Verbal Morphology - Tense, Mood, Aspect, and Voice In many languages, a number of different features are marked on the verb and serve to situate and contextualize its usage. Tense, mood, aspect, and voice are some of the most common of these types of features. Tense locates an event in time, while aspect refers to the way in which the event unfolds within a time frame. Mood signals the … [Read more...]

Affixation is the morphological process in by which bound morphemes are attached to a roots or stems to mark changes in meaning, part of speech, or grammatical relationships.  Affixes take on several forms and serve different functions.  In this tutorial, we will be looking specifically at affixation in Standard English. Affixes An affix is a bound morpheme that attaches to a root or stem to … [Read more...]

Grammar or Meaning Morphological processes serve different functions. Some occur to alter meaning and/or part of speech (derivational), others show grammatical relationships between words (inflectional). In English, the attachment of ‘-ness’ to an adjective such as ‘faithful’ derives the noun ‘faithfulness’. Likewise, when ‘un-‘ is attached to ‘happy’, meaning is reversed (unhappy).   In French, … [Read more...]