MORPHOLOGY(Linguistics)

Morphology in Linguistics- The study of structure of the words and word formation.

A. Word Structure1. Morpheme2. Free Morpheme (Lexical & Functional)3. Bound Morpheme (Inflectional & Derivational)4. Contractible Morpheme

Morphemes- The smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language.

A. Free Morpheme• The type of morpheme that

can stand alone as words by themselves

EXAMPLEfriend boy tree

*Free morphemes have two categories

Lexical and Functional morphemes

1. Lexical Morpheme• Referred also as OPEN CLASS

because we can add morphemes to these words.

• These are nouns, verbs and adjectives.

EXAMPLEgirl (n.) jump (v.)red (adj.)boy (n.) look (v.) pink (adj.)

2. Functional Morpheme• Words that do not have clear

meaning but has grammatical functions.

• These are conjunctions, prepositions, articles, auxiliaries and pronouns.

• Referred also as CLOSED CLASS because it cannot be added to other morphemes.

EXAMPLEhe she we but nor

B. Bound Morpheme• These are AFFIXES that must

be attached to the word.

AFFIXESa) Prefix - uncleanb) Infix - nowadaysc) Suffix - adjustment

*Bound morphemes have also two categories, Inflectional and Derivational morphemes

1. Derivational Morpheme• changes the part of speech of

the word when added to the free morpheme but there are some exceptions.

Example of Class Changingpay (v.) - payment (n.)pay (v.) - payer (n.)

Example of Class Maintainingpink (adj.) - pinkish (adj.)do (v.) - undo (v.)

List of Derivational Morphemes• Prefixes – re-, pre-, un-, ex-,

mis-, co- etc.• Suffixes - -ish, -less, -ly… etc.

2. Inflectional Morpheme• Morphemes that are used to

indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word.

EXAMPLEboy’s boyscleaned cleaning cleanstaken simplestheavier

List of Inflectional Morphemes-in English we have 8 Inflectional Morphemes.

• Noun – Possessive noun (‘s), Plural form (s).

• Verb – 3rd person singular (s), Progressive verb (-ing), Past tense (-ed), Past Participle (-en).

• Adjective – Comparative (-er), Superlative (-est).

4. Contractible Morphemes- these are auxiliary modals such as will, shall, have, had and would.- these can be contracted in informal style of language.

ExampleI will – I’llThey had – They’d

Root and Stem• Root words are the basic part

of a word that carries meaning.

• Stem is when a root morpheme is combined with affix morpheme.

EXAMPLEroot : teachaffix: -erstem: teacher

Bound Root• These are root morphemes

which cannot appear on its own.

EXAMPLEre-ceive dis-suade

Bound morphemes Bound root

Segmenting words into its constituent morphemes.EXAMPLE

repayment re – pay – ment

prefix root suffix

Morphological Descriptiona) The difference between

Inflectional and Derivational Morpheme?• Inflectional morpheme never

change the grammatical category of the word.

Old (adj.) older (adj.)

b) While Derivational Morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word.

teach (v.) teacher (n.)

Morphological DescriptionIdentify the morphological

description of the sentence below.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Summing up• Morphology is the study of word

structure and word formation.• The smallest meaningful part of the

word is called morpheme.• Morphemes have two classification

these are Free and Bound Morphemes.

• Free morphemes categories are Lexical and Functional Morphemes.

• Bound morphemes includes Inflectional and derivational morphemes

Thank You!-Renedict