How do words get their pieces?

From morphemes to Distributed Morphology

Utku Turk

LING 449U, How words are built

2026-09-29

What are we preparing when we prepare a word?

Last week: speakers can prepare morphological pieces, as well as sounds.

Today: what are those pieces, and how do they become a spoken word?

Compare smile, smiles, and smiled. What stays the same? What changes?

A first pass: meaningful pieces

Word A first segmentation Contributions
dogs dog-s dog + plural
unkind un-kind negation + kind
workers work-er-s work + person who does it + plural

A morpheme, in a familiar introductory definition, is a minimal pairing of form with meaning or grammatical function.

Root, base, affix

work → worker → workers

Term What it identifies Here
Root The core left after removing affixes work
Base What an affix attaches to work for -er; worker for -s
Affix A bound piece attached to a base -er, -s

A base can already contain several morphemes.

Ambiguities in words

unlockable can have two bracketings:

Structure Interpretation
[un-[lock-able]] Not able to be locked
[[un-lock]-able] Able to be unlocked

Same linear pieces; different combinations and meanings.

Free/bound and lexical/functional

These answer different questions.

Lexical content Grammatical function
Free: can occur as a word dog, kind the, and
Bound: needs a host cran- in cranberry plural -s, past -ed

Free/bound: how dependent is its form?
Lexical/functional: what kind of contribution does it make?

Why isn’t “root” another word for “free morpheme”?

Affixes can go in different places

Pattern Position Example
Prefix Before a base un-kind
Suffix After a base kind-ness
Infix Inside a base Tagalog s-um-ulat, from sulat ‘write’
Circumfix pattern Around a base German ge-spiel-t ‘played’, participle

Position describes where the material appears.

Derivation and inflection

Typical job Example
Derivation Make a new lexeme kind → kindness; kind → unkind
Inflection Make a grammatical form of a lexeme dog → dogs; smile → smiled

Derivation can change word class; unkind shows that it need not.

Inflection contributes meaning too: past and plural matter.

Try the distinctions

unhappiness · replayed · doghouses

For each word:

  1. Identify roots and affixes.
  2. Identify a base that contains more than one morpheme.
  3. Separate derivation, inflection, and compounding.

Which labels describe position, and which describe function?

One function, several pronunciations

Plural form Ending we hear
cats [s]
dogs [z]
buses [ɪz] or [əz]

These are allomorphs: different realizations of a morpheme.

Here, the surrounding sounds predict the variation.

Grammatical pieces needn’t be sound segments

Contrast What changes in the form?
cat → cats Add an ending
sheep → sheep No audible change
mouse → mice Change the stem vowel
go → went Use a radically different stem: suppletion

We can identify a grammatical contrast without finding a separate sound segment for it.

One ending can express several features

She walk-s.

The ending occurs with a bundle of properties:

present tense + third person + singular

Compare I walk, they walk, she walked.

Where are the three separate sound pieces for those three properties?

What should a theory explain?

  • Combination: how do the pieces form a structure?
  • Realization: how does that structure receive a pronunciation?
  • Interpretation: how does it receive a meaning?

DM separates these jobs and locates them in different parts of the grammar.

Where are words built?

A lexicalist architecture Distributed Morphology
A word-building component supplies words to syntax. Syntax builds structures within words as well as phrases.
Word formation and phrase formation have distinct machinery. One syntactic system combines the abstract building blocks.

DM: pronunciation is supplied after syntactic combination.

“Morpheme” now means something more abstract

First-pass definition In the DM analysis
A minimal form–function pairing A terminal node with grammatical content, or a root
Plural looks like a piece -s Syntax contains Number[plural]
Its sound and function come together A realization rule supplies its exponent

Exponent = the form that realizes a grammatical unit.

A map of the grammar

Syntactic features and roots feed syntax. Syntax branches toward morphological operations and phonological form on the left, and logical form and the conceptual interface on the right. Vocabulary Items feed phonological form; the Encyclopedia feeds the conceptual interface.

What is distributed?

Store Stored information Used for
Syntactic inputs Features and roots, e.g. [past], √SMILE Building structure
Vocabulary Rules linking roots/features to exponents Pronunciation
Encyclopedia Conventional meanings and world knowledge Interpretation in context

There is stored knowledge, spread across these lists.

A variation in the reading

The usual three-store presentation groups features and roots together.

Goryczka (2025) separates them into two input lists, giving four lists in total.

The central distinction remains:

syntactic inputs · pronunciations · conventional meanings

Build a word: smiled

1. Select abstract ingredients

√SMILE + v + T[past]

2. Combine them hierarchically

[ ] ]

v makes a verbal structure; T contributes tense.

Give the structure a pronunciation

3. Vocabulary Insertion supplies exponents

Abstract item Exponent in this example
√SMILE /smaɪl/
v ∅
T[past] /d/

4. Arrange the pieces and apply phonology: [smaɪld], smiled.

Meanwhile, the structure is interpreted

LF: combine the structural contributions, including past tense.

Conceptual interface: use conventional meaning and world knowledge.

For smiled: a smiling event located in the past.

The root label, its pronunciation, and its interpretation have different jobs in the analysis.

How does the grammar choose an exponent?

A simplified plural Vocabulary:

Realization rule Condition
Number[plural] ↔︎ ∅ In the local context of √SHEEP
Number[plural] ↔︎ /z/ Elsewhere

two sheep: the specific rule applies.
two dogs: use the elsewhere rule.

Underspecification: a rule can say less

I smiled. She smiled. They smiled.

The subjects differ in person and number; the past ending stays /d/.

A rule T[past] ↔︎ /d/ need not specify person or number.

  • Its requirements must be present in the node.
  • It must not require a conflicting feature.
  • A more specific eligible competitor can block it.

The rule can be underspecified even when the structure is fully specified.

Why leave room for morphological operations?

Syntax and pronunciation may package features differently.

  • Fusion: combine terminal nodes for realization.
  • Fission: split a node or its realization across more than one piece.
  • Impoverishment: remove a feature on the pronunciation branch.

These operations occur after syntax, toward PF.

Your turn: record

Keep a record of the meeting.

Please record the meeting.

How would DM derive these two uses of record, using its different lists?

Your turn: separate

The files are separate.

Please separate the files.

How would DM derive these two uses of separate, using its different lists?

Your turn: nominalizations

arrive → arrival

collect → collection

destroy → destruction

How would DM derive these nouns? What must be listed, and what must the morphology or phonology do?

Back to language production

A possible error pattern Candidate source of difficulty
Wrong root, intended tense retained Root selection or realization
Intended root, wrong tense form Feature selection or grammatical realization

Root and inflection errors can help us investigate these distinctions.

What additional evidence would distinguish a feature error from an exponent-selection error?

Exit ticket

  1. Classify -s in dogs by position and grammatical function.
  2. Explain how REcord and reCORD can share a root but differ in category and pronunciation.
  3. Trace smiled through the DM architecture: where do structure, pronunciation, and interpretation come from?

Foundations and further reading

Thank you

Thank you to Faruk Akkuş and Pamela Goryczka for the materials that helped shape these slides.