If the morphemic structure is taken as a ground of classification, adverbs fall into six groups: 1) The first largest group is made up of those adverbs formed from derived and base adjectives by adding the suffix -ly: evenly, smoothly, glamorously, beautifully, wonderfully, etc. 2) The second group originally very small, but in present-day English […]

Verb-forming derivational means are not numerous. The common de­vices are 1) affixation, 2) conversion, 3) verb+adverb combination, 4) back-formation. There is a rather short list of derivational affixes making English verbs. First, these are a limited number of suffixes such as the suffixes -en (to blacken, to strengthen, to toughen), -fy (to intensify, to ratify, […]

Adjectives as a rule have a suffixational structure and, on the ground of their derivational pattern, are divided into base adjectives and derived adjectives. Base adjectives are usually monosyllabic, which influences their formal qualities: they form the degrees of comparison by taking inflections -er and -est or by undergoing morphophonemic changes, i.e. they have developed […]

English nouns may be mono- as well as polysyllabic. The number of monosyllabic nouns in which the root, the stem and the word proper over­lap, is quite considerable. Nevertheless, noun-forming derivational means are rather numerous. Grammatically, it is important, since suffixes, besides their semantic function, also serve as part-of-speech indicators. The suffixational structure is found […]