Exploring the meanings of morphemes and how they combine to form the meanings of complex words, this book examines derived words (writer, unionize), compounds (dog bed, truck driver), and words formed by conversion. Using a series of case studies from English, Rochelle Lieber analyzes the lexical semantics of word formation in a systematic way. The reader is able to explore the nature of affixal polysemy--the reasons why there are multiple affixes with the same function, and the issues of mismatch between form and meaning in word formation.