Some basic concepts Laurie Bauer 1993

A lexeme is clearly analysable into its constituent morphs

'coverage' is clearly analysable into
cover + age

A morph which can occur in solation is termed a 'free morph'

A morph wich can only occur in a
wor-form in conjunction with at least one other morph is termed
'bound morph'

Morphemes are abstraact elements of analysis, and what actually occurs is a phonetic form which realizes the morphemes

A morph can be defined as a segment of a word-form which represents a particular morpheme

Besides morpheme ans morph, a third term, 'allomorph' is required for morphological analysis

An allomorph is a phonetically, lexically or gramatically conditioned member of a set of morphs representing a particullar morpheme

The lexeme is like a base of the word for example...

Shoot
shoots
shooting
shot

The lexeme of the word is just "shoot"

To explain what is the process of inflection we can see some examples from Italian inflectional paradigm

Subtopic

Parl . o = I speak
Parl . i = you (sg.) speak
Parl . a = he/she/is apeaks
PArl . iamo = we speak
Parl . ate = you (pl.) speak
Parl . ano = they speak

In Latin "regebam" is a "word" meaning 'I was ruling'
InMaori i is a "word" meaning is 'past tese'

According to Matthews (1972) it is related to a morphological condition

Irregular plural fors in English are determined by the word in question; only occur with that word

The only word in English that makes its plural by adding -en is ox; however, -en dosn't affect markers os plurality

'root', 'steam', and 'base' are all terms used in the literature to designate that part of a word that remains when all affixes have been removed

A root is a form which is not further analysable, either in terms of derivational or inflectional morphology

A steam is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology

A base is any form to which affixes of any king can be added

Affixes can be divided into 'prefixes' wich are attached before a base

suffixes, wich are attached after a base

infixes wich are attached inside a base

The basic units of analysis recognized in morphoogy are 'morphemes'. This is known as an elements

untouchables can be segmented to show its constituent elements

un-touc-able-s

Compounding or composition is roughly speaking, the process of puttin 2 words together to form a third, for example...

oil-paper
paperclip
paper acroplane
paper thin
(to) wallpaper
wastepaper
wastepaper basket

The next examples with different endings, exemplify the process od derivation

nation
nation - hood
nation - al
nation - al - ize
naton - al - ist
nation - al - ist - ic
nation - al - ity

Any discussions of word formation makes 2 assumptions

1. There are such things as words

2. At least some of them are formed

'Word-formation' is a traditional label, and one which is useful, but it doesn't generally cover all possible ways of forming everything that can be called a 'word'

The definition of "Word" has been a major problem for linguistics theory

The definition of a "Word" must be considerated a notion for operating