5 Morphology and Word Formation key concepts

part 
partial 
/t/ 

/S/
face 
facial 
/s/ 

/S/

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Delahunty and Garvey 
 
130
seize 
seizure 
/z/ 

/Z/
remit
remission 
/t/ 

/S/
In a multi-syllabic word with a stressed tense vowel, the palatalization 
may be accompanied by a laxing of that vowel:
(7) 
collide 
collision 
/d/ 

/Z/ /aI/  /I/
elide 
elision 
/d/ 

/Z/ /aI/  /I/
Sometimes the addition of a derivational affix requires a change in the 
stress pattern, with consequential changes in the pronunciations of the vow-
els. In most cases an unstressed vowel is pronounced as schwa:
(8) telegraph telegraphy

regal
regalia
tutor
tutorial
In still other cases we find suffixing, stress migration with change of vow-
el quality, and change of consonant:
(9) approve
approbation /u/ 

/@/ /v/ 

/b/
Additionally, English allows us to change a word’s part of speech without 
any change of form. As a result, identical forms may belong to different 
parts of speech, e.g., saw the noun and saw the verb:
(10) a. This saw is too dull. (noun)
b. Don’t saw that board. (verb)
Other examples include hit, buy, dust, autograph, brown-bag, which can all 
be both verbs and nouns. Change of part of speech without any correspond-
ing formal change is called conversion (also functional shift or zero deriva-
tion
). There is more on this topic in our chapter on Major Parts of Speech.
Exercise
1. Write each of the example words in (3)-(9) in a phonemic notation.

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Morphology and Word Formation
2. True or False?
a. Every English word contains at least one root.
b. In English, derivational morphemes occur before inflectional mor-
phemes.
c. In English, derivational suffixes regularly occur before inflection-
al suffixes.
d. In English, a few inflectional morphemes can occur as prefixes.
e. Every root in English is a free morpheme (i.e., there is no such 
thing as a bound root.) (Hint: consider receive, deceive, con-
ceive, perceive.
)
f. In English, some morphemes have both a free and a bound al-
lomorph. (Hint: consider able, ability; France, Franco-.)
3. a. In a broad phonetic (phonemic) transcription, transcribe the 
sounds represented by the bolded letters in