Suggested answer for Exercise 7

Easi+er

The stem of the word easier is easy which is an adjective. Adjectives can be graded. The comparative and superlative forms of easy are inflectional that is the suffixes er or est are added to the adjectival stem. The underlined suffix is inflectional, it can beadded to the appropriate word class (in this case adjective) productevily. Adjectives in comparative form compare two nominal expressions with respect to the property expressed by the adjective.

Grand+father+s

Two simple stems (roots) grand and father are combined to create the compound stem grandfather. The plural marker added to the complex stem is inflectional, as it can co-occur with determiners that require plural nouns e.g. two grandfathers.

un+happi+est

This word consists of three morphemes. The basic stem is the adjective happy. The derivational morpheme un- is added to the stem. The newly formed complex stem is still an adjective. Derivational morphemes can change the syntactic category of the basic stem (happily), but they do not necessarily do so. In this case no categorical change occurred. However, the meaning of the expression has changed, which is not something inflectional morphemes can do. Inflectional morphemes only have a grammatical function. Hence the prefix is derivational. The superlative suffix, as we have already seen is inflectional.

fail+(e)d

The stem is a verb. Verbs can be marked for tense. Tense is a grammatical category associated with inflection, a functional head. Tense specifies that time of the event encoded in the VP (verb and its arguments), hence interacts with construction outside the word it is attached to. It is an inflectional morpheme.

un+employ+ment

The verbal root is employ. The prefix un- as we have already seen is derivational and can be combined with adjectives as in (iii) and verbs (un-do). ment is a derivational suffix. It converts the verbal stem into a nominal stem. Only derivational morphemes can have this effect.

want+s

The stem is a verb to which the 3^rd. person singular simple present tense suffix is attached. The agreement marker is inflectional as it indicates that the lexical head of the subject DP is a 3^rd. person singular noun.

eat+able

The verbal stem eat is combined with the derivational suffix able, which converts the verbal stem into an adjective.

quick+ly

Quick is an adjective, which is combined with the suffix ly. This process is very productive and the resulting structure is an adverb. A ccording to traditional analyses the -ly morpheme is derivational since it changes the grammatical category of the word from adjective to adverb, however, in the present approach it has been argued that adjectives and adverbs belong to the same word class having the features [-F, +N, +V]. This means that the -ly morpheme is to be analysed as an inflectional morpheme, which appears when the given word it attaches to occupies a certain position in the structure. E.g. the -s ending on verbs appears when the subject is third person singular. The -ly morpheme appears on the adjective e.g. when it is used to modify a verb.