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.

This chapter presents techniques for proving the termination of 3-polygraphs. A first method is based on a certain type of well-founded orders called reduction orders. Attention then turns to functorial interpretations: these amount to construct a functor from the underlying category to another category which already bears a reduction order. This covers quite a few useful examples. To address more complex cases, a powerful technique, due to Guiraud, is presented, based on the construction of a derivation from the polygraph. Here, termination is obtained by specifying quantities on 2-cells which decrease during rewriting, based on information propagated by the 2-cells themselves.

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.

The derivation and formulation of the population balance equation (PBE) is presented in this chapter. Various formulations such as the discrete, continuous, multidimensional and coupled PBEs are presented under a unifying framework and related to the problems that they can be applied to. The spatially dependent PBE and its coupling with fluid dynamics is also discussed.

Young children often lack words for what they want to talk about. To fill the gaps in their lexicon, they coin new words. They rely on compounding and derivation to do this. This means identifying and analyzing parts of words – roots or stems, and affixes – and learning their meanings, as well as which combinations are possible. Some languages favor compounding and some derivation in word formation. Children are sensitive to which options are the most productive and adopt those first. Two-year-olds offer analyses of word meanings, as in running-stick (I run with it) or high-chair (it is high), and provide analyses of novel compounds where they take account of language structure (head noun first in Hebrew, second in English). They also analyze derived forms with agentive endings. They start to produce novel words from as young as age two, whether compounds in Germanic languages, or derived forms in Romance and Semitic. They begin with simple forms (minimal or no change to the root), advance to compound or derived word forms that are transparent in meaning, and opt for the most productive options in the adult language, with the goal of finding the right words to convey the child-speaker’s meaning.

The present chapter summarizes the patterns of lexical derivation in Slavic languages. Lexical derivation is presented here as word formation. Words are formed in the sentence by word-structure rules that expand root categories like N and A to derived structures like N[A–N] and A[N–A], followed by the lexicalization of the root and suffix categories with morphemes from the lexicon. Differing from the morpheme approach to morphology is the word approach, which assumes a lexicon of words and favors processes over items. The author presents basic patterns of prefixation, suffixation, and suffixless recategorization.

In diachronic development and contemporary structure of Slavic lexicons, we see influences of universal semantic mechanisms and specific historical processes, of language development, and of language contact. Old Church Slavonic played a role in forming Slavic vocabulary, especially in Russian, where specific or colloquial synonyms contrast with abstract or formal (golova ‘head as body part’ vs. glava ‘head as top in a hierarchy’). Semantic divergence of Proto-Slavic roots creates inter-lingual enantiosemy (e.g., Rus. čerstvyj ‘stale’ vs. Cze. čerstvý ‘fresh’). To compare languages we use regular abstract semantic relations, e.g. synonymy, antonymy, or lexical functions Magn, Oper. Linguistic expressions may differ, but we find similar semantic oppositions and derivation mechanisms. The languages share the same types of antonymy, albeit using different prefixes. Semantic bleaching patterns also agree: adjectives meaning ‘scary’ develop to mean ‘high degree’. Motion verbs such as ‘go’ come to mean process or result. We give case studies of lexical relations: Polish synonyms honor vs. cześć, Russian pravda vs. istina.

Chapter 6 summarizes new postulates of physicochemical mechanics and gives a simple but systematic derivation of all major transport and equilibrium relations.

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.

Latin loanwords (and codeswitches) were normally written in the Greek alphabet and took Greek endings. Their spellings started out as approximate transcriptions of the Latin pronunciation (not transliterations of the Latin spelling), but over time the Greek spellings could either remain fixed as the Latin pronunciation changed or be updated to reflect such changes. Most loanwords joined a Greek declensional class that closely resembled their Latin declension, but some changed declension or gender when borrowed. Some borrowings (including all verbs) acquired Greek suffixes as part of the borrowing process. Some loanwords were created by univerbating Latin phrases, making Latin-Latin compounds, or making Greek-Latin compounds with the Latin element taken directly from Latin. Derivatives could also be formed from previously-borrowed loanwords using any of the usual Greek derivation and compoundingprocesses.

Before venturing into the study of choreographies, we introduce the formalism of inference systems. Inference systems are widely used in the fields of formal logic and programming languages and they were later applied to theory of choreographies as well.