Morphological Rules [Linguistics ]

Morphological Rules

Definition :

Morphological rules are the systematic principles that govern how morphemes (the smallest units of meaning) combine to form words. These rules dictate the structure, meaning, and grammatical function of words by specifying how free and bound morphemes can be arranged and modified.

Morphological Rules

Fundamental :

Morphological rules5^[1] are language-specific and include:

Derivational Rules^[2]: Adding prefixes or suffixes to change a word's meaning or part of speech (e.g., happy → unhappy).
Inflectional Rules^[3]: Modifying words to express grammatical categories like tense, number, or case (e.g., walk → walked).
Compounding Rules: Combining two or more free morphemes to create a new word (e.g., sun + flower → sunflower).
Reduplication Rules: Repeating all or part of a word to convey meaning (e.g., in Tagalog, bili → bibili).
Suppletion: Using entirely different forms for grammatical relationships (e.g., go → went).

Example :

Derivational Rules: happy → unhappy.
Inflectional Rules: walk → walked.
Compounding Rules: sun + flower → sunflower.
Reduplication Rules: in Tagalog, bili → bibili.
Suppletion: go → went.

Notes

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317426738_Chapter_4_Morphology
Derivational rules
Derivational rules are rules in morphology that govern how new words are formed from existing words or roots by adding derivational morphemes (prefixes, suffixes, or infixes). These rules change the meaning of the original word and often alter its grammatical category (e.g., turning a noun into a verb or an adjective into a noun).
Inflectional rules
Inflectional rules are rules in morphology that govern how words are modified to express grammatical information, such as tense, number, gender, case, or person. Unlike derivational rules, which create new words, inflectional rules modify existing words to fit the grammatical context of a sentence without changing their core meaning or grammatical category.