Derivational Morpheme or Inflectional

Morpheme—A Case Study of “-ing” or “-ed”

Word Ending in English Linguistics Teaching

Panpan Cao(B)

Foreign Language School, Sichuan Minzu College, Kangding, Sichuan, China

[email protected]

Abstract. The learning of morphology plays a very important role in students’

language learning. However, in the learning process, students feel very confused
about inflectional and derivational morphemes and couldn’t distinguish their types
especially when it comes to the “-ed” or “-ing” word ending. To help them better
understand this question, this paper first reviewed the definitions and their sub-
types of these two terms according to different literature. Then, it summarized
the major differences of inflectional and derivational morphemes. Next, it focused
on analyzing the specific morpheme type of “-ed” or “-ing” endings in words
and in sentences. Last, it is concluded that whether “-ed” or “-ing” word ending
is an inflectional morpheme or a derivational morpheme depends on whether it
expresses lexical meaning or grammatical meaning. If “-ed” is used to form an
adjective or “-ing” is used to form an adjective or a noun, the lexical meaning is
expressed, then the “-ed” or “-ing” word ending acts as a derivational morpheme.
While when grammatical meanings such as tense and aspect of verbs are conveyed
in a sentence, “-ed” or “-ing” word ending is an inflectional morpheme. Besides,
whether the syntactic category of “-ed” or “-ing” word ending is changed or
not also can distinguish inflectional morphemes from derivational morphemes:
if not changed, probably inflectional morphemes and if changed, derivational
morphemes. Last, its contribution to the syntactic construction and its function in
the sentence should be taken into full consideration in distinguishing inflectional
morphemes from derivational ones.

Keywords: Inflectional morpheme · Derivational morpheme · “-ed” word

ending · “-ing” word ending · Distinction

1 Introduction

“Morphology, which literally means ‘the study of forms’, was originally used in biology,
but, since the middle of the nineteenth century, has also been used to describe that
type of investigation which analyzes all those basic ‘elements’ which are used in a
language” [1]75 . As a sub-discipline of linguistics, morphology is “the systematic study
of morpheme, which investigates the internal structure and rules of morphemes by which
words are formed” [2]52–53 .

© The Author(s) 2023

A. Volodin and I. Roumbal (Eds.): ICECIDT 2022, ASSEHR 677, pp. 682–690, 2023.
https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-02-2_74
 Derivational Morpheme or Inflectional Morpheme 683

In the study of morphology, the first concept should be known is morpheme, which
ranks the lowest, below word, phrase, clause and clause complex in the grammatical
hierarchical scale and thus, is the smallest meaningful grammatical unit in language.
Morphemes are smaller than words, because some words contain one morpheme such
as “fruit, gentle and nation”, which are mono-morphemic words, some words consist of
two morphemes such as “fruitful, gentleman, national”, which are double-morphemic
words, some words are made of three morphemes such as “unfruitful, gentlemanly,
nationalize”, which are triple-morphemic words, some words have four morphemes such
as “unfruitfulness, ungentlemanly, denationalize”, which are four-morphemic words
and some words include five morphemes (or even more) such as “ungentlemanliness,
denationalization”, which are over-four-morphemic words [3]52 .
“Morpheme is the smallest unit of language in regard to the relationship between
sounding and meaning, a unit that cannot be divided into further smaller units without
destroying or drastically altering the meaning” [2]52 . From this definition, two points
should be noted: first, morpheme is the minimal unit of language with sound and meaning.
For example, “student” and “-s” in “students”, “study” and “-ing” in “studying” and
“dis-”, “approve”, “-al” in “disapproval”, all of which are morphemes with their distinct
meanings and sounds. Second, morphemes defy further analysis, otherwise, the original
meaning will be changed, destroyed or even lost. For instance, “student” couldn’t be
divided into “stu-” and “-dent” because there is no relationship between parts like “stu-”,
“-dent” and the whole “student”.
Morphemes can be classified into free morphemes and bound morphemes according
to whether they can constitute words by themselves. Free morphemes can stand on their
own and function as single words such as “cat, desk, go, nice, sunflower” while bound
morphemes couldn’t occur alone and they are usually attached to another form(s) such
as “un-, dis-, -ment, -ly”. Bound morphemes can be further divided into derivational
morphemes and inflectional morphemes according to the different functions they serve
in words.
However, based on the undergraduates’ confusions and the author’s observation, it
is found that when teaching the morphology to the undergraduates in ethnic minority
areas, they do not have a clear distinction between inflectional affixes and derivational
affixes, especially when it comes to the “-ed” or “-ing” word ending since in the textbook,
no detailed explanation is mentioned and related exercises for further application and
consolidation is also missing, it is quite necessary and important to address this question
properly because these concepts are not only the key and difficult points of morphology,
but also the learning requirement for “English Linguistics” course at the undergraduate
stage, as well as the requirement for their further study and research.

2 Inflectional Morphemes and Derivational Morphemes

2.1 The Definition and Explanation
“A derivational morpheme is so called because when it is added to a word, it creates a
new word, by changing either the meaning or the grammatical class of the original word”
[4]25 . For example, by adding “ir-” to the adjective “regular”, the meaning of “irregular”
becomes opposite, by adding “-ize” to the adjective “modern”, a verb “modernize” is
684 P. Cao

formed and by adding “-ish” to the noun “fool”, an adjective “foolish” is created, to
name just a few.
Inflectional morphemes are “bound morphemes which are for the most part purely
grammatical markers and signify such concepts as tense, number, case and so on” [5]36 .
For example, “-ed” in “worked”, indicating the past tense of the verb, “-ing” in “study-
ing”, signifying the present participle of the verb, “-s” in “books”, expressing the plu-
rality of the countable noun, or “-er” in “shorter” and “-est” in “longest”, marking the
comparative or superlative degree of an adjective, all these are all inflectional morphemes.

2.2 Subtypes of Derivational Morphemes and Inflectional Morphemes

2.2.1 Type of Derivational Morphemes
For derivational morphemes, there are prefixes, suffixes and infixes, which are classified
according to their position around the root or stem of a word.
“A prefix is an affix attached before a root or a stem” [6]35 . To put it simply, prefixes
are the bound morphemes which are added to the initial part of words and precedes other
morphemes in a word, as “un-” in “unhappy”, “re-” in “rewrite” and “en-” in “enlarge”.
“A suffix is an affix attached after a root or a stem” [6]35 . Namely, suffixes refer to
the bound morphemes which are attached to the final part of words and follow other
morphemes in a word, as “-ly” in “happily”, “-ment” in “appointment” and “-ness” in
“sadness”.
“An infix is inserted between a morpheme, instead of being placed before or after
a morpheme” [7]55–56 . That’s to say, instead of following or preceding a morpheme,
it breaks up a single morpheme and is inserted in it, such as “-bloody” in “al-bloody-
mighty”, “-goddam-” in “absogoddamlutely” and “-fucking” in “unfuckingbelievable”,
which are occasionally used in fortuitous or aggravating circumstances by emotionally
aroused English speakers [8]17 . Since the English infixes are very rare and thus not
mentioned here.

2.2.2 Type of Inflectional Morphemes

For inflectional morphemes, English has only eight types, which are attached to nouns,
verbs and adjectives or adverbs [1]77 as follows:
For nouns, there are two types: “-s” (the plural form of countable nouns) as in “boys”
and “-’s” or “-s’” (the possessive case of nouns) as in “the boy’s toy” or “the boys’ toy”.
For verbs, the four types are “-s” (3rd person present singular), “-ing” (present
participle), “-ed” (past tense) and “-en or -ed” (past participle). For example, in “The boy
plays with his toy”, “-s” of “plays” is the third person singular subject in simple present
tense. In “The boy played with his toy”, the “-ed” of “played” shows the past tense.
In “The boy is playing with his toy”, the “-ing” of “playing” is the present participle,
together with “be” to express the simple present progressive tense. In “The boy has
played with his toy and i have taken a walk”, the “-ed” of “played” or “-en” of “taken”
are past participle of verbs, together with “has or have” to indicate the simple present
perfect tense.
For adjectives and adverbs, two inflections are “-est” (superlative) and “-er” (com-
parative). For instance, “-er” in “smarter” or “faster” shows the comparative degree of
 Derivational Morpheme or Inflectional Morpheme 685

adjectives or adverbs and “-est” in “smartest” or “fastest” express the superlative degree
of adjectives or adverbs.

3 Distinction Between Inflectional Morphemes and Derivational

Morphemes

3.1 Reason for Adding Inflectional or Derivational Morphemes

Inflectional morphemes “indicate syntactic or semantic relations between different words

in a sentence, it occur with all members of some large class of morphemes” [3]51 , while
derivational morphemes “indicate semantic relations within the word, it occurs with
only some members of a class of morphemes” [3]51 . “That whether one should add
inflectional affixes or not depends very often on some other factors within the phrase or
sentence at stake. Whileas derivational affixes are more often based on simple meaning
distinctions” [2]55 .
To put it simply, adding inflectional morphemes are mainly the requirement of
grammar while adding derivational ones are for lexical reasons. For example,

The boy likes his toy.

The boy is very clever.

In the first sentence, the choice of “likes” is determined by the agreement between
the singular subject “the boy” and its predicate in the simple present tense, so the “-s”
here expresses grammatical meaning. However, in the second sentence, the choice of
“clever” or “cleverness” depends on whether we want to talk about the property “clever”
or the state of being clever “cleverness”, thus “clever” here expresses lexical meaning.

3.2 Whether the Grammatical Category of the Word is Changed

“Inflectional morphemes do not change the meaning or word-class of a word. They are
only able to modify the form of a word so that it can fit into a particular syntactic slot”
[6]35 . This could be shown and tested by the following examples:

• flower---flowers
• walk---walks, walked, walking
• my friend---my friend’s
• fast---faster, fastest

For the first example, the plural form of “flower” is “flowers”. In the second one,
the third person singular subject in simple present tense of “walk” is “walks”, its past
tense and past participle “walked”, and its present participle “walking”. In the third, the
possessive case of “my friend” is “my friend’s”. In the fourth, the comparative degree
and superlative degree of “fast” is “faster” and “fastest” respectively.
On the one hand, from “flower” to “flowers”, the grammatical category is still noun.
From “walk” to “walks, walked, walking”, the syntactic category remains unchanged,
686 P. Cao

still a verb. From “my friend” to “my friend’s”, they are still noun phrases and from “fast”
to “faster, fastest”, the word class is still an adjective or adverb. Thus, the inflectional
morphemes only serve to produce different forms of a single lexical item, they do not
form a new word and they never change the part of speech of the word to which it is
attached.
On the other hand, no matter the plural form of countable noun “-s”, the past tense,
the past participle, the present participle or the third person singular subject in simple
present tense of “walk”, or the comparative degree or superlative degree of “fast”, they
all don’t add any new lexical meaning to the base lexeme they are attached to.
However, derivational morphemes (affixes) often change the lexical meaning and
they might change the word class or not, which is shown below:

• friend---friendship, friendly, unfriendly, unfriend

From “friend” to “friendship, friendly, unfriendly, unfriend”, the lexical meanings

are changed from “a person you know well and like, and who is not usually a member
of your family” [9]701 to “a relationship between friends” [8]702 , “behaving in a kind
and pleasant way because you like somebody or want to help them” [9]702 , “not kind
or pleasant to somebody” [9]1928 and “delete somebody from your friend list”. While
from “friend” to “friendly, unfriendly”, the word class are changed from a noun into an
adjective and from “friend” to “friendship”, the part of speech of the word is unchanged,
still a noun and from “friend” to “unfriend”, the grammatical category of the word
remains the same, still a verb which means “add somebody into your friend list or
remove somebody from your friend list”.
Based on the above-mentioned distinction between inflectional morphemes and
derivational ones, it is not difficult to see that not all the “-er” suffix is an inflectional
morphemes. Only when it indicates the comparative degree of adjective or adverbs, as
“-er” in “faster”, it is an inflectional morphemes, which doesn’t change the grammatical
category of the word. Otherwise, it is a derivational morphemes as “-er” in “worker”,
because it changes the word from the verb “work” into a noun “worker” and the meaning
is also changed from “to have a job” to “a person who works”.

3.3 Position of Inflectional or Derivational Morphemes

“In English, most inflectional affixes are suffixes, which are always word final”. [2]55
as “-s” in “flowers”, “-’s” in “John’s”, “-ing” in “walking” and “-er” in “older”.
However, derivational affixes can be either prefixes, suffixes or both at the same
time, prefixes as “un-” in “unhappy”, “ir-” in “irregular” and “en-” in “enable”, suffixes
as “-ment” in “arrangement”, “-ly” in “happily” and “-al” in “national” and both prefix
and suffix as in “unhappily, irregularity, inability, international”. Thus, the position of
derivational affixes is more flexible than that of inflectional ones.
“Whenever there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix attached to the
same word, the inflectional morpheme always follow the derivational one” [1]78 , as “-s”
after “-er” in “bakers”.
 Derivational Morpheme or Inflectional Morpheme 687

3.4 Productivity
“Inflectional affixes are generally less productive than derivational affixes” [2]55 .
Inflectional affixes often add a minute grammatical function only to the stem, such
as the “-s” in “toys”, “-s” in “walks”, “-’s” in “John’s”, thus they only create different
versions of the same lexical word. However, derivational affixes are very productive
in deriving new words just as the name suggest, such as “happy, happily, happiness,
unhappy, unhappily, unhappiness”.

4 Distinction Between Inflectional Morphemes and Derivational

Morphemes in “-ed” or “-ing” Word Ending
From the definitions and distinctions of inflectional morphemes and derivational mor-
phemes mentioned above, it is clear that derivational morphemes express lexical meaning
mainly by adding prefixes and suffixes, which usually change the lexical meaning and
might change the part of speech of the word they are added to, while inflectional mor-
phemes are just grammatical markers, mainly as word finals, expressing grammatical
concepts such as number (-s), case (-’s), tense (-ed or -s), aspect (-ed or -ing) and degree
(-er, -est). They never change the grammatical category of the word and they don’t add
new meaning to the base lexeme.
So, obviously, when words ending with “-ed” or “-ing” indicate the past tense or
the past participle or the present participle or other grammatical meanings, the “-ed” or
“-ing” is an inflectional morpheme, does it mean that all words ending with “-ed” or
“-ing” are inflectional morphemes?
To know more about this question, the following examples will help:

4.1 The Distinction in Single Words

• Are the following “-ed or -ing” word endings derivational or inflectional morphemes?
(1) undeveloped, interested, golden-haired
(2) interesting, boring, moving, lasting,
(3) considering, including, concerning, regarding
(4) learning, building, meaning, finding

In (1) “undeveloped”, “-ed” can make “develop” a verb or an adjective, but “un-”,
a negative prefix, here make the word an adjective, so here “-ed” acting as an adjective
suffix, changes the verb “develop” to an adjective “developed”, thus expresses lexical
meaning, and is a derivational morpheme. The “-ed” in “interested” may express lexical
meaning when it is used to form an adjective like “interested audiences” or grammatical
meaning when it is used to show the past tense or the past participle like “That snow
mountain has always interested me”. While the “-ed” in “golden-haired” is added to
the noun “hair” instead of a verb and it changes the part of speech of the word into an
adjective as in “the golden-haired woman”, thus it is a derivational morpheme.
Similarly, in (2), in most cases, these words are used as adjectives, as in “interesting
books, boring days moving experience”, their word classes are changed, thus the “-ing”
688 P. Cao

endings express lexical meaning and are derivational morphemes. But if they are used
to show the present participle like “the car is moving”, the “-ing” is an inflectional
morpheme.
In (3), most often, these words are used as prepositions or conjunctions as in “con-
sidering his age, he did a wonderful job” and the grammatical categories are changed,
thus the “-ing” expressing lexical meaning, is derivational morphemes. But if they are
used to show the present participle like “he is considering what to do next”, the “-ing”
here is an inflectional morpheme.
In (4), these words can be used as nouns instead of verbs such as “the learning
of English, the teaching building” so, the “-ing”s change the verbs into nouns, express
lexical meaning and are derivational morphemes. But if they are used to show the present
participle like “I am learning English and they are building a house”, here the “-ing” is
an inflectional morpheme.
So, not all “-ed” or “-ing” word endings are inflectional morphemes. Whether
“-ed” or “-ing” is an inflectional morpheme or a derivational morpheme depends on
what meaning it expresses. If it expresses lexical meaning, which mainly represents
attributes, events, states, concepts, etc., it is a derivational morpheme and if it expresses
grammatical meaning, which is mainly reflected in the past tense, past participle and
present participle of verbs, it is an inflectional morpheme.
The lexical meaning or grammatical meaning difference as well as its grammatical
category are the keys to the distinction between derivational morphemes and inflectional
morphemes, which is hard to judge just based on the single word. But in specific linguistic
sentences, their identification and distinction will be easier as shown in the following
part.

4.2 The Distinction in Sentences

• Are the following “-ed or -ing” word endings derivational or inflectional morphemes?
(5) This place developed fast while that was undeveloped.
(6) This movie has interested me, it is really interesting.
(7) She’s very active, considering her age.
(8) He enjoys playing piano.
(9) He is fond of writing, and he is writing now.
(10) This building is very old, they are busy building another new one.

In example (5), the former “-ed” represents the past tense of the verb and is modified
by the adverb “fast”, which belongs to grammatical meaning, and thus is an inflectional
morpheme while the latter “-ed” represents lexical meaning, because the negative prefix
“-un” makes it an adjective and thus, is a derivational morpheme.
In example (6), the “-ed” represents the present perfect tense of the verb and is
followed by the object “me”, which belongs to grammatical meaning, while the “-ing”
represents lexical meaning, because it makes the word an adjective, the grammatical
category is changed and it is modified by the adverb “really”, thus reflects lexical meaning
and is a derivational morpheme.
In example (7), the “-ing” represents lexical meaning, because it makes the word a
preposition or conjunction, its part of speech is changed, thus is a derivational morpheme.
 Derivational Morpheme or Inflectional Morpheme 689

In example (8), the “-ing” can nominalize “play” and turn it into a noun, but here
not a noun since it is followed by the object “the piano”, so its word class is unchanged.
Therefore, here “-ing” expresses grammatical meaning and is an inflectional morpheme.
In example (9), the former “-ing” represents lexical meaning, because it is after
the preposition “of”, functioning as a noun which can be modified by adjectives or
determiners while the latter “-ing” represents grammatical meaning, because it is used
as a present participle and helps to form the simple present progressive together with
“is”.
In example (10), the former “-ing” represents lexical meaning, because it turns the
word from a verb into a noun which is modified by the determiner “this” and is the
subject of the sentence together with “this”, thus, is a derivational morpheme while
the latter “-ing” represents grammatical meaning, because it is followed by the object
“another new house”, the syntactic category is not changed and thus, it is an inflectional
morpheme.
So, from what has been discussed above, it is concluded that when “-ed” is used
to form an adjective or when “-ing” is used to form an adjective or noun, it acts as a
derivational morpheme, while when grammatical meanings such as tense and aspect are
expressed in a sentence, it is an inflectional morpheme. Whether it is an adjective can
be tested by adding adverbs such as “very” or “really” before it and whether it is a noun
can be tested by adding adjectives or determiners before it.
Moreover, in identifying the derivational or inflectional morpheme for “-ed” or “-ing”
ending, grammatical category should be taken into consideration. If the part of speech of
the word is changed, it is a derivational morpheme while if the word class is unchanged,
it is likely to be an inflectional morpheme. Last, the contribution of “-ed” or “-ing”
ending to the word and its function in the sentence should also be paid attention to so as
to facilitate the distinction of derivational morpheme from inflectional morphemes.

5 Conclusion
The learning of morphology plays a very important role in students’ language learning
because a clear knowledge of word formation process and word formation rules is a
great help for their vocabulary learning and enlargement and also beneficially prepares
students to be future English teachers and lays a good foundation for their future language
learning and researching.
To students’ confusion that whether the “-ed” or “-ing” words ending is an inflectional
morphemes or a derivational morpheme, it is concluded that the lexical meaning or
grammatical meaning difference is the key to their identification and distinction. If it
expresses lexical meaning, it is a derivational morpheme and if grammatical meaning,
inflectional morpheme. So, when “-ed” is used to form an adjective or when “-ing” is
used to form an adjective or noun, it shows lexical meaning and acts as a derivational
morpheme. While when “-ed” or “-ing” marks tense and aspect of verbs, it expresses
grammatical meanings and is an inflectional morpheme. For the single words ending with
“-ed” or “-ing”, it’s not easy to identify the type sometimes, but for the words ending with
“-ed” or “-ing” in specific sentence, grammar analysis can be made to check whether
lexical meaning or grammatical meaning is expressed. Put it another way, adverbs such
690 P. Cao

as “very” or “really” can be used to test whether it is an adjective and proper adjectives
or determiners can be used to test whether it is a noun. Last, the syntactic category of
“-ed” or “-ing” ending, its contribution to the word formation and its function in the
sentence should be taken into full consideration in the identification of inflectional and
derivational morphemes.

Authors’ Contributions. This paper is independently completed by Panpan Cao.

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