Morphology is the study of the smallest units of language called morphemes. It examines word formation through processes like inflection, derivation, and compounding. Morphemes can be free or bound, and may or may not have meaning. They undergo phonological variations and combinations to form words. Morphology analyzes the internal structure, forms, and relationships between morphemes in a language from both synchronous and diachronic perspectives.

1. MORPHOLOGY The science and study of the smallest grammatical units of language The science of the formation of words including inflection, derivation, and composition The study of the patterns of word-forms The study of: how the words are formed where they originate from what their grammatical forms are what the function of prefixes and suffixes in the formation of words are on what basis the parts of speech of a particular language are formed How and why the word forms change

2. The synchronic and diachronic study of the Word-forms When it is only synchronic, it is termed as morphemics Morphological analysis refers to the observation and description of the grammatical elements in a language by studying their form and function Their phonological variants Their distribution and mutual relationships within larger stretches of speech Morphological analysis may be synchronic or diachronic or may be both

3. Morphology is complementary to Syntax Grammar of words Deals with the internal structure or forms of words Refers directly to the forms o words in language system Grammar of sentences Deals with how the words are patterned into sentences Refers to the form of the arrangement of words in the phrases and sentences

4. Words and Morphemes Word: any unit of language that, in writing, appears between spaces or between a space and a hyphen Problem with defining the ‘word’ Ex. Dinner-table one unit? Word is not really a unit of language but an articraft of the writing system Problem with pauses: pauses occur often at the end of the phrase, clause and sentence Speech with discernable pauses within each word would seem highly abnormal Problem with defining word as minimum free forms

5. Concept of competence Role of nonlinguistic factors that interfere with the competence at the time of performance The writing system is a way of representing language not language itself Defining the word interconnection of both linguistic and nonlinguistic information Word: combination of three related concepts 1- word as pure linguistic unit of competence 2-word as a unit of performance used in speech 3- word as a unit of performance used in writing The first concept is the most important: It deals with the abstract, unconscious knowledge of the language that makes the other two possible Syntactic Words can be identified on the basis of uninterruptability and mobility

6. Morphemes Minimal, distinct, syntactical units of grammatical structure The units of ‘lowest’ rank out of which words, the units of next highest rank are composed Grammatical function Semantically different from other phonemically similar or identical linguistic forms Not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms If try to analyze a morpheme by breaking it up, it loses its identity and is left with meaningless noises Morpheme leads us directly into the realm of phonology

7. Morphemes may or may not have meaning They also may have or may not have phonological representation In plural words we have two morphemes in each words: The first has a phonological representation The second is zero morpheme as it has no phonological representation, and present on at the semantic level not in spelling or pronunciation Variation in Phonological representations: As the plural morpheme is pronounced in plural words like cats, dogs, hands /z/ , and in churches, judges, classes /iz/, but no phonetic form in words like sheep, fish etc. Then we have completely idiosyncratic forms such as oxen, children, etc.

8. It is not always clear whether or not given sound sequence should be considered a morpheme for ex. The word animal The word ‘natural has two morphemes {nature} {al} Then we should regard the word woman as having two morphemes {wo-} {man} or not A sound sequence is a morpheme in some words while absent in others as {un} is a morpheme in unnatural, unfaithful etc. but not in under or sun A morpheme may be monosyllabic as {man} or polysyllabic as {happy} and {nature} etc. Martinet has called a morpheme ‘a grammatical moneme” ‘ Glosseme’ another synonym of the morpheme

9. MORPHEMES Free Bound Prefix Initial position Infix Middle position Suffix Final position Derivational Inflectional Bound bases Class-maintaining Class-changing

10. Free and Bound Morphemes Bound Morphemes: classes that cannot occur alone such as less, un, pre, -up, de-, con-, -er etc. Free Morphemes: classes that can occur alone such as dog, cat, yet, but, black, white, free, go etc. Free Morphemes: lexical and functional Lexical: that carry the content of message Functional: serve some function such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns etc.

11. Roots and affixes Root morpheme is that part of word which is left when all the affixes have been removed Roots may be bound or free Potentially unlimited in language Ex. {Un} {faith} {ful} prefix root affix All affixes are bound morphemes Monomorphemic : The word consisting only free root morpheme ex. Cat, rat, hat etc.

12. Polymorphemic : The word consisting more than on root ex. Air-craft, dinner-table etc. They are also called compound words, and can occur with or without affixes Roots and affixes may be of any length and structure Affixes generally are shorter than the roots Criterion of determining the root : Its indivisibility into constituent morphemes by matching its parts with the parts of other words in the language Affixes : the recurrent formative morpheme of words other than roots

13. Affixes Prefix Infix Suffix Receive, remove, Deceive, perform, Unfaithful etc. In These words re, de, per, un all are Prefixes Affixed before the root Bound morphemes The plural formatives –s, -en The verb paradigm affixes –ing, -d, -ed Bound morphemes The plural and superlative ending of The adjectives –er, est Other final position Formatives such as -ness, -less, -ment Occur after the root Infixes are less Commonly found in English apart from one mode of analysis of plural Forms like geese, men etc. Mostly found in Cambodian, Sudanese, Sanskrit etc.

14. Morphs and allomorphs Morph: Any phonetic shape or representation of a phoneme The segmentation of words: segments are referred as morphs Each morph represents a particular morpheme but each morpheme does not have a morph Allomorphs: frequently it happens that a particular morpheme is not represented by the same morph but by different morphs on different environments Allomorph is morpheme ‘variant’ or alternant’ A class of morphs which are phonemically and semantically identical

15. We can say that an allomorph is a family or class of morphs that are alike in two ways: 1- in the allophones of which they are composed 2- in the meaning which they have Allomorphs are phonemically conditioned as their forms are dependent on their adjacent phonemes Or they are morphologically conditioned Ex: /-z/ = /-z/ /-s/ /-iz/ / θ / They all are the various allomorphs of plural morpheme /-z/ The study of allomorphs: halfway between phonology and morphology Morphophonology or morphomology Morphophonemics

16. Phonological Conditioning English plural morpheme provides best examples for phonologically conditioned allomorphs /-s/ appears with morphs ending in /p, t, k, f, and θ / as k Λ ps, hæts, θ æ η ks, k כ fs etc. /-z/ appears with morphs ending in /b, d, g, v, n, l, r, w, y, η , ðm/ as h Λ bs, d כ gz, rimz, gl Λ vz etc. /-iz/ appears with morphs ending in /z,⌠, t⌠ etc. as kla: siz, di⌠iz, t⌠ Λ v ⌠iz etc. Thus we find that /-s/ appears after morphs ending in voiceless morphemes, except the sibilants and affricates

17. /-z/ appears after morphs ending in voiced morphemes, except the sibilants and affricates /-iz/ appears after morphs ending in sibilants and affricates Another example of phonological conditioning the past –ed tense Represented by three phonological conditioned allomorphs /t/, /d/, /-id/ Rule governing their conditioning is as follows: /-id/ occurs after morph ending in alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ as in wanted and wedded /d/ occurs after voice phonemes except /d/ as in loved, called etc. /t/ occurs after voiced phonemes except /t/ as in helped

18. Morphological conditioning In pairs such as Man-men,. Child-children, deer-deer, the second item contains the plural phoneme Each morpheme is referred separately, or, alternatively to their phonemic shapes, and specify the allomorph of the plural morpheme separately for each Morphologically conditioned allomorphs of a morpheme are regarded as irregular in contrast to phonologically conditioned

19. Inflection and derivational morphemes Both are suffixes and bound morphemes following a root They are sub-categories of suffixes Inflectional: do not allow further affixation of a suffix as in agree/d/ or agree/s/ Derivational: allow or may be followed by further affixes as in agree/able/ness/ etc. Inflectional are always final in morpheme and their distribution is regular They are ‘terminal’ as their termination never changes Derivational may be final in the group they belong to or may be followed by other derivational suffixes or inflectional ones They are of limited occurrence and their distribution tends to be arbitrary Prefixes are always derivationals

20. Class-maintaining and class-changing derivational suffixes Class-maintaining: that produce a derived form of the same class as the underlying form, they do not change the class of a part of speech Ex: boyhood, childhood, kinship etc. produce nouns out of nouns after suffixation Class-changing: produce a derived form of another class EX: teacher, boyish, national, development etc. we see the verb becomes a noun, noun adjective and so on