ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the distinction between lexical or derivational morphology and inflectional morphology. The formation of new words, in the sense of new lexemes, is the field of lexical or derivational morphology. It is obvious that many lexemes can be analyzed into segments called morphs. Lexical stems may themselves be unanalyzable or may themselves be complex. The fact that words can be analyzed as having an internal constituent structure suggests some general ‘word formation rules’. It is useful to distinguish between inflectional and derivational morphology. Inflectional morphology deals with the distribution of categories introduced by the grammar, and is general and productive. Derivational morphology deals with the production of new lexemes, is less productive and often arbitrary in application; as such it belongs with the lexicon rather than the grammar. It can also be extended to make generalizations about the internal structure of some lexemes that otherwise one would wish to treat as units.
