This is an updated and substantially revised edition of Peter Matthews's well-known Morphology, first published in 1974. It includes chapters on inflectional and lexical morphology, derivational processes and productivity, compounds, paradigms, and much new material on markedness and other aspects of iconicity. As in the first edition, the theoretical discussion is eclectic and critical: its scope ranges from the ancient grammarians to the work of Chomsky and his followers, the disintegration of the classical Chomskyan scheme, and the renewed standing of morphology and historical linguistics...

This is a history of the spread and dominance of North American linguistic theory, concentrating on the influential ideas of Bloomfield and Chomsky. It gives an account of the development and continuity of three dominant ideas in linguistics: the study of formal relations can and should be separated from that of meaning; sentences are composed of linear configurations of morphemes; many aspects of grammar are determined genetically. This is an invaluable survey for all linguists wishing to trace the origins of their discipline.