LING150/University of Oregon

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1.3.1. How words are constructed

Types of Roots

Types of Affixes

1.3.2. How words are used - NOUNS, VERBS and ADJECTIVES

English words are constructed from two different types of morphemes -- Roots and Affixes. Each of these classes can be further subdivided: Roots can be divided into Free Roots and Bound Roots; Affixes can be divided into Prefixes and Suffixes.

Roots and affixes differ radically both in the way they affect the meaning of a word and in the way they affect its structure (or form). Let's take a closer look at behavior of these two classes of morphemes.

Roots differ from affixes in two ways:

• 1) Roots usually have a rather specific meaning, and this meaning tends to be relatively constant across all the words that use the root. Roots also contribute the greatest conceptual content to the overall meaning of the word. Since roots are doing most of the work of conveying meaning, they are required word elements. EVERY WORD HAS AT LEAST ONE ROOT.

For example, pter is a root meaning 'wing'. It appears in words like:

pterodactyl	'wing-fingers'
helicopter	'spiral wing'
apterous	'lacking wings'

The form pter always has the specific meaning 'wing' in each word. Also, the meaning 'wing' is a vital and central part of the overall meaning of the word.

Affixes are morphemes which attach to roots or a combination of roots and other affixes. Their main use is to modify the meaning conveyed by the root or roots.

Consider the affix pro- meaning 'before, for, forward'. Some examples are:

propel	'to push forward'
pronoun	'substituting for a noun'
prologue	'something spoken before (something else)'

Although the different senses of pro- are clearly related, the exact meaning shifts somewhat from word to word. As a rule, affix meanings tend to be vaguer and more variable than root meanings. Learning to deal with the "shiftiness" of affixes is an important skill in word analysis.

• 2) Roots have freer distribution; that is, they can occur almost anywhere in a word. Look back at the examples we just discussed. We find pter at the beginning, at the end, and in the middle of the word. On the other hand, affixes are restricted to certain positions within a word. In our examples, pro- is always at the beginning of the word. In fact, since it is a prefix, it must be in front of a root. Consequently, it will always occur at or near the beginning of the word.

WORDS ANALYSIS TIPS
Memorize the hyphens	Roots are written without hyphens. Affixes have a hyphen at the location where they must attach to a root.
Strip off obvious affixes first	This is especially helpful if you can't spot the root.
Look for the roots	They will give you the most information about the word.
Find AT LEAST one root per word	If you can't find at least one root, your analysis is wrong!

Types of Roots

Free Roots are roots that can occur alone as whole words. Many native words such as blue and berry, are free roots because they can stand alone as single words. Free roots can also be combined with other roots or affixes to form more complex words, for example blueberry and bluish.

Bound Roots can never occur alone as whole words. For example, the roots cran and rasp cannot stand alone; they must occur in combination with other morphemes, such as cranberry and raspberry.

WORD HISTORY Cranberry literally means 'crane berry' from Dutch and German words. Early Dutch and German settlers to the U.S. used this term for the berry that grows in bogs, replacing the earlier British settlers' term ,"fen berry." Raspberry comes from the earlier "raspis berry." It's believed to be the same word as Middle English raspis 'kind of wine'. It is highly speculative whether this has any relationship to the word rasp 'to scrape'. This may be a "folk etymology."

Almost all the Latin and Greek roots we are studying are bound roots. Some examples are:

log	prologue
iatr	pediatrics
phob	phobia

Compounds are words constructed from two or more roots. They may or may not have affixes. For example,

blueberry	a compound of two free roots
anthropology	a compound of two bound roots

Types of Affixes

Affixes by definition are always bound or (affixed) to a root. They are divided into two different types depending on where they attach to the root.

• Prefixes occur before a root (although several prefixes can be strung together before a single root).
• Suffixes occur after a root (although multiple suffixes can occur at the ends of words).

The two types of affixes also differ in how they affect the meaning of the word.

Prefixes modify the meaning of the root in some way. Often, they provide spatial information about an action named by the root. For example, the root ced 'go' can be combined with a variety of prefixes which modifying the direction in which the "going" occurs (although the sense of 'go' may be rather metaphorical in some cases).

secede	'to go apart'
intercede	'to go between'
recede	'to go back'
decedent	'one who goes away'
concede	'to go together'
precede	'to go before'

Notice that in constructing the literal meanings, the meaning of the prefix occurs after the meaning of the root. This is necessary to make a sensible English phrase. English grammar requires that the verb is followed by a spatial preposition. Latin (from which all these morphemes came) conveyed the same concepts of ACTION plus DIRECTION in reverse order and in a single word.

Suffixes have two functions, which we'll discuss in WebLecture 1.4. Their most important function is to indicate the part of speech of the word. Suffixes identify a word as being a NOUN, VERB, ADJECTIVE, or ADVERB. They can change the word from one part of speech to another. In fact, multiple suffixes can be added to a single root, changing it first to one part of speech and then another. For example,

verb -->	verbal -->	verbalize -->	verbalization
NOUN	ADJECTIVE	VERB	NOUN

Because this use of suffixes is so important with Latin and Greek vocabulary, we'll spend some time discussing how to identify the different parts of speech.

1.3.2. How words are used - NOUNS, VERBS and ADJECTIVES

Identifying the part of speech (or grammatical class) of a word is important for constructing an appropriate literal meaning. The most important parts of speech for our purposes are NOUNS, VERBS and ADJECTIVES. The majority of English words fall into one of these three classes.

NOUNS, VERBS and ADJECTIVES have both meaning properties and form properties. The meaning (or functional) properties are usually more familiar to students; however, the form (or structural) properties are often the most useful in identifying a word's part of speech.

Functional properties are "uses" which a word serves in a sentence or the meaning it conveys.

FUNCTIONAL PROPERTIES
NOUN	identifies the entities a speaker is referring to names a person, place, thing, or idea
VERB	identifies an action or state of being
ADJECTIVE	modifies the meaning of a noun identifies a property or characteristic of the noun

Structural properties include both the kinds of affixes a word can take as well as its position in a sentence relative to other words. Some of the most useful (but by no means all) structural properties are given below:

STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES
VERB	permits the suffix -ed 'past tense' (They talked.) may follow the infinitive marker "to" (They wanted to talk.)
NOUN	may be plural; usually indicated by the suffix -s (the two tables) is the last word in a phrase beginning with the articles "a" or "the" or a possessive pronoun (a table, the table, her table )
ADJECTIVE	may have the suffixes -er 'comparative' or -est 'superlative' (redder, reddest) comes before a NOUN and often after an article or possessive pronoun (the red book, his gigantic turnip)

In English, it is frequently impossible to determine the part of speech of a word unless you consider it in the context of an entire sentence. Native words are especially problematic because they often have no suffixes when given in their dictionary or citation form. For example, while we sometimes imprecisely refer to words like skirt, table, chair, hand, and arm as NOUNS, they all can be used as verbs without any alteration. Below, the highlighted words are all clearly VERBS in the first column because they have the past tense suffix -ed or follow the infinitive marker "to". In the second column, the same words are all clearly NOUNS because they have the plural suffix -s; they also follow either the word "the" or a possessive pronoun.

VERBS	NOUNS
They skirted the issue.	Their skirts were long.
They tried to table the motion.	The tables were carefully set.
She chaired the committee.	The chairs were pushed in.
He handed her the letter.	Her hands rested on her lap.
They wanted to arm the bomb.	His arms were crossed over his chest.

Latin and Greek words usually have suffixes which should help us identify the part of speech. Unfortunately, these suffixes often have more than one meaning.

They delegated the matter to the committee.

The delegate was confused about the issues.

Since we can only determine the exact meaning by seeing the word in the context of a sentence, exam questions will always provide a word in a sentence whenever you need to determine its part of speech.

Copyright 1998 by the Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon.