercise 7

un+happi+est
This word consists of three morphemes. The basic stem is the adjective happy. The
derivational morpheme un- is added to the stem. The newly formed complex stem is
still an adjective. Derivational morphemes can change the syntactic category of the
basic stem (happi-ly), but they do not necessarily do so. In this case no categorical
change occurred. However, the meaning of the expression has changed, which is not
something inflectional morphemes can do. Inflectional morphemes only have a
grammatical function. Hence the prefix is derivational. The superlative suffix, as we
have already seen is inflectional.

fail+(e)d
The stem is a verb. Verbs can be marked for tense. Tense is a grammatical category
associated with inflection, a functional head. Tense specifies that time of the event
encoded in the VP (verb and its arguments), hence interacts with construction outside
the word it is attached to. It is an inflectional morpheme.

un+employ+ment
The verbal root is employ. The prefix un- as we have already seen is derivational
and can be combined with adjectives as in (iii) and verbs (un-do). -ment is a
derivational suffix. It converts the verbal stem into a nominal stem. Only derivational
morphemes can have this effect.

want+s
The stem is a verb to which the 3rd. person singular simple present tense suffix is
attached. The agreement marker is inflectional as it indicates that the lexical head of
the subject DP is a 3rd. person singular noun.

eat+able
The verbal stem eat is combined with the derivational suffix -able, which converts
the verbal stem into an adjective.

quick+ly
Quick is an adjective, which is combined with the suffix -ly. This process is very
productive and the resulting structure is an adverb. A ccording to traditional analyses
the -ly morpheme is derivational since it changes the grammatical category of the word
from adjective to adverb, however, in the present approach it has been argued that
adjectives and adverbs belong to the same word class having the features [-F, +N, +V].
This means that the -ly morpheme is to be analysed as an inflectional morpheme,
which appears when the given word it attaches to occupies a certain position in the
structure. E.g. the -s ending on verbs appears when the subject is third person singular.
The -ly morpheme appears on the adjective e.g. when it is used to modify a verb.