Help with morphology trees-please.

Greetings-

I am drawing morphology trees and I am stuck.

I have to do one for the words, geekiness, conversational and retrovirus.


I am thinking the converstationally can be this way or just conversational-ly which would make it just adverb (highes branch/ top) then adjective extended branch...

My biggest issue, however is geekiness.

geeky which is the root word is a adjective, but the ness makes it a noun. Can a noun modify a adjective to make a new noun? http://www.longhaircareforum.com/ima...s/spinning.gifhttp://www.longhaircareforum.com/ima...s/spinning.gif

PLEAAAAAAASE HELP!!!!!!!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bmack

Greetings-

I am drawing morphology trees and I am stuck.

I have to do one for the words, geekiness, conversational and retrovirus.


I am thinking the converstationally can be this way or just conversational-ly which would make it just adverb (highes branch/ top) then adjective extended branch...

My biggest issue, however is geekiness.

geeky which is the root word is a adjective, but the ness makes it a noun. Can a noun modify a adjective to make a new noun? http://www.longhaircareforum.com/ima...s/spinning.gifhttp://www.longhaircareforum.com/ima...s/spinning.gif
Yes, but ness is not a noun, it's simply another morpheme (and see below).

PLEAAAAAAASE HELP!!!!!!!!

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Your diagrams look strange. Are you inferring that 'retrovirus' is made from adding 'us' to 'retrovir'?
The morphology of a word has nothing to do with nouns modifying adjectives, etc. It's about morphemes modifying other morphemes or words to make new words.
Are you sure 'geeky' is the root?

To pursue Raymott's last question a bit, 'geekiness' is characteristic behaviour. But of whom?

b

I think he just meant to show (us) to inform that the it belongs to the root "virus". With regards to the first three, "Retroviral", you are correct in identifying the end result as an adjective. The root is virus, which attaches to "al" to form "viral". You will attach "Retro" last since "Retro" is more likely to attach to an adjective than a noun. With yur second word, "conversationally", the root is actually a verb, "converse". Attach "ation" to make it a noun, "al' to make it an "adjective" and finally, "ly" to make it an adverb. This is basically the answer but I will leave the actual trees to you.