Derivational Morpheme or Inflectional Morpheme—A Case Study of “-ing” or “-ed” Word Ending in English Linguistics Teaching

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.