5 Morphology and Word Formation key concepts

Exercise
1. Can you think of a reliable way to distinguish the past tense and past 
participle of a verb, regardless of whether it is regular or irregular? 
(Hint: think of words or classes of words that often occur with these 
forms.)
2. Check a reference grammar for further examples of irregular inflec-
tions. Also, for an excellent discussion of this and related issues, read 
Pinker (1999). 
3. From the following words, determine the three distinct pronuncia-
tions or allomorphs of the past tense morpheme {-ed}: towed, sighed, 
tapped, tabbed, tossed, buzzed, raided.
Specify the phonological envi-
ronment in which each allomorph occurs. (Hints: look at the last sound 
of the word to which the morpheme is added and think of the allo-
morphs of the plural morpheme discussed earlier.)
4. Pinker (1999) notes that children learning English as their native 
language sometimes produce forms like goed and readed. Why do you 
think they do this?
5. Would you expect adult non-native learners of English to produce 

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Morphology and Word Formation
forms similar to those of native speaking children? What further dif-
ficulties might non-native speakers have that native English-speaking 
children might not have? (Hints: think of the frequency of irregular 
forms in English and think of your own experience in learning a second 
language.)
English derivational morphology
Derivation
is the process of creating separate but morphologically related 
words. Typically, but not always, it involves one or more changes in form. It 
can involve prefixing, as in resaw, and suffixing, as in sawing, sawer, sawable.
Another type of derivation, while not visible, is at least audible. It in-
volves a change in the position of the primary stress in a word. Compare:
(3) permit (noun)
permit (verb)
contact (noun)
contact (verb)
perfect (adj.)
perfect (verb)
convert (noun)
convert (verb)
In some derivationally related word pairs, only a feature of the final con-
sonant changes, usually its voicing:
(4) 
advice 
advise 
/s/ 

/z/
belief
believe
/f/  /v/
mouth 
mouthe 
/T/  //
breath
breathe
/T/  //
In some cases adding a derivational morpheme induces a change in a 
stressed vowel:
(5) 
divine 
divinity 
/aI/  /I/
profane
profanity 
/e/  //
serene
serenity
/i/  /E/
In other cases, the addition of a suffix triggers a change in the final con-
sonant of the root. For example, an alveolar consonant becomes palatal with 
the same voicing value:
(6)