MAKALAH ENGLISH "THE DIFFERENCE OF INFLECTIONAL AND DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES"

Inflectional morphemes refer to morphemes that do not change category and do not create new lexemes, but rather change the form of lexemes so that they fit into different grammatical contexts or meanings. Grammatical contexts can include information about number (singular and plural), person (first, second, third), tense (past and present), etc.20 There are many types of inflectional morphemes:

1. Inflectional morphemes (…s/…es) to show plural inflection, such as in books (additional -s), boxes (additional –es).

2. Inflectional morphemes (…’s/ ...s’) to show possessive inflection, such as in John’s hat (additional ‘s), Charles’ son (additional s’).

3. Inflectional morphemes (…..ing) to show progressive inflection, such as in is studying, am eating, are playing (additional ….ing).

4. Inflectional morphemes (…ed) to show past tense inflection, such as in worked, washed (additional –ed). 20Rochelle Lieber, Introducing Morphology, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009),

5. Inflectional morphemes (…s/…es) to show third person singular inflection, such as in drinks (additional –s), goes (additional es).

6. Inflectional morphemes (…er) to show comparative inflection, such as in smarter, faster (additional –er).

7. Inflectional morphemes (…est) to show superlative inflection, such as in largest (additional –est).

8. Inflectional morphemes (…th) to show ordinal inflection, such as in sixth, seventh (additional –th).

b. Derivational Morphemes

Derivational morphemes are a type of bound morphemes which generate or create new words by either changing the class of word or forming new words.21 Derivational morphemes are used to make new words in the language and are often used to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem.22 There are many kinds of derivational morphemes, for example:

1. Noun Affix

Noun affix is an affix that forms noun. For example:

· age forms noun breakage from verb break.

Adjective Affix . Adjective affix is an affix that forms adjective. For example:

· ful forms adjective careful from verb care.

· less forms adjective fruitless from noun fruit.

2. Verb Affix

Verb affix is an affix that forms verb. For example: –en forms verb brighten from adjective bright. ize forms verb liquidize from noun liquid. From the study above, it can be concluded that inflectional morphemes are different from derivational morphemes.

Inflectional morphemes change grammatical function, such as plural, past tense, possessive, etc. On the contrary, derivational morphemes generally change meaning or part of speech. For the detail explanation about the differences between inflectional and derivational morphemes.

D. Literature Review

The study of morpheme is an interesting endeavour in the sense that it is an attempt to study how humans come about word usage which is the foundation of any human language. It is also very interesting to note that morphemes form the foundation of words even though they themselves do not tell us meaning, but they have a way of contributing to meaning when they are used in specific contexts. This is because they are made up of phonemes which in turn combine to give words.7 The morpheme is necessary to make the sentence grammatically correct.8 So that’s why, it is important to learn morphemes in order that we can master English skill.

Morpheme comes from the Greek, “morphe” that is form or shape. Morphemes can be thought of as minimal units of morphology.9 A Morpheme is the smallest unit of a language

system which has meaning.10 For example: the word reopened in the sentence the police reopened the investigation consists of three morphemes. They are open, re-, and –ed.

There are two types of morphemes:

1. Free Morphems

2. Bound Morphemes

3. Lexical Morphemes

4. Functional Morphemes

5. Prefix

6. Suffix

7. Inflectional Morphemes and Derivational Morphemes

CHAPTER II

FINDINGS

A. Definition Affixes

An affix (in modern sense) is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixation is, thus, the linguistic process speakers use to form different words by adding morphemes (affixes) at the beginning (prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words.

Example of affixes

Affix	Contoh Affix	Contoh Kata (Affix + root)
Prefix	a-, en-, be-, dis-, un-	along, enlarge, befriend, dislike, unhappy
Suffix	-acy, -al, -ate, -hood, -ion	supremacy, emotional, passionate, childhood, prescription
Infix	-s	cupsful, passers-by, sons-in-law (bentuk jamak dari cupful, passer-by dan son-in-law)

B. Positional categories of affixes

Affixes are divided into plenty of categories, depending on their position with reference to the stem. Prefix and suffix are extremely common terms. Infix and circumfix are less so, as they are not important in European languages. The other terms are uncommon.

Categories of affixes
Affix	Example	Schema	Description
Prefix	un-do	prefix-stem	Appears before the stem
Suffix/postfix	look-ing	stem-suffix	Appears after the stem
Suffixoid/semi-suffix	cat-like	stem-suffixoid	Appears after the stem, but is only partially bound to it
Infix	Minne⟨flippin'⟩sota	st⟨infix⟩em	Appears within a stem — common in Borneo-Philippines languages
Circumfix	en⟩light⟨en	circumfix⟩stem⟨circumfix	One portion appears before the stem, the other after
Interfix	speed-o-meter	stem_a-interfix-stem_b	Links two stems together in a compound
Duplifix	money~shmoney	stem~duplifix	Incorporates a reduplicated portion of a stem (may occur before, after, or within the stem)
Transfix	Maltese: k⟨i⟩t⟨e⟩b "he wrote" (compare root ktb "write")	s⟨transfix⟩te⟨transfix⟩m	A discontinuous affix that interleaves within a discontinuous stem
Simulfix	mouse → mice	stem\simulfix	Changes a segment of a stem
Suprafix	produce (noun) produce (verb)	stem\suprafix	Changes a suprasegmental feature of a stem
Disfix	Alabama: tipli "break up" (compare root tipasli "break")	st⟩disfix⟨m	The elision of a portion of a stem

C. Orthographic affixes

In orthography, the terms for affixes may be used for the smaller elements of conjunct characters. For example, Maya glyphs are generally compounds of a main sign and smaller affixes joined at its margins. These are called prefixes, superfixes, postfixes, and subfixes according to their position to the left, on top, to the right, or at the bottom of the main glyph. A small glyph placed inside another is called an infix.^[3] Similar terminology is found with the conjunct consonants of the Indic alphabets. For example, the Tibetan alphabet utilizes prefix, suffix, superfix, and subfix consonant letters.

D. Definition Inflectional Affixes

Inflection is often defined as a type of affix that distinguishes grammatical forms of the same lexeme. When we talk of lexemes in linguistics we’re usually referring to the fact that there are some word forms that differ only in their inflectional properties. So go and went are different word forms, but they belong to the same lexeme, whereas go and walk belong to different lexemes. With that in mind, let’s turn to an example of inflection. The English plural suffix -s in book-s is an inflectional suffix because it distinguishes the plural form books from the singular form book. Books and book are thus different grammatical forms of the same lexeme.

E. Definition Derivational Affixes

Derivation refers to an affix that indicates a change of grammatical category. Take for example the word person-al. The suffix -al does not distinguish between grammatical forms of the same lexeme: person and personal are different lexemes, and personal belongs to a different word class (i.e. it is an adjective) from person (which is obviously a noun).

F. The difference of Inflectional and Dericational Affixes

Inflection and derivation are the two main processes of word formation. They are two kinds of morphosyntactic operation.

a. Inflectional affixes

produce a new word from of an existing lexeme a word i.e. they do not create a new entry in one's mental lexicon. For example, the noun "students" can be produced by adding the plural -s, a inflectional suffix, to the base "student". The plural -s indicates that more than one student is concerned, but it does neither change the grammatical category of the word nor does it produce a new lexeme. Additionally to number, inflectional affixes give grammatical information in terms of tense, case and gender.

b. Derivational affixes

in contrast, are capable of creating a new lexeme from a base. Therefore, they can provide a more complex change. On the one hand, a derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of the word. A derivational suffix like "-ly" can transform an adjective into an adverb, the suffix "-ment" is often used to produce a noun. On the other hand, we can change the meaning of a word without changing its category. If we add the derivational prefix "un-" to the adjective "happy", we receive the adjective "unhappy". The word remains an adjective while the meaning changes completely.

There are several factors which indicate whether an affix is derivational or inflectional. For one, it is essential to keep in mind that any prefixes in the English language are derivational. In her book on Morphology from 1988, Laurie Bauer summarizes the factors which can help you to differentiate between inflectional and derivational affixes:

a. If an affix changes the part of speech of the base, it is derivational. Affixes which do not change the part of speech of the base are usually (though not invariably) inflectional. So form is a noun, formal is an adjective; -al has changed the part of speech; it is thus a derviational affix. Formal is an adjective, formalise is a verb; -ise has changed the part of speech; it is a derviational suffix. Formalise is a verb, formalises is still a verb; -'s' has not changed the part of speech; -'s' is likely to be an inflection affix. Note, however, that while all prefixes in English are derivational, very few of them change the part of speech of the base.

b. Inflectional affixes always have a regular meaning. Derivational affixes may have irregular meaning. If we consider an inflectional affix like the plural 's in word-forms like bicycles, dogs, shoes, tins, trees, and so on, the difference in meaning between the base and the affixed form is always the same: 'more than one'. If, however, we consider the change in meaning caused by a derivational affix like 'age in words like bandage, cleavage, [...] peerage, shortage, spillage, and so on, it is difficult to sort of any fixed change in meaning, or even a small set of meaning changes.

c. As a general rule, if you can add an inflectional affix to one member of a class, you can add it to all members of the class, while with a derviational affix, it is not generally possible to add it to all members. That is, inflectional affixes are fully productive, while derivational affixes are not. For example, you can add -s to any non-modal verb in English to make the 'third person singular of the present indicative', but you cannot add -ation to any non-modal verb to make a noun. [...] We can summarise this criterion in the following way: affixes which show limited productivity with large numbers of gaps are derivational; affixes which are fully productive can be either inflectional or derivational." (Bauer 1988, 12f.)

d. Compare: Inflection and derivation

Inflectional operations create forms that are fully grounded and able to be integrated into discourse, whereas derivational operations create stems that are not necessarily fully grounded and which may still require inflectional operations before they can be integrated into discourse.

	Inflectional operations	Derivational operations
Lexical category	Do not change the lexical category of the word.	Often change the lexical category of the word
Location	Tend to occur outside derivational affixes.	Tend to occur next to the root
Type of meaning	Contribute syntactically conditioned information, such as number, gender, or aspect.	Contribute lexical meaning
Affixes used	Occur with all or most members of a class of stems.	Are restricted to some, but not all members of a class of stems
Productivity	May be used to coin new words of the same type.	May eventually lose their meaning and usually cannot be used to coin new terms
Grounding	Create forms that are fully-grounded and able to be integrated into discourse.	Create forms that are not necessarily fully grounded and may require inflectional operations before they can be integrated into discourse

Inflection versus derivation is more a continuum than a strict distinction. Some operations fall in between the prototypical extremes. Operations tend to migrate diachronically from inflection to derivation. (Very rarely do they migrate in the opposite direction).

In the study of Morphology, which is concerned with the structure of words, there has traditionally been a distinction drawn between two types of affixes, inflectional and derivational. An affix is basically what your traditional Latin or German grammars would have called an ‘ending’, though the term is more general, as it can refer to bits of words that come at the beginning (a prefix), or in the middle (an infix) or at the end (suffix) etc.

That’s all well and good, but unfortunately things don’t stop there. On closer inspection it becomes clear that there are significant problems with the above definitions. First, they come with theoretical assumptions, that is, an a priori distinction between lexemes and word forms. There are theoretical implications here, as lexemes are considered to be those linguistic tokens which are stored individually in each person’s lexicon or ‘mental dictionary’, whereas anything to do with grammar is traditionally considered not to be stored there. More problematic, however, is that many affixes cannot neatly be identified as either inflection or derivation. Some seem more inflection-like than others but have derivation-like qualities too, and vice versa. This is problematic for people who believe in a dichotomous dual mechanism model, i.e. who think that grammatical information and lexical information are stored in separate components of the overall grammar.

Haspelmath (2002) discusses several more distinctions between inflection and derivation, building on the narrow definitions given above. He groups the distinctions into two categories, ‘all-or-nothing’ and ‘more-or-less’ criteria. That is, in his view, the ‘all-or-nothing’ criteria unambiguously distinguish inflection from derivation, whereas the ‘more-or-less’ do so to a lesser extent. I won’t go through every criterion as that would be tedious, but you’ll soon get a sense that there are problems with pretty much all of them.

His first ‘all-or-nothing’ criterion is basically the one we used to define our terms at the beginning: derivation indicates a change of category, whereas inflection does not. However, consider the German past participle gesungen, (‘sung’). On first glance this seems to be an example of bog-standard inflection, The circumfix ge- -en indicates that gesungen is a different grammatical form of the lexeme singen (‘to sing’) from, say, singst (‘you (sg) sing’). They are all the same category, however, as they are all verbs. However, gesungen can change category when it functions as an attributive adjective, as in (1):

1. Ein gesungen-es Lied

A sing.PP-NOM song

‘A song that is sung’

In this case, then, an example of what appears to be inflection can also change category.

Haspelmath’s (2002) third criterion is that of obligatoriness. The saying goes that inflection is ‘obligatory’, but derivation is not. For example, in (2), the right kind of inflection must be present for the sentence to be grammatical:

2. They have *sing/*sings/*sang/sung.

By contrast, derivation is never obligatory in this sense, and is determined by syntactic context. However, some examples of inflection are not obligatory in the sense described above either. For example, the concept of number is ultimately the speaker’s choice: she can decide whether she wishes to utter the form book or books based on the discourse context. Because of this, Booij (1996) distinguishes between two types of inflection, inherent and contextual. Inherent inflection is the kind of inflection which is determined by the information a speaker wishes to convey, like the concept of number. Contextual inflection is determined by the syntactic context, as in (2). Keep this distinction in mind, we’ll come back to it!

In addition, there are problems with all of Haspelmath’s (2002) further ‘more-or-less’ criteria. I’ll take three of them here, but I’ll cover them quickly.

1. Inflection is found further from the base than derivation

Example: in personalities we have the base person, then the derivational suffixes -al and -ity before we get the inflectional suffix -s. You don’t get, e.g. *person-s-al-ity

Problem: Affect-ed-ness has the opposite ordering (i.e. inflectional suffix -ed is closer to the base than the derivational suffix -ness).

2. Inflectional forms share the same concept as the base, derivational forms do not.

Example: person-s has same concept as person, but person-al does not.

Problem: It’s very vague! What is a ‘concept’? What about examples like

German Kerl-chen (‘little tyke’)? -chen is usually considered to be an inflectional suffix, but Kerl doesn’t mean ‘tyke’, it means ‘bloke’. There is surely a change in concept here?

3. Inflection is semantically more regular (i.e. less idiomatic) than derivation.

Example: inflectional suffixes like -s and -ed indicate obvious semantic content like ‘plural’ and ‘past tense’, but it’s not always clear what derivational suffixes like -al actually represent semantically. Derivation, such as in the Russian dnev-nik (‘diary’, lit. ‘day-book’) is more idiomatic in meaning (i.e. you can’t work out its meaning from the sum of its parts).

Problem: What about inflectional forms like sand-s, which is idiomatic in meaning? (i.e. sands does not equate with the plural of sand in the same way that books does with book.)

So, why does this matter? I alluded to the problem above. Basically, many linguists (e.g. Perlmutter (1988)) are keen to hold to a dichotomous approach to grammatical and lexical components in terms of how linguistic information is stored in the brain. They want inflection and derivation to be distinct in a speaker’s linguistic competence in accordance with the dual mechanism model, with derivation occurring in the lexicon and inflection occurring subsequent to syntactic operations. But the natural language data seem to indicate that the distinction between inflection and derivation is somewhat fuzzier.

So how do people get around it? There are several ways, but I’ll outline two of them here. The first is known as the Continuum approach, advanced by scholars such as Bybee (1985). As the name suggests, this approach entails that there is a continuum between inflection and derivation. Take a look at the following table, adapted from Haspelmath (2002:79) (sorry it’s so small):

In the descending rows, the different types of inflectional/derivational affixes can be placed in an order according to how prototypically inflectional or derivational they are. For example, the -s plural suffix is prototypically more inflectional than the German diminutive suffix -chen.

But this approach can’t account for the order preference of base-derivation-inflection, which is one of the properties we discussed above. In addition, it carries with it great theoretical implications, namely that the grammar and the lexicon form a continuum. This is not the place to get into this debate, but I think there are good reasons for keeping the two distinct.

Booij (1996; 2007) comes up with a tri-partite approach to get around this problem, and it goes back to the distinction made above between inherent and contextual inflection. His approach is neat, because it attempts to account for the fuzziness of the inflection/derivation boundary while maintaining a distinction between the grammar and the lexicon. By dividing inflection/derivation phenomena into three rather than two (so derivation plus the two different types of inflection), we can account for some of the problematic phenomena we discussed above. For example, ‘inherent’ inflection can account for lack of obligatoriness in inflection when this occurs, as well as accounting for the occasional base-inflection-derivation order, when that occurs. ‘Contextual’ inflection takes care of obligatory inflection and the usual ordering of base-derivation-inflection.

There’s more to be said on this: can Booij’s tripartite approach really explain why, for example, the ordering base-derivation-inflection is so much more common than the other ordering? What about the problems with inflection that can change category such as in ein gesungenes Lied? Nevertheless, we’ve seen that a sharp distinction between inflection and derivation cannot be drawn, which has consequences for a dichotomy approach to the grammar. This dichotomy can be maintained if we follow Booij’s distinction of contextual versus inherent inflection.

CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A. Conclusion

1. Affixes

Affixes are the new word created by derivational (processing of generation word) or inflectional (variation of word)

2. Derivational Affixes