Three classes of '+' boundaries.

It is well-known that English morphology has two classes of affixes: "+" morphemes such as in+, ad+, ab+, +al, +iry and "#", morphemes such as un#, #ness, #ly. The two classes differ in a number of respects, including: (1) Etymology: + morphemes are (often) historically correlated with Latin; # with German and Greek, (2) Stress Assignment (e.g., parent + al vs. parent # hood), and (3) Word Formation: + morphemes can attach to bound morphemes (e.g., cirmin- as in criminal); # cannot (criminhood). This paper will extend this reasoning in dividing the first classes into three parts.