Conceptos Clave de Morfología Lingüística: Derivación, Flexión y Perspectivas

Morphology

Refers to the study of internal structures of words (syntagmatic perspective) and of the systematic form-meaning correspondences between words (pragmatic perspective). It is a set of correspondence rules between forms and meaning between words.

• Deals with both the form and the meaning of linguistic expressions.

Perspectives in Morphology

Syntactic Perspective

Morpheme-based morphology. (The / And : room = the first 2 options are syntactically related). They are always at the same level.

Pragmatic Perspective

A new word is formed by replacing 1 constituent with another. (My / The : house = Between the first 2 options you must choose only 1).

Properties of Morphology

The main function is to expand the set of available words. It also serves to get a better understanding of the nature of linguistic rules and the organization of the grammar.

Inflection

Rules for computing the different forms of lexemes. Its function is to make forms of lexemes. They convey grammatical meaning, so they don’t change the meaning of the word and always go at the end of the word.

• This process encodes grammatical categories such as case, tense, person, and plural (e.g., balls).

Derivation

They are prefixes, infixes, and suffixes that do change the meaning of a word and are part of word formation or lexeme formation (e.g., -ee, -er). At either end of the base form, derivational suffixes can occur inside other derivational suffixes (e.g., UN-TRUTH-FUL-NESS).

Derivational suffixes can also change the category of the base form (e.g., use [noun] - useless [adjective]).

Example: Sing – er – s

• Derivational suffixes are nearer the root.
• Inflectional suffixes are on the outside.

Characteristics of Derivation

• Encodes lexical meaning: Work – Worker
• Is not syntactically relevant: Suffixes here are not relevant in syntax.
• Can occur inside derivation: un-truth-ful-ness
• Often changes the part of speech: Use – Useless (Adjective out of a noun).
• Is often semantically opaque: The meaning of the derived word cannot be inferred (e.g., Inter – view).
• Is often restricted in its productivity: Shows restrictions to some possible combinations (e.g., Walk - Walkive).