I. Noun Feminine Forms
English has a small group of nouns with feminine derivational suffixes. All but
(-ster) are of foreign origin. They have been added to a masculine form or a
base morpheme.
Suffix
Masculine
Feminine
1. -e (borrowed from French)
fiancé
fiancée
2. -enne (borrowed from French)
comedian
comedienne
3. -ess (the most productive)
patron
patroness
4. -etta
Henry
Henrietta
5. -ette
usher
usherette
6. -euse (borrowed from French)
masseur
masseuse
7. -ina
George
Georgina
8. -ine
hero
heroine
9. -ster (no longer a feminine suffix)
spinner
spinster
10. -stress (dead suffix)
seamster
seamstress
11. -ix
aviator
aviatrix
The feminine suffixes must be used judiciously.
Although some individuals are unconcerned about morphological forms that
distinguish men from women, others see such distinctions as unnecessary
and perhaps even demeaning to women.
English has about fifty pairs of words with separate forms of the masculine
and the feminine.
bull, cow; uncle, aunt; gander, goose
These are a matter of lexicography rather than morphology.
J. Noun Diminutive Forms
There are six diminutive suffixes in English. They are morphemes that
convey a meaning of smallness or endearment or both.
Suffix Examples 1. -­‐ie, -­‐i, -­‐y (highly produc3ve)
aun3e, Be9y, swee3e, Willy
2. -­‐e9e (in ac3ve usre)
dine9e, towele9e
3. -­‐kin, -­‐ikin, -­‐kins (unproduc3ve)
babykins
4. -­‐ling (unproduc3ve)
duckling, darling, 5. -­‐et (unproduc3ve)
circlet
6. -­‐let (unproduc3ve)
booklet, starlet
Other diminutives have come to English as part of borrowed words. They
were diminutive in their own or parent language but are nonmorphemic in
English. (p. 106)
K. Immediate Constituents
Morphemes; bases, prefixes, infixes, and suffixes—of which words are
composed, are put together to build the word structure.
blaze is composed of one morpheme; unitary part.
cheerful is composed of two morphemes, with the division between them:
cheer
ful
A word of three or more morphemes is not made up of a string of individual
parts; it is built with a hierarchy of twosomes.
gentlemanly is composed of three morphemes.
* gentle + manly
gentlemanly
gentleman + ly
gentlemanly
gentleman
ly gentle
man
ly
un
gentle
man
ly
In doing words diagram to show layers of structure, we make successive
divisions into two parts, each of which is called an immediate constituents,
IC. The process is continued until all component morphemes of a word, the
ultimate constituents, have been isolated.
Recommendations on IC division:
1. If a word ends in an inflectional suffix, the first cut is between this
suffix and the rest of the word.
pre
conceiv
ed
mal
formation
s
2. One of the ICs should be, if possible, a free form. A free form is one that
can be uttered alone with meaning, e.g., enlarge, dependent, supportable.
Wrong:
Right:
en
large
ment
en
in
depend
ent
in
in
support
able
in
large
depend
support
ment
ent
able
3. The meaning of the ICs should be related to the meaning of the word.
It would be wrong to cut restrain like this:
rest
rain
because neither rest nor rain has a semantic connection with restrain.
Nor would a division of starchy as
star
chy
be right because this would give n unrelated morpheme and a meaningless
fragment. The two examples are properly cut in this way:
re
strain
starch
y