Morphology in linguistics is all about the shapes of words. Every language has certain consistent patterns by which the shapes of words can be adjusted to express ideas. In this chapter we will discuss the word structure of Modern English, beginning with definitions of some basic concepts in morphology, and how they apply to English. Following this, the distinction between derivation and inflection will be outlined, and a brief overview of derivational categories in English presented. Inflectional categories are discussed in more detail in the discussions of nouns, verbs, and auxiliaries in Chapters 5, 6, and 11.

Some basic concepts in morphology

The first term that needs to be defined in any discussion of morphology is the notion of word. What is a word? This question is not as easy to answer as it might seem at first. See Dixon and Aikhenvald (2002) for an in-depth, cross-linguistic approach to this question. One possible definition of a word is “the smallest structural piece that can be surrounded by pauses.” In practice, however, this definition quickly breaks down. For example, pauses may occur between any two syllables, whether we intuitively think of them as two words or not.