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    Inflection and Derivation Properties

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    saif
    Inflection involves changing a word's form to express grammatical properties like number, tense, and case without changing the word's syntactic category or core meaning, while derivation involves attaching affixes that can change a word's syntactic category or add new semantic content. Derivational affixes have more arbitrary constraints on application and are more likely to induce changes to the base word's form and class than inflectional affixes. In general, inflection is a more productive and systematic process than derivation.

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    Inflection and Derivation Properties

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    saif
    175 views13 pages
    Inflection involves changing a word's form to express grammatical properties like number, tense, and case without changing the word's syntactic category or core meaning, while derivation involves attaching affixes that can change a word's syntactic category or add new semantic content. Derivational affixes have more arbitrary constraints on application and are more likely to induce changes to the base word's form and class than inflectional affixes. In general, inflection is a more productive and systematic process than derivation.

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    Inflection involves changing a word's form to express grammatical properties like number, tense, and case without changing the word's syntactic category or core meaning, while derivation involves attaching affixes that can change a word's syntactic category or add new semantic content. Derivational affixes have more arbitrary constraints on application and are more likely to induce changes to the base word's form and class than inflectional affixes. In general, inflection is a more productive and systematic process than derivation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    175 views13 pages

    Inflection and Derivation Properties

    Uploaded by

    saif
    Inflection involves changing a word's form to express grammatical properties like number, tense, and case without changing the word's syntactic category or core meaning, while derivation involves attaching affixes that can change a word's syntactic category or add new semantic content. Derivational affixes have more arbitrary constraints on application and are more likely to induce changes to the base word's form and class than inflectional affixes. In general, inflection is a more productive and systematic process than derivation.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 13

    Inflection and Derivation

    Properties

    Supervised By: Asst. Prof. Abbas Lutfi (PhD)


    Presentation By : M. A. Candidate Ghadeer Zeyad Tariq
    Summaries of differences between
    inflection and derivation
    1- Relevance to syntax
    Derivation typically, but not always, induces a
    change in syntactic category.
    E.g. The verb institute forms a noun institution
    by suffixation of -ion and from the noun
    institution we can form the adjective
    institutional.
    On the other hand, inflection cannot cause a word
    to change its syntactic category since it is inflected
    into new forms of the same word such as visiting,
    visits, visited from the verb visit.
    2- Obligatoriness of expression
    -Inflectional features are obligatorily expressed on all
    applicable word forms.
    E.g. English Past tense –ed applies to verbs to indicate the
    meaning of a past action as in stay stayed.

    -Derivational meanings are not obligatorily expressed.


    E.g. The English suffix –er applies to verbs to derive nouns
    with the meaning of ‘agent’; e.g. from the verb drink we
    derive the noun drinker. But it is not the case that all
    nouns must express an
    agentive meaning.
    3- Limitations on application
    -Inflectional values can be applied to their base without
    arbitrary limitations.
    E.g. progressive –ing applies to all verbs.

    -Derivational formations may be limited in an


    arbitrary way.
    E.g. English has female nouns in -ess such as authoress,
    heiress, priestess, but it is not possible to say *professoress
    ‘female professor’, *presidentess ‘female president’, and so on.

    Thus, Inflection more productive than derivation.


    4- Same concept as base
    -Inflected word-forms express the same concept as the
    base.
    E.g. the same concept is expressed in go and goes.

    -Derived lexemes express a new concept.


    E.g. at one point in the history of English the plural of
    brother was brethren. But at a later stage, brethren took
    on the specialized meaning of members of a Christian
    fellowship, and came to be interpreted as a separate
    lexeme. A new plural (brothers) was created to pair with
    brother in the meaning of male sibling.
    5- Abstractness
    -Inflectional values express a relatively abstract
    meaning.
    E.g. -'s (possessive case), -(e)s (plural) both has
    an abstract meaning to express grammatical
    features.
    -Derivational meanings are relatively concrete.
    E.g. act (n.) –ive active (adj.)
    active (adj.) –ate activate (v.)
    6- Meaning compositionality
    -Inflected word-forms have compositional meaning.
    Inflectional values usually make a predictable semantic
    contribution to their base.
    E.g. –(e) S (plural) always refer to a plural noun.

    -Derived lexemes have non-compositional meaning.


    {ize} attaches to a noun and turns it into a verb:
    rubberize.
    {ize} also attaches to an adjective and turns it into a
    verb: normalize.
    7- Position relative to base
    -Inflection is expressed at the periphery of
    words while derivation is expressed close to the
    root.

    a . king-dom-s >> root – status (D) – plural (I)


    b. real-ize-d >> root – factitive (D) – past tense (I)
    c. luck-i-er >> root – proprietive (D) – comparative (I)
    8- Base allomorphy
    -Inflection induces less base allomorphy;
    derivation induces more base allomorphy.

    Root Inflected Derived


    Form Form
    destroy destroy-ed destruc-tion

    broad broad-er bread-th


    9- Word-class change
    -Inflection does not change the word-class of
    the base.
    E.g. Drive (v.) Driving (v.)

    -Derivational affixes may change the word-class


    of the base.
    E.g. Fail (v.) Failure (n.)
    10- Cumulative expression
    -Inflectional values may be expressed cumulatively;
    derivational meanings are not expressed cumulatively.
    Latin insulaˉrum ‘of the islands’, where the suffix
    -aˉrum expresses both ‘genitive’ and ‘plural’.
    -Derivational meanings can sometimes be
    iterated.
    Dutch –ster ‘agent’ and ‘female’.
    11- Iteration
    -Inflectional values cannot be iterated.
    E.g. we don’t say *cat-s-es but ‘a set of cats’,
    and, we don’t say *didded but ‘had done’.
    -Derivational meanings can sometimes be
    iterated.
    E.g. post-post-modern.

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