Английского

§ 3. In traditional grammar the study of the morphemic structure of 
the word was conducted in the light of the two basic criteria: posi-
tional (the location of the marginal morphemes in relation to the 
central ones) and semantic or functional (the correlative contribu-
tion of the morphemes to the general meaning of the word). The 
combination of these two criteria in an integral description has led 
to the rational classification of morphemes that is widely used both 
in research linguistic work and in practical lingual tuition. 
In accord with the traditional classification, morphemes on the up-
per level are divided into root-morphemes (roots) and affixal mor-
phemes (affixes). The roots express the concrete, "material" part of 
the meaning of the word, while the affixes express the specifica-
tional part of the meaning of the word, the specifications being of 
lexico-semantic and grammatico-semantic character. 
The roots of notional words are classical lexical morphemes. 
The affixal morphemes include prefixes, suffixes, and inflexions 
(in the tradition of the English school grammatical inflexions are 
commonly referred to as "suffixes"). Of these, prefixes and lexical 
suffixes have word-building functions, together with the root they 
form the stem of the word; inflexions (grammatical suffixes) ex-
press different morphological categories. 
The root, according to the positional content of the term (i.e. the 
border-area between prefixes and suffixes), is obligatory for any 
word, while affixes are not obligatory. Therefore one and the same 
morphemic segment of functional (i.e. non-notional) status, de-
pending on various morphemic environments, can in principle be 
used now as an affix (mostly, a prefix), now as a root. Cf.: 
out — a root-word (preposition, adverb, verbal postposition, adjec-
tive, noun, verb); 
throughout — a composite word, in which -out serves as one of the 
roots (the categorial status of the meaning of both morphemes is 
the same); 
outing — a two-morpheme word, in which out is a root, and -ing is 
a suffix; 

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outlook, outline, outrage, out-talk, etc. — words, in which out- 
serves as a prefix; 
look-out, knock-out, shut-out, time-out, etc. — words (nouns), in 
which -out serves as a suffix. 
The morphemic composition of modern English words has a wide 
range of varieties; in the lexicon of everyday speech the preferable 
morphemic types of stems are root-stems (one-root stems or two-
root stems) and one-affix stems. With grammatically changeable 
words, these stems take one grammatical suffix {two "open" 
grammatical suffixes are used only with some plural nouns in the 
possessive case, cf.: the children's toys, the oxen's yokes). 
Thus, the abstract complete morphemic model of the common Eng-
lish word is the following: prefix + root + lexical suf-
fix+grammatical suffix. 
The syntagmatic connections of the morphemes within the model 
form two types of hierarchical structure. The first is characterised 
by the original prefixal stem (e.g. prefabricated), the second is 
characterised by the original suffixal stem (e.g. inheritors). If we 
use the symbols St for stem, R for root, Pr for prefix, L for lexical 
suffix, Gr for grammatical suffix, and, besides, employ three 
graphical symbols of hierarchical grouping — braces, brackets, and 
parentheses, then the two morphemic word-structures can be pre-
sented as follows: 
W
1
= {[Pr + (R + L)] +Gr}; W
2
= {[(Pr + R) +L] + Gr} 
In the morphemic composition of more complicated words these 
model-types form different combinations.