1 Morphology, derivation, parts of speech

1.1 Morphology, word-formation

The term morphology consists of two parts: μορφή (‘form, shape‘) and λόγος ('word, doctrine'), therefore morphology can be understood as a science that deals with forms such as cell morphology, phytomorphology, geomorphology etc.

The unit (object) of the study of linguistic morphology is a word whose form is understood to be a structure whose components are morphemes or complexes of morphemes.

In the traditional structural linguistics approach to the language the following are divided:

• the sound plane (sounds, phonemes) - phonetics, phonology,
• the plane of the building elements consisting of the words (morphs and morphemes) - morphematics (morphemics),
• the plane of words or word forms - morphology, lexicology,
• the plane of collocation and sentence - syntax,
• the text plane - text linguistics.

Elements of the lower planes consist of elements of higher planes, e.g. sentences consist of words. The plane of the building elements, which consist of words, examines the linguistic discipline morphematics (morphemics). The smallest, non-separable language units that act as building blocks of words and carry some lexical or grammatical meaning (or have a certain function) and which are repeated at least in two words or verbal forms are called morphsHowever, the smallest language unit (language element) is a phonemes that have only form, not their own meaning. Phonemes just help to differentiate the meanings of higher levels (morphs and morphemes, words). Cf. in Russian: брат – брать, том – там, дам – дым, только – столько..

The boundary between the two morphs, which are part of the same word, is called a morphemic seam (we will mark it a dash): вод-а, вод-н-ый, на-вод-н-ени-е.

A set of morphs of the same kind, which have the same lexical or grammatical significance (or the same function) and which are similar to their formal structure, are called morphemes. Morpheme is an abstract unit that is realized through one of its morphs, e.g.: ног-а, нож-к-а, без-ног-ий. Concrete morphs -ног- [ног], -нож- [нож], -ног- [ног'] are realising here morpheme with a lexical meaning „одна из двух нижних конечностей человека, а также одна из конечностей птиц, некоторых животных“. The morphs belonging to such a set (which form one morpheme) are referred to as variants of the given morpheme or as an alomorphs, in other words -ног- [ног], -нож- [нож], -ног- [ног'] are the alomorphs of the morpheme -ног- with a lexical meaning „одна из двух нижних конечностей человека, а также одна из конечностей птиц, некоторых животных“.

Morph(eme)s, from which Russian words and grammatical word forms are composed, are usually divided into root word and affixes. Root morph(eme)s (root) are the central type of morph(eme)s and carry the main lexical meaning of the whole word or grammatical form of word, that every word has a root morf(eme): вод-а, жив-ой, трав-а, мног-о, пис-а-ть, глав-н-ый, мой. Affixes are morphemes that are located in a word in front of a root morph(eme)s or after it:

• Prefixes are located in front of the root, e. g.: под-писать, супер-герой, с-делать.
• Suffixes are found after the root or between the root and the ending, e. g.: ум-н-ый, дом-ик, красн-еньк-ий.
• Postfixes for certain types of words or grammatical forms can be attached to the so-called absolute end, i.e. behind a case, gender or personal inflexion or suffix, e. g.: умываться, кто-нибудь.
• InterfixesAlso called link vowel, copulative morpheme., which are used to join the front and rear composite members into a new word, in Russian most often -o-, -e-, e.g.: пар-о-ход, земл-е-трясение, вод-о-провод, лес-о-заготовки.
• Inflection (ending, inflectional morph(eme)s), in Russian they are morphemes whose change is accompanied by a change in morphological gender, numbers, case and persons, e. g.: стен-а, стен-ы, стен-е...; нов-ая, нов-ый, нов-ое, нов-ые; пиш-у, пиш-ешь, пиш-ем..., пиш-утFlective morph(eme)s in Russian are also infinitive pointers -ть, -ти, -чь, e.g.: писать, нести, печь.. Inflexion morph(eme)s are at the end of a word or grammatical form, after which only postfixes can be found in Russian, e. g.: -ся, -сь, -те, -то, -либо, -нибудь: стро-ит-ся, занимал-а-сь, ид-ём-те, как-ой-то.

Prefixes and suffixes can also be divided into:

• word-forming (derivation), which specify, modify, change the main lexical meaning of a word or word form, e.g.: дом – дом-ик („маленький дом“), писать – пере-писать („написать заново, иначе“);
• form-building (derivation of word forms), which express grammatical meanings (grammatical categories) and can only be used for flexible word types, e.g. case inflections of nouns (вод-а, вод-ы, вод-е), verb suffix of past time -л- (чит-а-л, чит-а-л-а, чит-а-л-о, чит-а-л-и).

Form-building morph(eme)s in Russian can be realized using so-called null morphs (morphological zero, mark Ø), in other words formally unrecognized morph, e.g. столØ, стол-а, стол-у or учительØ, учител-я, учител-ю, where in the nominative case the ending of a masculine gender is not expressed formally (i.e. by letter or special sound), but in other cases the ending is expressed on a formal level. If the word does not decline or conjugate, we can not speak of any null morphs at its end, e.g. in the words радио, хаки, какаду, Сочи, Брно, бордо, but in words such весело, улыбаясь we can talk about the final suffixes/postfixes: весел-о (suffix -о-), улыб-а-я-сь (postfix -сь).

The stem of a word or word form is the part of it that remains after separation of inflection (ending) or inflection with postfix -те. Morphs of other postfixes are part of a word or word form, e.g.: stem of word form пишется is пиш...ся, stem of word form чья-то is /ч'j/…то. Such stems are called intermittent in the Russian grammatical tradition.

Another branch associated with the structure of the word and its separation into morphs is word-forming (derivation) that deals with word-motivated words, i.e. words whose meaning and pronunciation are influenced in other words by the same root.

The term word-forming motivation refers to the relationship between two words with the same root, the relationship between the two words being of a dual nature:

• the meaning of one word is determined by the meaning of the second word (дом – домик „маленький дом“, победить – победитель „тот, кто победил“);
• the meaning of the two words is similar / the same, but each word of the pair is another part of speech (бежать - бег, белый - белизна, быстрый - быстро).

Words with the same root that do not meet the above requirements are not found in the word-motivation relationship, e.g.: the word домик and домище, but дом – домик, дом – домище are already in relation to word-forming motivation, while one of the words pair is motivating (underlying word), the second word is motivated. Features of a motivated word are as follows:

1. If both words have a different lexical meaning, the motivated word is the one whose stem is longer (whether from formal or phonemic point of view): горох - горошина, писать - написать, есть - съесть.
2. If both words have a different lexical meaning, but the same/similar formal page, motivated is a word whose semantics is determined over the meaning of the first word: химия – химик („тот, кто занимается химией“), художник – художница („женщина-художник“).
3. In pairs verb - noun, adjective - noun motivated word is the noun: косить - косьба, выходить - выход, атаковать - атака, красный - краснота, синий - синь; in the pair adjective - adverb motivated is a word with a longer stem (q. v. point a): вчера – вчерашний.
4. Stylistically colored words can not be motivating if they have a stylistically neutral adjective, e.g.: гуманитарный – гуманитар (colloquial), технический – техник (colloquial).

The underlying (motivating) word in relation to the next word may be motivated, e. g.: the word учитель in the pair with the word учительница is underlying, but in relation to the word учить is motivated. Such words form derivation chains (word-forming chains): учить → учитель → учительница. The derivation chain consists of words with the same root, which are related to motivation. The first member of the derivation chain is an unmotivated word, all other members of the derivation chain are determined by their distance from the first non-motivated word (so-called motivation degree):

старый → стареть (I) → устареть (II) → устарелый (III) → устарелость (IV)

The words of the second and the higher motivation degree can be motivated by the words of the previous motivation degree, e.g.: преподавать → преподаватель → преподавательский, where the word преподавательский can be motivated both by the word преподаватель and the word преподавать.

Another important term in the field of morphematics is a family of words, which means a group of words with the same root, which is organized on the basis of its motivation. The first word (vertex) of the family of words can be an unmotivated word. A family of words can also be defined as a series of derivation chains with the same first non-motivated word.

Family of words or derivation chains can be found in Russian-language vocabulary, e.g.:

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• ПОПОВА, Т. В., ЗАЙКОВА, Е. С.: Морфемно-словообразовательный словарь русского языка (5–11 классы). Москва: АСТ-ПРЕСС КНИГА, 2012. 272 с. ISBN 978–5-462–00922–8.
• ТИХОНОВ, А. Н.: Словообразовательный словарь русского языка: в 2 томах (около 145000 слов). Москва: Русский язык, 1985. 854 с.
• ТИХОНОВ, А. Н.: Новый словообразовательный словарь русского языка для всех, кто хочет быть грамотным. Москва: АСТ, 2014. 639 с. ISBN 978–5-17–082826–5.