Hi again,

English in particular inflects nouns for plural and verbs for tense, which does not change the grammatical category. However, derivational affixes can operate a change in grammatical category. These affixes are often referred to as nominalizers, verbalizers, adjectivalizers, adverbalizers. Other derivational affixes can operate a change in meaning without changing the grammatical category:

–time (PREarrange, AFTERthought, ONset)

–number (MULTIlingual)

–place (Infield, ONstage)

–degree (SUPERsensitive, OVERconfident, HYPERactive)

–privation (Asymmetric)

–negation (ANTIsocial, UNreasonable, Ineffective, DYSfunctional, DISregard, DEactivate)

–size (MICROchip, MINIcam)

–Repetition (REuse)

Hope this will help.

Thank you vey much, Zouheir for this detailed interesting information. Best regards. Hazim.

It is generally believed that inflectional endings change the meaning of the stem but not the word class ( See Francis Katamba). Alternatively, many consider derivational affixes to be more productive than inflectional ones. However, many generalizations in English morphology are inconclusive because we can also find inflectional patterns that are highly productive. For instance, the plural morpheme s has a very high frequency in English just as the agentive suffix er is a derivational suffix with an appreciable degree of generality.