Morphology

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico
Facilitator

word structure
 Rootword - car, beauty, write, near
 Root + Affixes – cars, written, nearly,
beautifully
 parts: car + s; write + -en
near + ly; beauty + ful + ly
 each part has meaning : morpheme

PBET 1101 TESL Program Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya Dr. Jessie Grace U Rubrico/260810

 morphemes –parts of words that carry meaning
- smallest unit of meaning or
grammatical function

 rootword - one morpheme-word;
- word cannot be divided


Polysyllabic Words Rootword Prefix Suffix Morphemes
1. careless care -less 2

2. misleading lead mis- -ing 3

3. disloyalty loyal dis- -ty 3

4. disrespectfully respect dis- -ful; -ly 4

5. untruthfulness

6. previewer

7. shortened

 morphemes that can stand alone
 content/lexical words
– nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
 function words – pronouns, prepositions,
determiners, conjunctions


 affixes: prefixes, suffixes
 derivational - make new words or
change their categories
 inflectional – changes the form of the word
but not its meaning
-indicates grammatical function
singular/plural ; tense; comparatives;
possessive

 make new words or change their categories
 Noun > Adj
care care+ -ful > careful
care+ -less > careless
 Adj > Noun
good good + -ness > goodness
lovely lovely + -ness > loveliness


Base Suffix
Noun +-ful Adj beauty + -ful

Verb + -ment Noun establish + -ment

Verb + -er Noun do + -er; work + -er

Verb + -ive Adj prohibit + -ive

Noun + -en Verb light + -en
Adjective + -en Verb short + -en

Adjective + -ness Noun good +-ness
Adjective + -ly Adv beautiful + -ly

inflectional – changes the form of the word
but not its meaning
-indicates grammatical function
 number : plural or singular – boys, books
 possession : ownership –attached to nouns
 tense : past or present tense
– dances, danced


 bound to nouns [Noun +] -
–‘s / s’ (possessive) : Mary’s, the childrens’
- s (plural), books, boys
 bound to verbs [Verb +]
-s (3rd person, singular) – dances, watches
-ing (present participle) – dancing, watching
-ed (past tense) – danced, watched
-en/-ed (past participle) - they’ve done it
 bound to adjectives [Adj +]
–er : darker
-est : darkest

 /indefiniteness/ - a before a consonant - a boy
an before a vowel - an apple
▪ /plural/
▪ cat + /plural/ -[s] after voiceless segment: [kæts]
▪ dog + /plural/- [z] after voiced segment : [dɔgz]
[dɒgz]
▪ judge + /plural/-[әz] after voiced segment
 sheep + /plural/ - sheep + Ø : sheep
 man + /plural/ - æ > ε : men
(suppletion)

content/
lexical
free
function

morpheme
derivational
bound

inflectional

 storage of words in a language; dictionary
contents:
 phonological information/pronunciation
 meaning, related words, sentence use
 spelling
 etymology (historical development)
> not contain in the mental lexicon


 phonological information
sounds and phonotactics
 semantic information– meaning
 morphological information –formation of
relations in word: past tense (V), plural (N)
 syntactic information -category (noun or verb)
and usage


Content words: nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs
 lexical morphemes
 denote concepts like objects, actions,
attributes, ideas, etc.
 semantic content (meaning)
 open class words
– add new words: download, byte, email


Function words : determiners/ articles,
pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions
 grammatical function- connect words to
other words or phrases
 closed class
-articles a/an and the – marks
definiteness/indef of nouns
 preposition of -marks possession, etc.

 Nouns
 Adjectives
 Verbs-
 Adverbs – modify verbs,
adjectives, and other adverbs –


pronouns
 Personal pronouns – person- first, second, third
 Demonstrative – this, these; that, those
 Interrogative pronouns – who, what, etc.
 Relative pronouns –who, that, which, whose,
whom –related to the preceding NP
 Indefinite pronouns – someone, anyone,
everyone, somebody, etc
 pronouns: used independently, not as modifiers
of other words


Determiners – precede nouns:
 def/indef articles– a, the
 demonstratives : this, that, these, those
 possessives : my, our, your, her, his, their
 interrogatives: which what, whose

Prepositions- typically precede nouns; give
information about time, place, etc.
Conjunctions: coordinating conjunctions –and,
but, or – conjoin words of the same category
- subordinating conjunctions – that, whenever,
while, because

Lexical/grammatical categories
1. words with parallel book –books ; dog - dogs nouns
forms belong to tall- taller-tallest adjectives
the same category small-smaller-smallest verbs
walk – walks, walked
play-plays-played
2. co-occurrence-
Nouns preceded by a determiner the cat, my car,
an egg
take plural forms
regular book-books
irregular tooth – teeth,
sheep-sheep

Lexicalcategories

Verbs preceded by modals will, can, may, might, etc

Adjectives take very, or too; more, the most

3. relying on the meaning or function
 nouns name persons, places, things, etc.
 adjectives name qualities or properties of nouns
 verbs - transitive – requires a Intransitive – does not
describe noun phrase after it require a noun after it
action (object)
 adverbs – modifying adjectives swiftly, sweetly, courageously,
usually, quickly; very/too tall
modifying verbs often; here, soon, now
modifying adverbs very soon, really incredible

grammatical categories
pronouns personal person- first, second, third

demonstrative this, these; that, those

interrogative who, what, etc.
relative- relates to the who, that, which, whose, whom–
preceding NP
indefinite someone, anyone, somebody
determiners: def/indef articles the, a, an
precede nouns
demonstratives this, that, these, those
possessives my, our, your, her
interrogatives which what, whose
prepositions -typically precede a noun
conjunctions
-conjunctions coordinating conjunctions and, but, or
-conjoin words of the same category
-subordinators subordinating conjunctions that, whenever, while,
because

McGregor, William B. 2009. Linguistics: An
Introduction. London: Continuum International
Publishing Group.
O'Grady, William D., Archibald, John, [eds.] (2009).
Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction,
6th edition. Ontario: Pearson Education Canada.
Yule G. 2006. The study of language. Cambridge:
CUP.


Morphology

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