Timeline for The suffix -er in English: Why is this derivational?
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5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 7, 2014 at 8:28 | comment | added | curiousdannii♦ | No I don't think any of those are necessarily accurate, but it's hard to come up with a single universally acceptable definition. It may be that there isn't a binary difference but more of a spectrum with prototypical derivational and inflectional affixes at each end. | |
| Jul 7, 2014 at 8:16 | comment | added | Teusz | So, a good way to determine if a suffix is inflectional, is with reference to: (1) Can it attach to many words? (2) Is it grammatically necessary? (3) Does it have little/no semantic effect on the meaning of the word to which it attaches? [this last one seems hard to elaborate -- what do you say?] | |
| Jul 7, 2014 at 6:50 | comment | added | curiousdannii♦ | Yes that's a good thought. | |
| Jul 7, 2014 at 5:59 | comment | added | Teusz | This is a great answer. Thank you. One quick follow-up. You wrote "The primary factor I think is that derivational affixes often change the part of speech of a lexical item, and inflectional affixes don't" -- but perhaps it is more accurate to simplify this, "... often significantly change the meaning of the word to which they attach", e.g. bake>baker>bakery. This way, both -r and -ery can be considered as derivational rather than inflectional. What do you think? | |
| Jul 7, 2014 at 0:55 | history | answered | curiousdannii♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |