Acknowledgements viii
1. Introduction 1
Recommendations for reading 2
2. Words, sentences and dictionaries 4
2.1 Words as meaningful building-blocks of language 4
2.2 Words as types and words as tokens 5
2.3 Words with predictable meanings 6
2.4 Non-words with unpredictable meanings 9
2.5 Conclusion: words versus lexical items 12
Technical terms 13
Exercises 14
Recommendations for reading 15
3. A word and its parts: roots, affixes and their shapes 16
3.1 Taking words apart 16
3.2 Kinds of morpheme: bound versus free 18
3.3 Kinds of morpheme: root, affix, combining form 20
3.4 Morphemes and their allomorphs 22
3.5 Identifying morphemes independently of meaning 24
3.6 Conclusion: ways of classifying word-parts 26
Technical terms 27
Exercises 28
Recommendations for reading 29
4. A word and its forms: inflection 30
4.1 Words and grammar: lexemes, word forms and grammatical words 30
4.2 Regular and irregular inflection 32
4.3 Forms of nouns 36
4.4 Forms of pronouns and determiners 40
4.5 Forms of verbs 41
4.6 Forms of adjectives 43
4.7 Conclusion and summary 44
Technical terms 45
Exercises 47
Recommendations for reading 48
5. A word and its relatives: derivation 49
5.1 Relationships between lexemes 49
5.2 Word classes and conversion 50
5.3 Adverbs derived from adjectives 53
5.4 Nouns derived from nouns 54
5.5 Nouns derived from members of other word classes 55
5.6 Adjectives derived from adjectives 57
5.7 Adjectives derived from members of other word classes 58
5.8 Verbs derived from verbs 59
5.9 Verbs derived from members of other word classes 60
5.10 Conclusion: generality and idiosyncrasy 61
Technical terms 62
Exercises 63
Recommendations for reading 64
6. Compound words, blends and phrasal words 65
6.1 Compounds versus phrases 65
6.2 Compound verbs 66
6.3 Compound adjectives 67
6.4 Compound nouns 67
6.5 Headed and headless compounds 70
6.6 Blends and acronyms 71
6.7 Compounds containing bound combining forms 72
6.8 Phrasal words 73
6.9 Conclusion 74
Technical terms 74
Exercises 75
Recommendations for reading 76
7. A word and its structure 78
7.1 Meaning and structure 78
7.2 Affixes as heads 78
7.3 More elaborate word forms: multiple affixation 79
7.4 More elaborate word forms: compounds within compounds 83
7.5 Apparent mismatches between meaning and structure 86
7.6 Conclusion: structure as guide but not straitjacket 89
Technical terms 90
Exercises 90
Recommendations for reading 91
8. Productivity 92
8.1 Introduction: kinds of productivity 92
8.2 Productivity in shape: formal generality and regularity 92
8.3 Productivity in meaning: semantic regularity 95
8.4 Semantic blocking 98
8.5 Productivity in compounding 100
8.6 Measuring productivity: the significance of neologisms 102
8.7 Conclusion: 'productivity' in syntax 104
Technical terms 105
Exercises 106
Recommendations for reading 107
9. The historical sources of English word formation 108
9.1 Introduction 108
9.2 Germanic, Romance and Greek vocabulary 108
9.3 The rarity of borrowed inflectional morphology 110
9.4 The reduction in inflectional morphology 112
9.5 Characteristics of Germanic and non-Germanic derivation 114
9.6 Fashions in morphology 116
9.7 Conclusion: history and structure 118
Technical terms 119
Exercises 119
Recommendations for reading 121
10. Conclusion: words in English and in languages generally 122
10.1 A puzzle: disentangling lexemes, word forms and lexical items 122
10.2 Lexemes and lexical items: possible reasons for their overlap in English 123
10.3 Lexemes and lexical items: the situation outside English 124
10.4 Lexemes and word forms: the situation outside English 126
Recommendations for reading 127
Discussion of the exercises 128
References 149
Index 152