UNIT 11 WORDS AND THEIR ELEMENTS

Structure

Objectives
Introduction
Identifying the Parts of a Word
1 1.2.1 The Criteria
1 1.2.2 Morphemes
11.2.3 Free Morphemes and Bound Morphemes
11.2.4 Affixes, Stems and Roots
How are Morphemes Combined into Words?
Let Us Sum Up
Key Words
Some Useful Books
Answers

11.0 OBJECTIVES

At the end of this unit, you should be able to

identify morphemes,
identify the kinds of information we learn when we learn a word
identify the criteria for defining a word,
analyse the structure of complex and compound words,
identify prefixes, suffixes, roots and stems, and
formulate rules for the combination of morphemes into words on the basis
of some given examples of complex words.

11.1 INTRODUCTION

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words.

When we think of a human language, we naturally think of words to be the

most fundamental units of phrases, clauses and sentences. Our ability to
understand and analyse words in a language assumes the knowledge about
various properties that words have. When we come across the words read and
reader, for example, we at once feel that these two words are somehow related
and that the meaning of read must also be part of the meaning of reader. We
are not wrong for when we look up a dictionary, we find that a reader is
someone who reads. That read and reader are structurally related is one kind
of information about words. Besides this, let's first find out the kinds of
information we have learnt when we learn a word.

1. Phonetic/phonologicaI information

For every word that we know, we know how it is pronounced; in other words,
every word is associated with a certain sequence of sounds. A dictionary
encodes this information by giving phonetic symbols within slanting brackets
for the pronunciation of a word, e.g. /bet/ shows the pronunciation of the word
bet.
 I
~orphology- 2. Morphological Information

Every word that we have learned has its internal structure, i.e.,a word such as
reads is made of read and -s, or a word such as invitation is made of invite
and -ation.

3. Grammatical Information
, Every word fits into a definite slot in the structure of phrases, clauses, and
sentences. We know that my can come before a noun and not before an article,
e.g. This is my bag and not* this is my a bag. We know whether a word is a
noun or adjective or a verb and the structures that they will occur in.

4. Meaning
For every word we know what it means, e.g, we know that polite is a word
used to mean 'well behaved' ,whereas rude is its opposite in meaning.

5. Collocations, Idioms, etc

We know that certain words occur with certain other words and there an
patterns of co-occurrence of words, e.g, we generally say a handsome man but
not a handsome woman. These are called collocations. We also know that
combinations of certain words have a meaning which is not the sum of the
meaning of separate words but a completely new meaning, e.g, an apple of
one's eye does not refer to an apple but to someone very dear.
'\
When we say we know a word, it is implied that we also know all or most of
the above kinds of information about the word. Now the aim of a dictionary is
also to represent or at least try to represent all these kinds of information. For
a language learner, then, a dictionary is a valuable resource of knowledge
pertaining to different aspects of a word. In the course of these units we shall
be referring to the use of a dictionary when we talk about the structure of
words.
As we are concerned with morphology of words, we shall here concentrate on
the inner structure of words. We say that something has structure when we can
divide it into parts and show the relationship between the parts. It is true that
sometimes a word is made up of a single element and cannot be divided into
parts, but many words are there in the following sentence which can be easily
divided into parts:
Whenever she has time, Suman helps her younger brothers with their
homework.

whenever = when + ever

helps = help +s
younger = young+ er
brothers = brother +s
homework = home + work

In the words given above, the structure is quite simple, since each word is
made up of only two parts. But some words can have many more parts. For
example, the following word consists of five parts:
ungentlemanliness: un+gentle+man+li+ness.
How do we decide how many parts a word has? This is one of the important Words ant1 Their
questions of morphology. Other important questions are: Elements

What are the criteria for defining what a word is?

How do the parts combine with each other?
Can they combine in any order, or are there some rules for their
combination?
These are the questions that we shall discuss in the next two sections.
-.

11.2 IDENTIFYING THE PARTSOFA WORD -

11.2.1 The Criteria

We have said above that whenever, helps, younger, etc. have two parts each,
whereas ungentlemanliness has five parts. Wow did we decide this? In other
words, what aie the criteria for dividing a word into parts?

In dividing whenever into two parts, we are guided by the fact that bath whrir
and ever occur independently as words. The same also applies to homework:
home and work both occur independently as words. We can, therefore set this
up as the first criterion: whenever a word is made up of two or more parts
which also occur independently as words, we can divide the word into parts
which are identical with the independently occurring words. Thus nevertheless
and newspaperman are both made up ofthree parts, or elements, etc.
But what about words like helps, younger and brothers? They arc not made LIP
of two independently occurring words, so what is our criterion for dividing
them into two parts?

It seems fairly clear that our criterion for dividing them into two parts is that,
though they do not consist of two independently occurring words, they do
consist of two parts which also occur elsewhere. One part occurs as an
independent word (namely, help-, young-, and brother- respectively), while
the other part occurs in similar words in a fairly regular way. For example, the
-s of helps occurs in words like works, sleeps, hits, kicks, etc.; the -er of
younger occurs in words like older, taller, sweeter, longer, and so on; the-s of
brothers occurs in sisters, fathers or mothers and lovers. Some other
considerations are also relevant.

The first consideration is of the independent occurrence of the parts, i.e.

when we divide a word into parts, the parts must be such that they also occur
elsewhere. In isolating one part of the word, we should not be left with another
part which occurs nowhere except in that word. For example, if we isolate the
part -er in brother, sister, father, mother etc., we are left with the portions
broth- sist- fath- and moth- which do not occur anywhere else (i.e. in any other
words). (It should be noted here that when we speak of words and their parts
we are speaking of their spoken forms only and that we should not be
misguided by their written forms, moth-, for example should not be considered
to be the same as morh, the insect. The two are pronounced quite differently.)
On the other hand, if we isolate the -er of younger, taller, older, etc. as a
separate element, we are left with the elements ,young, tall and old, which
occur not only as independent words but also as parts of other words like
youngest, tallest and oldest. This naturally also means that we can identify -
est as another element occurring in words.
Morphology- I The second consideration is that of meaning. In isolating the element -er in
younger, taller and older, we are guided by the fact that these words share a
common clement of meaning. We can describe this common element of
meaning as the 'comparative' element, the element which is also expressed
with some words by 'more' (as in more beautiful). A similar consideration
guides us in dividing the word brothers into the parts brother- and -s. The
element -s carries the meaning 'plural' or 'more than one', and is to be found
in the plural forms of almost all common nouns.
The third consideration is that of grammatical function. It is not always
possible to distinguish grammatical function from meaning. For example, the
plural number is a grammatical function, but it can also be identified as the
meaning 'more than one'. Some words, however, contain elements which are
easier to describe in grammatical terms than in terms of meaning. For example
-s that occurs in helps in our sentence is easier to describe as the third person
singular number inflection of the verb in the present tense. This -s, therefore,
performs a grammatical function of agreement with the subject which is in the
third person and singular number,
Les us now summarize the criteria we have described for identifiing the parts
that form the structure of a word. They are as follows:
i. If a word is wholly made up of two or more smaller words, each
smaller word constitutes a part (i.e. a structural element) of the word,
e.g., when- ahd -ever in whenever, home- add -work in homework.
ii. A word can be divided into two or more parts if the parts are such that
they also occur in other words, e.g., young- and -er in younger, help-
and -s in helps.
iii. A portion of a word can be recognized as constituting a part (or a
structural element) of the word if it carries a clearly recognizable
element of meaning, e.g., brother- and -s in brothers ( d u d ) , young-
and -er in younger (comparative).
iv. A portion of a word can also be recognized as constituting a part of the
word if it performs a particular grammatical function, e.g., -s in helps,
-ing in working.
We can define a 'structural part' of a word as follows:
A portion of a wotd is called a 'structural part' of the word if it also occurs
independently as a word, or it occurs in a number of words with the same
meaning, and/or performs the same grammatical function in every word in
which it occurs.
11.2.2 Morphemes i

We have so far been using the term 'part', 'structural part', 'element', etc to
refer to the constituents of a word. The technical term for a 'structural part' of
a word is 'morpheme'. A morpheme is defined as 'the smallest meaningful
element of a larlguage', or as 'the smallest unit which is grammatically
significant'. Both these definitions are contained in our definition of 'a
structural part' of a word. The additional point to note is that the morpheme is
the smallest part into which a word can be divided. In other words, a
morpheme has no parts.
There is another sense in which morpheme differs from 'a part of a word' as
we have often referred to 'a part of a word' as being 'a portion of a word' with
certain characteristics. A morpheme does not always refer to a portion of a Words and Their
word, though in most cases it is clearly identifiable as a portion. For example, Elements
we can say, without any hesitation, that brothers consists of two morphemes
brother- and -.r. As a grammatical unit, or as a unit of meaning, however, -s is
not actually a morpheme, though it 'represents' a morpheme. The morpheme
it represents is the grammatical unit 'plural number'. This distinction (between
a morpheme and its representation) is necessary at least for two reasons.

I. We mentioned above that in speaking of words and their parts in the

study of morphology we refer generally to their spoken forms. The
spelling does not always represent the spoken forms accurately. For
example, the plural element -s in brother is pronounced /z/(as in zoo),
but in cats it is pronounced Is/ (as in sit) and in horses it is pronounced
/IZ/. (as in is). Which one of these (/z/, /s/ or I1z.f) shall we say is the
plural morpheme? If we identify a morpheme with a portion of the
word everywhere, we have a problem here. If, however, we regard
plural number as an abstract morpheme and the three forms /z/, Is/ and
IZ/as its representations, the problem disappears. We can represent this
information through the following diagram:

ii. Though in a large number of words a morpheme is represented by a

clearly recognizable portion of the word, this is not always so. For
example, the 'plural number' morpheme is not always represented by -
s or - e s in spelling, or /[z/, /zl or Is/ in pronunciation. Some nouns form
their plural in other ways, e.g., man has the plural men, woman has the
plural women, mouse has the plural mice, and so on. In these plural
forms, there is no clearly recognizable portion 6f the word which can
be said to 'be' the plural morpheme. Yet we know that both men and
boys contain the grammatical element 'plural number'. This
grammatical element, or morpheme, is represented by a change in the
vowel sound of the word.

By regarding the morpheme to be an abstract grammatical unit and by

not identifying it with a portion ofthe word, we are able to say that just
as boys is made up of the two morphemes boy + 'pfdil number',
similarly men is also made up of man + plural number. We can extend
the same treatment to nouns which do not change their form at all in
the plural, e.g., sheep (sing.) > sheep (pi.). We can say that sheep (pl.)
is made up of the two mofiemes sheep + 'plural number', where the
morpheme 'plural numbet' has a zero representation.

For these reasons, we shall henceforth regard morphemes as abstract, and shall
not identify them with portions of a word, even if in most cases they actually
happen to be identical (e.g., the morpheme boy and the portion boy- of boys).
To avoid difficulties in exposition, however, we shall highlight this distinction
(between morphemes and their representations) only in those cases where the
two are not identical. In other cases, we shall still speak of the portions as the
morphemes.
Morphology-I 11.2.3 Free Morphemes and Bound Morphemes
In the examples of wot-ds that we cited above, we came across two types of
morphemes: first, those which can occur by themselves as words, e.g., when-
and -ever in whenever, brother- in brothers, help- in helps, -er in younger, -s
in brothers, etc. Morphemes of the first type, which can occur by themselves
as words are called free morphemes; those of the second type, which cannot
occur by themselves as words but must be bound with a free morpheme, are
called bound morphemes.
Let's capture this information thus:

Words are made up of either a single free morpheme, or a free morpheme and
one or more bound morphemes, or two or more free morphemes (with or
without some bound morphemes), or in some rare cases, of two bound
morphemes. A word made up of a single morpheme (e.g. time, brother, table,
with,etc.) is called a simple word; a word made up of one free morpheme and
one or more bound morphemes is called a complex word, and a word made up
of two or more free morphemes is called a compound word (which we shall
look into in a separate section).
The following diagram will present the above information more clearly:

simple Complex Compound

made up of a single made up of a free morpheme made up of two
free morpheme and one or more bound or more free
morphemes morphemes
Here are some exarpples of complex and compound words:

Simple words- allow, wise, desire, kind, short, accept, work

Complex words disallow, unwise, desirable, kindness, shorten,
unacceptable, works
Compound words : bathroom, homework, red-hot, widespread
11.2.4 Affixes, Stems and Roots
Let us analyze the complex words cited above into their constituent free and
bound morphemes:
disallow dis- bound morpheme
-allow free morpheme
desirable desir(e)- free morpheme
-able bound morpheme
kindness kind- free morpheme
-ness bound morpheme
unacceptable un- bound morpheme
accept- free morpheme
-able bound morpheme
works work- free morpheme Words and Their
-s bound morpheme Elements

We notice that all the words have a free morpheme and one or more than one
bound morpheme. We also notice that the bound morphemes are attached, or
affixed, either to the beginning or to the end of the free morpheme. The bound
morphemes are, therefore, said to function as affixes in the structure of a
word. Affixes in English are of two types: prefixes (those which are attached
to the beginning of the free morpheme, e.g., dis-,im-, un-, etc.) and suffixes
(those which are attached to the end of the free morpheme, e.g., -able, -ness,
-s).

Although we have just said that an affix is attached to a free morpheme, this is
not strictly correct. -Take, for example, the word unacceptable. In
unacceptable, the prefix un- is attached not to the free morpheme accept
(since that would give us unaccept, which is not a word of English), but to the
'word' acceptable, which consists of a free morpheme plus a bound
morpheme. We should not, therefore, say that an affix is always attached to a
free morpheme. Strictly speaking, we also cannot say that affixes are attached
to 'words', since 'word' is a vague term and is used loosely to refer to items
without as well as with affixes. We, therefore, require a term to describe the
'portion' to which an affix is attached. The term is stem. Affixes are attached
to stems. For example, in unacceptable, -accetable is the stem to which the
prefix un- is attached, but accept- is the stem to which suffix -able is attached.
A stem can consist of either a single free morpheme, a free morpheme and one
or more bound morphemes, or two (or more) free morphemes. The stem which
consists of a single free morpheme is also called the root, e.g., in
unacceptable, accept is the root, i.e. the free morpheme from which the word
ttnacceptable grows. If the stem consists of two (or more) free morphemes
(e.g. bathroom-), it is called a compound root.

Root, stem, prefix and suffix are the terms that we have used in describing
the structure of a word, i.e., they are the elements of word-structure.
Morphemes are what make up these elements.

'The following table will show the structure of the word unacceptable:

Prefix Stem Suffix

accept -able
un- acceptable

Check Your Progress 1

I. Say how many morphemes the following sentence contains.

it's exciting to learn how words are formed, don't you think so?

2. State how many morphemes each of the following wordslphrases has

and which are free and which are bound?
a. decentralized .....................................................................

b. disagreeable ....................................................................
endlessly ..........................................................................
.......................................................................................
friendliest .......................................,.................................
.......................................................................................
marriageable ......................................................................
.......................................................................................
passbooks .........................................................................

points of view ....................................................................

.......................................................................................
teeth ...............................................................................
.......................................................................................
unconditionally ...................................................................
.......................................................................................
undue. ..............................................................................
.......................................................................................
went ................................................................................

workers. ...........................................................................

Try to form as many words as you can from the following free
morphemes. Consult a dictionary for this task.

know, expect, employ, compare, perform

Which of the following words have compound roots?

a. reaction
b. overtaken
c. pickpockets
d. unearthed
e. handfuls

State whether the morphemes represented by the italicized portions in

each pair of words below are the same or different. If different, then
what function do they serve?
a. gently gentlemanly ......................................................
b. mangoes goes ...........................................................
c. higher taller .............................................................
d. sleeps feels .............................................................
e. speaker sweeter ........................................................
 Words and Their
11.3 HOW ARE MORPHEMES COMBINED INTO Elements
WORDS?

As stated in Section I I.I. the second important question o f morphology is

how morphemes are combined into words. This is the question we shall
discuss in the present section.

When a word consists o f only one morpheme, or o f two morphemes, the

problem o f combination does not arise. In a two-morpheme word, a free
morpheme is combined either with a bound morpheme (as in brother.^, unwise,
etc.) or with another free morpheme (as in homework, gentieman, etc.),
producing a complex and a compound word respectively. Since there are only
two morphemes, the question o f the order in which they are combined does
not arise. But when a word consists o f three or more morphemes, this question
becomes quite important.

Consider the word unacceptable, which we referred to in Section 11.2.4.

l'here are two ways in which the morphemes can be said to have been
combined in this word, either in Order I, or in Order 2:

Order 1:
1 Root I Prefix / Stem 1 Suftix
1 Acce~t I un- I acce~t 1 1
I - A - . - - I unaccept J
Order 2: !
I Root I Prefix I Stem I Suffix
Accept
acceptable

Which is the correct order and why'?

In Section 1 1.2.4 we suggested that the correct order was Order 2. 'The reason
given was that pretixing un- to the root -accept produced a 'form unaccept,
which does not exist in English. (* indicates an unacceptable form.) Hence,
Order I is wrong. In Order 2, on the other hand, the suffixation o f able to the
root accept- produces the form ncceptable, which exists in English. The prefix
un: is then attached to the stem -ucceptahle to produce unacceptable.

Let 11snow elaborate this point a little more. How can we state the rule that the
prefix un- cannot be attached to nccc>p!but can be attached to -acceptable? 110
we have to list each and every stem to which un- can be prefixed'? That w i l l
make our task very difficult, as a very, very long list w i l l have to be drawn up.
Moreover, such a list w i l l have to be drawn up for every prefix and every
suffix. making our task almost impossible.

Fortunately, this is not necessary. We can state the rule in terms of the part o f
speech o f the stem. We can say that zln- is prefixed to adjectives: this explains
why un- can be prefixed to -accepfahlc but not to --accep!. We can further
strengthen the rule by saying that when un- is prefixed to an adjective, it
produces the negative meaning.

There are some difficulties about this 'rule' which we must point out. First,
zm- cannot be prefixed to all ad-jectives. e.g.. we cannot say *unhent~!ifi~l,
*imlall *un-.~~l~c.et,
etc. Generally. 1111- i s prefixed only to those adjectives
which do not have a separate and independent word denoting the opposite
~orphologv-
I meaning. Words like beauliful, lall, and s~veuldo have independent words
which denote the opposite meaning, namely, ugly, shorl, and hiller. Secondly,
though un- cannot be prefixed to -accepl, there are verbs which take un- as a
prefix, e.g., undress, untie, unlock, etc. However, the meaning of this prefix
tm- is different from the meaning o f the adjective prefix un- : it means
'reversing or undoing an action' and not 'negative or opposite of the meaning
denoted by the stem', which is the meaning o f the negative prefix. We shall,
therefore, treat the two prefixes un- to be different morphemes.

If we now accept the un- of unacceptable as an adjective prefix, we can

identify the structure o f a number o f complex words containing -un, and can
describe the order o f combination o f the morphemes.

Rules o f this kind have been formulated for most prefix and suffix morphelnes
in English. Though these rules are not as thoroughly reliable as rules o f
mathematics, they do provide us some guidance in combining morphemes into
words and. therefore, in identifying the structure o f complex words. The
following are some rules o f this kind:

i. The s i ~ l l i s morpheme -nears is attached to adjective stems and

produces abstract nouns with the meaning 'having the quality denoted
by the ad-jective'; e.g., kindness, happiness.
ii. The prefix morpheme de- i s attached to verb stems and produces the
meaning 'reversing the action denoted by the verb'; e.g., denationalize,
decentralize, etc. -
iii. 'The suffix morpheme -ize i s attached to adjectives and produces the
meaning 'to make (adjective)'; e.g., modernize., nutionalize, etc. It i s
also attached to noilns prodi~cingvarious types o f meaning.
iv. The suffix morpheme -ution i s attached to verbs and produces the
meaning 'the process or state denoted by the verb', e.g., e.~pltrntrlion,
starvation. etc.
v. 'The suffix morpheme -1y is attached to adjectives and produces the
meaning ' in the manner denoted by the adjective', e.g. ctilnily, huppilv,
etc. It may also be attached to nouns and create adjectives, e.g.
co~vardly,manly, etc

Making use o f such rules, we can see how morphemes are combined into
words. For example, they tell us how the mgrphemes are combined in the
complex word denationalization. The structure o f the word is shown in the
following table:

The above table shows how complex words are formed by attaching prefixes
and sut'fixes at different stages. The morphology o f a language consists largely
o f rules o f this kind, which tell us how the morphemes o f the language are
combined to produce complex words.
Check Your Progress 2 Words and l'lieir
Elements
I. Show how the following words are built up step by step. Use a table to
indicate the structure o f the words, as we have done above.
kindness, foolishness, unfriendly, immeasurably

2. Say which o f the following words can take the suffix +r to form
coinparatives (consult a dictionary in case of doubt).
sweet, beautiful, clever, fair, intelligent

3. On the basis o f words like rigidily, legality, sccrrci~i,,crhilily, etc..

formulate a rule for adding the suftix morpheme -it! to free
morphemes.

4. Identify the prefixes in the following words in the table given below
and state their meaning (consult a dictionary when in doubt):

( Word / Prefix ( Meaning --.

I undo II I I
-1
1

destabilize I I
--

5. Identify the sul'fixes in the following words in the table given below
and state their function. Also mention the stems to which the suffixes
are attached along with the part o f speech the stems belong to (consult
a dictionary when in doubt):
----

of the stem
Function of
the suffix i
I critics I I I I
1 develops 1

11.4 LET U S S U M U P

We have made the following major points in this unit.

i. Morphology i s the study ofthe internal structure ol'the word.

ii. 'Two important questions in inorphology are: (a) How do we identify
the parts o f a word? And (b) How do the parts combiiie with each
otherr?
iii. Four major criteria are used for identifying the parts o f a word. They
are:
their occurrence as words independently,
their occurrence in other words,
their occurrence with a clearly recognizable element of'
meaning everywhere, and
their occurrence with the same grammatical function.
iv. A portion of a word which satisfies these criteria is a 'structural part'
of the word.
v. The smallest structural part of a word is called a morpheme.
vi. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language which is
grammatically ,significant.
vii. A morpheme is not always identical with a portion of a word.
Sometimes it is represented in other ways like a change in the vowel.
Sometimes it has zero representation.
viii. Morphemes are free or bound.
ix. Complex words are combinations of free and bound morphemes.
X. Compound words are combinations of free morphemes.
xi Bound morphemes occur as affixes: prefixes or suffixes.
xii Affixes are attached to stems: prefixes are attached to the beginning
and suffixes to the end of the stems.
xiii A stem consisting of a single free morpheme is a root.
xiv ~ f f i x e sare attached to stems in a certain order. This order is
determined by certain general rules which are stated in terms of the
part of speech of the stem and the effect on meaning, etc.
xv. The order in which affixes are attached to the stems determines the
internal structure of the word.

11.5 KEY WORDS

Morphology: the study of the internal structure of words.

Structure: the way something is made up of parts and the
relationships between its parts.
Morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit of a language which is
grammatically significant.
Free Morpheme: a morpheme which can occur independently as a word.
Bound Morpheme: a morpheme which cannot occur independently as a word
but must combine with a free morpheme to form a word.
Affix: a bound morpheme which is attached to the beginning or
the end of a stem.
Prefix: a bound morpheme which is attached to the beginning of
a stem.
Suffix:. a bound morpheme which is attached to the end of a stem.
Stem: the element consisting of a free morpheme (and one or
more than one bound morpheme) to which an affix is
added.
Root: the element consisting of a single free morpheme which
cannot be analysed into smaller parts; when an affix is
attached to a root, we refer to it as a stem
Compound Root: the element consisting of two or more free morphemes to
which affixes are added.
Simple Word: a word consisting of a single free morpheme.
Complex Word a word consisting of a free morpheme and one or more Words and Their
bound morphemes. Elements
Compound Word a word consisting of two or more free morphemes.

11.6 SOME USEFUL BOOKS

Akmajian, A., Demers, R.A., and Harnish, R.M. ( 1 984), Linguistics: An

Iniroduction to Language and Conzmunication, (Ch. 3), Cambridge, Mass.:
The MIT Press. I

t
Fromkin, V. and Rodman, R. (1974). An Introduction io Lan uage. (Ch.6).
New York: Holt. Rinehart and Winston.

Gleason, H.A. (1 96 1 ). An Iniroduction to Descriptive Linguistics, (Revised

Edition), (Chs., 5,6,7,8). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Quirk, R. (1 962). The Use of English, (Ch. ll), London, Longman.

11.7 ANSWERS

Check Your Progress I

I. eighteen

3. know: knowledge, knowledgeable, knowing, knowingly,

known, unknown, well- known
expect: expectation, expectant, expected, unexp~cted,
unexpectedly, etc.
employ: employer, employee, employment, unemployment, etc.
compare: comparison, comparable, incomparable, comparative,
comparatively, etc.
perform: performer, performance, etc.

4. b) overtaken (c) pickpockets

Morphology- I 5. a. different: -1y in 'gently' forms an adverb; in 'gentlemanly', it
forms an adjective
b. different: -es in 'mangoes' is plural marker; in 'goes', it is
marker of simple present tense, 3'* person singular
c. same: marker of comparative degree
d, same: marker of simple present tense, 3rdperson singular
e. different: -er in 'speaker' means one who does something; in
'sweeter', it is marker of comparative degree
Check Your Progress 2

kind -ness

foolish -ness

- - 1 un- -friendly
measure measure

1 1 1 immeasurable ( -ly 1
2. sweeter, fairer, cleverer

3. Rule for -ity : ity is suffixed to adjectives to produce abstract nouns

with the meaning 'state or quality denoted by the adjective'.

4. 1R:fIx
#?:%hte action
) destabilize de- reversing the action
1 unkind un- negative
I indecent in- negative
I mismanagement ( mis- 1 in a wrong manner
5- ~ W o r d % S speech
f e m of the
/ ~ o f j ~ i o n o f t h e ~
I

I'
stem
careful care noun -ful forms an adjective
kindly kind adjective -1 forms an adverb
national nation noun , -a1 forms an adjective
critics critic noun -S plural marker
develops develop Verb -S
1 ( present tense, 3'" 1
1 1 1 ( person singular