Inflectional Morpheme

 Inflectional Morpheme (IM) is morphemes that

change neither part of speech nor meaning and
give extra grammatical information about the
already existing meaning of word.

 The types of the Inflectional Suffixes in English:

-s (present), -ed (past), -ing (continous), -en
(past participle), -s (plural), -’s (possessive), -er
(comparative), -est (supperlative)
 Inflectional vs. Derivational
 NO CHANGE in  CHANGE in meaning
meaning or part of or part of speech.
speech. Eg.
Eg.
((hospital)N –ize)v
((book)N –s)N
((work)v –ed)v ((govern)v–ment)N
 Inflectional vs. Derivational
 Occur at the margins of  Occur before
words. Inflectional Suffix/must
 Eg. –s (plural) always be closer to the root.
comes last a word, as in  Eg.
neighborhoods. neighbor + hood + s
root DM IM
 Inflectional vs. Derivational
 Occur with all members  Occur with only some
of some large class of members of class of
morphemes. morphemes.
 Eg. Plural (-S) occurs  Eg. Suffix (-hood) with
with most nouns. brother, neighbor,
 Have very few knight.
exception.  But not with friend,
daughter,etc.
 Although they are
NOUN.
 Inflectional vs. Derivational
 Indicates syntactic or  Indicate semantic
semantic relations relations within the
between different word word.
in a sentence.  Eg. Painful
 Eg. She waits for me.  (-ful)has no particular
 (-s) shows agreement connection with any
with Subject of the verb other morpheme beyond
the word painful.
 Divide the words below into their component
morphemes and identify the nature of
morphemes by answering these question for
each:
1. How many morphemes?
2. Is it Free or Bound morpheme?
3. What kind of affixes are involved?
4. Is it Inflectional or Derivational Morpheme?
1. Cats 9. Comfortable
2. Catsup 10. Reconditioned
3. Succotash 11. Directional
4. Entrust 12. Thickeners
5. Unhappy 13. Rationalization
6. Milder 14. Fixation
7. Bicycle 15. Monstrous
8. Signpost