The Righthand Head Rule in Inflectional Morphology
The righthand head rule may also be applied to inflectional morphology (i.e. the addition of semantic information without changing the word class). In relation to inflectional morphology, the righthand head rule holds that the rightmost element of a word provides the most essential additional semantic information.
For example, the past tense form of 'play' is created by adding the past tense suffix '-(e)d' to the right. This suffix provides the past tense feature which is also the main additional semantic content of the output word 'played'.
Likewise, the plural form of 'dog' is created by the addition of the plural nominal suffix '-s' to the right of the input. Thus 'dogs' inherits its plurality feature from the suffix.
The same thing goes for the comparative form of the adjective'ugly'. 'Uglier' is created by the addition of the comparative suffix '-er' to the right, thus receiving its comparative feature from the suffix.
Formalizing the examples shows that the underlying principle of inflection is basically the same as the righthand head rule (INF=infinitive, P=past tense, SG=singular, POS=positive, COM=comparative):
- playINF + -(e)dP = playedP
- dogSG + -sPL = dogsPL
- uglyPOS + -erCOM = uglierCOM
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