english morphology for brazilian students

1. MORPHOLOGY 101
Professora Especialista Ana Lourdes Pereira
It means "introductory something". The allusion is
to a college course with the course code 101, which
in the American system
indicates an introductory course often with no
prerequisites. It means: (chiefly US, postpositive)
Basic, beginner, starting from scrath.

2. How to decode words,
increase spelling, vocabulary
and reading comprehension
BIG QUESTION: How does the knowledge of
words structures and word meanings
affect reading comprehension?

3. What do you know about
MORPHOLOGY?

4. Curiosity
 50% of all “high-frequency words” and 2/3 of all
academic and technical words are derived from Latin
or Greek.
 It’s very important to
learn the meaning of the
roots, prefixes and
sufixes.
 These basic elements
make the process of
acquirement of new
words easier.

5. Some basic
concepts
 Morpheme
The smallest unit of language that carries information about
meaning or function
Ex.: builder – build-er
 Simple words
Contain only one morpheme
Ex.: mom, cat
 Complex words
Contain more than one morpheme
Ex.: blueberry. watermelon
 Free morpheme
A morpheme that can be a word by itself
Ex.: boy, car
 Bound morpheme
Can’t be alone, it is always part of a word
Ex.: cats

6. An affix which is
placed before the
stem of a word
(re-, un-, dis-)
BASIC
TERMS
 ROOT FORM/BASE FORM
 STEM FORM
 AFFIX
 PREFIX
 SUFFIX
 DERIVATION
You’d better get used to
them!
A word with
no preffix or
suffix added
A word where
an affix has
been added
Meaninful part of
a word attached
before or after a
root (prefix,
suffix, infix)
An affix which is
placed after the
stem of a word
(-ful,-ive, -ly)
A word formed
from an existing
word, root or
affix: eletric.
eletricity

7. KINDS OF MORPHEMES

8. MORPHEM
E
 MORPHEME
The smallest meaningful unit of language. Any part of a
word that cannot be broken down further into smaller
meaningful parts, including the whole word itself.
 FREE MORPHEME
A morpheme that can stand alone as an independent
word
 BOUND MORPHEME
A morpheme that cannot stand alone as an independent
word, but must be attached to another morpheme/word

9. EXAMPLES
FREE MORPHEMES
 TALK
 OPEN
 TOUR
 HUNT
 ACT
 GIRL
 CAT
 LITTLE
BOUND MORPHEMES
 -FUL
 -S
 -ING
 -ED
 -LY
 UN-
 RE-
 IN-

10. FREE
MORPHEME
LEXICAL MORPHEME
 Words that carry content: nouns, verbs, adjectives.
 “Open class words” – we can create new ones easily
 Ex.: child, paper, read, open, big, yellow, sincere...
 As known as content morpheme
FUNCTIONAL MORPHEME
 Words that play a functional role between words: conjunction,
prepositions, pronouns
 “Close class words” – change the form of a word but it does not have a
real meaning
 Ex.: and, so, the, but, to, of...
 Also known as gramatical morpheme

11. BOUND
MORPHEME
DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME
 Are affixes (prefixes or suffixes) that are added to existing word in
order to form new ones, often changing the word class (part of speech)
 Bake/baker|legal/legalize|beauty/beautiful|contact/contactless
INFLECTIONAL MORPHEME
 Are suffixes that provide grammatical information about gender,
number, person, case, degree and verb form.
 Are changes in words to express their relationships to other words in a
sentence.
 They are not used to change the grammatical category of a word.
 Charles says
 Sally’s daughter
 I wanted it

12. REVIEW