2. Derivational morphemes: English is blessed with derivational morphemes; there are quite a number of derivational morphemes. Look at the following sets of words and identify what happens to the original word when DM is attached to it (hint: Does the part of the speech remain the same?)

Examples:

change category
blind blindness
address addressee
deliver delivery
exist existent
victim victimize
burden burdensome

change meaning

culture monoculture
star megastar
intelligent ultra-intelligent
president ex-president

Differences between the inflectional morphemes and the derivational morphemes:

1. The inflectional morphemes do not change the class (the part of speech) of the root, the derivational morphemes may or may not change the class of the root.

2. All inflectional morphemes are suffixes but the derivational morphemes can be either prefixes or suffixes.

3. Although there are fewer inflectional morphemes, they are widely applied. In other words, under the rules above, they can applied to almost any words of the same root. The derivational morphemes, however, are not as productive. Take 'un-prefix' for example, it can be attached to the adjective roots 'happy', 'reliable', 'important' ? 'unhappy', 'unreliable', 'unimportant'. Nonetheless, it cannot be applied to other adjective roots such as 'short, long, far ?*unshort', *unlong, *unfar.

4. The derivational morphemes are attached closer to the root.
friendlier: {friend} + derivational morpheme {-ly} + inflectional morpheme {-er}

5. Not more than one inflectional morpheme can be added to the root but there is no limit of allowable derivational morphemes.
*narrowerest {narrow} + {COMP} + {SUP} *droven {drive} + {PAST} + {PAST PART}
unrecoverability {-un} + {recover} + {-able} + + {-ity}