Old English differs from Present-Day English in two main respects. The first is that Old English has relatively rich inflectional morphology, most of which is no longer present in Present-Day English. The second is that Old English word order is relatively free compared to that of Present-Day English, particularly when it comes to the position of finite verbs. These differences are the result of a number of changes that can be observed in the recorded history of English and that are commonly understood as representing a typological shift towards a more analytic type. The key changes include the loss of inflection, the shift from OV to VO and the development towards a fixed position of the lexical verb, which have also resulted in a divergence from the continental West Germanic languages.

This chapter provides an overview of the evolution of English morphology, focusing on inflection. Beside a largely synchronic account of the nominal and verbal morphology in the individual historical periods, the chapter explains the underlying mechanisms and motivations behind morphological developments pertinent to individual stages. These include changes such as loss of inflections, transformation of case, number and gender systems, or the restructuring of the formal marking of tense and mood. The typological drift which English experienced over the last 1300 years stays central to the discussion, as does language contact with Celtic, Norse and Norman French, whose role as a potential catalyst for morphological changes will be explored. The discussion emphasises the dynamic nature of the morphological system and the continuity of the processes involved in its gradual transformation over the centuries.

Speakers frequently (perhaps always) have only partial knowledge of the meanings of the words they use, and may have demonstrably wrong information about them. When it comes to morphologically complex words, we must therefore expect the same to be true, and ‘meaning’ of a new word to be more specific than the linguistic structure of that word indicates. The meaning conveyed by inflection is more precise than the meaning conveyed by derivational affixes.

A widely accepted principle in morphological studies is that inflectional affixes should not be found between a root and a derivational affix or internally in a compound. Many of the apparent exceptions to this general principle in English can be argued not to be genuinely exceptional, but some types, including an innovative type, appear to contradict the usual patterns, though it is not clear why this should be the case.

In this chapter some of the problems facing the scholar of word-formation are considered, including the nature of the word, the boundaries of word-formation, the question of productivity and problems with determining the nature of evidence for it, whether word-formation is defined by rules, some proposed constraints on word-formation and whether word-formation is part of morphology.

Canonical form is no longer discussed much, but has implications for the distinction between inflection and derivation, for helping us recognize a morphologically complex word and for helping us define a prototypical word in English.

A word like tenderfoot has two possible plural forms: tenderfoots and tenderfeet. Why is a regular plural allowed in this word, and what factors license such unexpected regularity? Various factors are considered here, one of which has previously been ignored, and the fact that usage is divided and apparently unpredictable is discussed.

Chapter 6 treats Balkan convergence involving morphology and morphosyntax more generally, focusing particularly on inflectional morphology. Attention is given to categories and to forms, as well as the special, and often nuanced, functions and semantic range of particular items. Convergence involving nouns and noun phrases is documented, with regard to case, deixis, definiteness, gender, number, and adjectival modification. Particular attention is given to the development of analytic structures. Regarding verbs and verb phrases, convergence is discussed in the categories of tense, aspect, mood, evidential marking, voice, and valency.

The framework of Construction Grammar extends naturally to morphology. Constructions in a lexicon–grammar continuum elegantly capture the regularities and idiosyncrasies that typically co-occur in complex words. Yet, Construction Morphology is not just Construction Grammar applied to morphology. Morphological phenomena come with their own challenges and place specific demands on the theory. This chapter outlines the contributions that a constructionist approach to morphology makes to constructionist thinking more broadly. The focus is on two construction-based approaches: Construction Morphology and Relational Morphology. Three topics are highlighted especially. First, idiomaticity and other types of non-compositionality are discussed in the context of the relations within and across morphological constructions. Second, the chapter addresses productivity, specifically limited productivity as is often seen in word-formation. The third topic is paradigmaticity and the role of ‘horizontal’ connections between complex words and between morphological schemas. The chapter aims to show that morphology, the grammar of words, is instructive for the larger theoretical framework.

The prosodic word (ω-word), the first interface level with morphosyntactic constituents, is introduced. The chapter starts with monomorphemes and shows that lexical words are ω-words: They have a minimal weight (i.e., they are minimally bimoraic). By contrast, function words are usually not ω-words: When unfocused they are often pronounced in their reduced form and do not carry lexical stress. A review and OT analysis of the defective distribution of the inflectional prefix ge- is provided. The rest of the chapter is concerned with derivation and compounding. A distinction is made between concatenative and non-concatenative prosodic morphology. In the former, complex words are built in a recursive fashion and the morphemes can be ω-words themselves or not, the result is always a ωmax. Culminativity and syllable structure are indicators of prosodic words, as is their faculty of being elided in coordination. It is shown that inflection and part of derivation are non-moraic and do not form prosodic words, while another part of derivation and all elements of compounds always form distinct prosodic words. An OT analysis is developed that takes into account all aspects of prosodic words.

Slavic languages are notorious for rich inflectional systems, allowing substantial freedom in word order. Aside from SVO word order, canonical for the great majority of Slavic languages, orders with arguments surfacing in non-canonical positions are also allowed. We consider two such orders – OVS and OSV. The two orders stem from two different types of argument reordering with distinct syntactic, interpretive and prosodic properties. The first is linked to neutral prosody and is licenced by the object being construed as interpretively prominent compared to the subject. The object undergoing this type of reordering binds into the subject and takes scope over it. This reordering is possible only if the thematic prominence relations of arguments are identified by means other than their relative structural position. The second type is linked to marked prosody and is licenced by the displaced object being disambiguated as contrastive. In this type of reordering the object cannot bind into the subject or take scope over it. This type of reordering is possible only if the object carries a strong prosodic marker.

The chapter opens with a basic structural description of declensional patterns in Slavic languages, concentrating on several pervasive, salient, and typologically important features. The Late Common Slavic (LCS) system is outlined, with samples of key substantival and pronominal paradigms. Next, the survey traces crucial changes from LCS into the modern languages in the organization of nominal inflection into classes, including emergence of patterns specific for adjectives and numerals. Also discussed is the prehistory of the LCS system and its contextualization within the Indo-European family. Finally, the chapter reviews a number of mostly post-LCS innovations involving interesting synchronic or diachronic problems, such as: encoding virility and animacy; encoding innovative case/number categories (‘second locative’, partitive, paucal, etc.); patterns of syncretism and developments towards analyticity; defectivity and indeclinability; recycling of former dual endings; rise of definiteness markers; transfers to and from declensional morphology; role of segmental alternations and prosodic distinctions in declensional systems.

This chapter provides an overview of the inventory, formation, and use of synthetic and periphrastic tense and mood forms in modern Belarusian, Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian, Bulgarian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Lower and Upper Sorbian, and Ukrainian. It addresses both characteristics common to all modern languages and features of individual languages.

The article describes grammatical voice in Slavic: (1) informal characterization of voice; (2) definition of voice and a general inventory of specific voices; (3) voice types in Slavic; (4) Slavic derived voices; (5) discourse functions of voices; (6) historical development of voice in Slavic; (7) some voice-like phenomena in Slavic; and (8) summary of the main issues in the study of Slavic voice. Voice phenomena are considered in a dependency approach to language.

Chapter 6 presents an overview of the organization of the mental grammar. We will focus on general architectural properties of the mental grammar, that is, the units and rules that every grammar must have to capture the sound form, meaning, and syntactic structure of words and sentences. I will suggest that the grammar functions like a checking device in that it tells the language user whether linguistic expressions are well-formed (i.e., grammatical, in accordance with the rules of grammar). There is some technical detail (and many linguistic terms), but at the very least the reader will be left with the conviction that languages are quite complex. It is explained how languages allow people to express any thought they might have, drawing attention to the pivotal notion of recursivity. This chapter sets the stage for being amazed that children have pretty much full control of their language by the age of 4. By learning what a mental grammar might look like, the reader can form an idea of what it is that the child needs to acquire. Without such information, it would be difficult to discuss the role of nature and nurture in language.

This chapter discusses the place of inflectional and derivational morphology in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). After describing how inflection is encoded in the layered structure of the word, the chapter offers an explanatory account of the factors that motivate inflectional marking. The functional orientation of RRG presupposes a view of morphology distributed throughout the different components of the grammatical model. Additionally, the typological commitment of RRG requires paying close attention to the role of inflectional processes not only in dependent-marking languages but also in head-marking languages, since the interface between inflectional morphology and syntax is much tighter in the latter type of language. The chapter then reflects on word formation as a lexicological process which involves the interaction of lexical semantics and morphology. The approach to derivational morphology can be said to be markedly motivated by semantics.

The concepts being discussed in this chapter are bound morpheme, free morpheme, root, affix, semi-affix, inflection, derivation and their application in the analysis of Chinese word-formation process. The inflectional affixes include aspectual markers, plural marker, potential infixes as well as those involved in reduplication. Two major approached are presented in this chapter about the derivation of Chinese words. The essence of the morphological derivation approach is that most word-building blocks have equal status as free root and bound roots, except for affixes. Chinese words are formed with these roots according to morphological rules and the syntactic status of a word is determined by its head. The essence of the syntactic-semantic is that the majority of Chinese words are constructed according to syntactic rules in that the relationship between morphemes in a word could be described as conjunction, modification, subject-predicate, verb-object or verb-result. A few bound morphemes are treated as affixes since their semantic content has been bleached, and they form words with morphological rules.

In Chapter 2, we discussed evidence supporting a Usage-based Construction Grammar approach. Now, we move on to looking at the various types of constructions needed for a full analysis of Present-day English. We start with what is normally considered to be the smallest types of FORM-MEANING pairings, morphemes, and investigate the various parameters according to which these can be classified. In particular, we will see to what degree the classic Structuralist distinction between grammatical and lexical morphemes makes sense from a Construction Grammar point of view. Then we will look at the various ways in which Present-day English can outlinine a Construction Grammar approach to word-formation.