An Introduction to English Morphology ― Words and Their Structure

What exactly are words? Are they the things that get listed in dictionaries, or are they the basic units of sentence structure? Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy explores the implications of these different approaches to words in English. He explains the various ways in which words are related to one another, and shows how the history of the English language has affected word structure.

Topics include: words, sentences and dictionaries; a word and its parts (roots and affixes); a word and its forms (inflection); a word and its relatives (derivation); compound words; word structure; productivity; and the historical sources of English word formation.

Requiring no prior linguistic training, this textbook is suitable for undergraduate students of English - literature or language - and provides a sound basis for further linguistic study.

Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy teaches linguistics at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He studied at Oxford, MIT, and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he gained his PhD. His previous books are Allomorphy in Inflexion, Current Morphology and The Origins of Complex Language.