Word formation rules

Let’s look more carefully at words derived by affixation. Prefixes and suffixes usually have special requirements for the sorts of bases they can attach to. Some of these requirements concern the phonology (sounds) of their bases, and others concern the semantics (meaning) of their bases – we will return to these shortly – but the most basic requirements are often the syntactic part of speech or category of their bases. For example, the suffix -ness attaches to nouns.

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a. -ness on adjectives: redness, happiness, wholeness, commonness, niceness

b. -ness on nouns: *chairness, *ideaness, *giraffeness

c. -ness on verbs: *runness, *wiggleness, *yawnness

The prefix un- attaches to adjectives (where it means ‘not’) and to verbs (where it means ‘reverse action’), but not to nouns:

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a. un- on adjectives: unhappy, uncommon, unkind, unserious

b. un- on verbs: untie, untwist, undress, unsnap

c. un- on nouns: *unchair, *unidea, *ungiraffe

We might begin to build some of the rules that native speakers of English use for making words with -ness or un- by stating their categorial requirements:

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Rule for -ness (first version): Attach -ness to an adjective.

Rule for un- (first version): Attach un- to an adjective or to a verb.

Of course, if we want to be as precise as possible about what native speakers know about forming words with these affixes, we should also indicate what category of word results from using these affixes, and what the resulting word means. So a more complete version of our -ness and unrules might look like.

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Rule for -ness (second version): -ness attaches to adjectives ‘X’ and produces nouns meaning ‘the quality of X’.

Rule for un- (second version): un- attaches to adjectives meaning ‘X’ and produces adjectives meaning ‘not X’; un- attaches to verbs meaning ‘X’ and produces verbs meaning ‘reverse the action X’.

If we’re really trying to model what native speakers of English know about these affixes, we might try to be even more precise. For example, un- does not attach to all adjectives or verbs

The negative prefix un- in English prefers to attach to bases that do not themselves have negative connotations. This is not true all of the time – adjectives like unselfish or unhostile are attested in English – but it’s at least a significant tendency. they suggest that the un- that attaches to verbs prefers verbal bases that imply some sort of result, and moreover that the result is not permanent. Verbs like dance, push, and yawn denote actions that have no results, and although explode implies a result (that is, something is blown up), it’s a result that is permanent. In contrast, a verb like tie implies a result (something is in a bow or knot) which is temporary (you can take it apart).

We have just constructed what morphologists call a word formation rule, a rule which makes explicit all the categorial, semantic, and phonological information that native speakers know about the kind of base that an affix attaches to and about the kind of word it creates. We might now state the full word formation rules for negative un- as in:

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Rule for negative un- (final version): un- attaches to adjectives, preferably those with neutral or positive connotations, and creates negative adjectives. It has no phonological restrictions.

Now let’s look at two more affixes. In English we can form new verbs by using the suffixes -ize or -ify. Both of these suffixes attach to either nouns or adjectives, resulting in verbs:

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-ize on adjectives: civilize, idealize, finalize, romanticize, tranquillize

-ize on nouns: unionize, crystallize, hospitalize, caramelize, animalize

-ify on adjectives: purify, glorify, uglify, moistify, diversify

-ify on nouns: mummify, speechify, classify, brutify, scarify, bourgeoisify

We might state the word formation rules for -ize and -ify as in (9):

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Rule for -ize (first version): -ize attaches to adjectives or nouns that

mean ‘X’ and produces verbs that mean ‘make/put into X’.

Rule for -ify (first version): -ify attaches to adjectives or nouns that

mean ‘X’ and produces verbs that mean ‘make/put into X’.

But again, we can be a bit more precise about these rules. Although -ize and -ify have almost identical requirements for the category of base they attach to and produce words with roughly the same meaning, they have somewhat different requirements on the phonological form of the stem they attach to. As the examples show, -ize prefers words with two or more syllables where the final syllable doesn’t bear primary stress (e.g., TRANquil, HOSpital). The suffix -ify, on the other hand, prefers monosyllabic bases (pure, brute, scar), although it also attaches to bases that end in a -y (mummy, ugly) or bases whose final syllables are stressed (diVERSE, bourGEOIS). Since we want to be as precise as possible about our word formation rules for these suffixes, we will state their phonological restrictions along with their categorial needs:

(10) Rule for -ize (final version): -ize attaches to adjectives or nouns of two or more syllables where the final syllable does not bear primary stress. For a base ‘X’ it produces verbs that mean ‘make/ put into X’.

I leave it to you to come up with the final version of the word formation rule for -ify.