2. What is morphology
Morphology is the study of the
structure of words.
Morphology analyzes the internal
structure of words.
Words are made up of morphemes.
3. Why is morphology important?
The form of a word can give us
important information about its
function.
If we learn to analyze the structure of
words we may understand the
meaning of new words.
Morphology is very unpredictable.
4. Morpheme (I)
A morpheme is the smallest
meaningful unit.
The meaning that a morpheme gives
can be:
Grammatical (for instance: the part of
speech, if the word is plural or singular, the
tense of a verb, etc.)
Lexical (that is the ‘dictionary’ meaning’
Both grammatical and lexical
6. Morpheme (II)
A word that contains more than
one morpheme is a
morphologically complex word
One morpheme is the basic one,
the core of the form root or
stem
The add-ons bound morphemes
are affixes
E.g. ‘rearranged’
‘teachers’
7. Type of morphemes
Free Vs. Bound Morphemes
Free Bound
Can stand alone as separate
words
Cannot occur on their own
as separate words
Single morphemes
e.g. hunt, kill, the, play,
child, book.
Affixes
-s in dogs
-ness in happiness
-ed in walked
8. Free Morphemes
it’s divided into lexical and functional
morphemes.
Lexical morphemes Functional morphemes
As content words: carry the
content of the message
as function words
Includes nouns, verbs,
adjective, adverbs:
children, love, beauty, play,
sing
Include pronouns, articles,
conjunctions, prepositions:
as, the, on, from, and, in, etc.
Open class word Close class words
9. Bound Morphemes (I)
Affixation
Prefix: An affix that is attached to
the front of a base, e.g. re-play.
Suffix: An affix that is attached to
the end of a base, e.g. kind-ness.
Infix: An affix that occur within a
base, e.g. (in Indonesian) s-in-
ambung.
10. Bound Morphemes (II)
It’s divided into derivational and
inflectional morphemes.
Derivational
morphemes make
new words in a
language- different
grammatical
category from the
stem
e.g. suffix –ness in
happiness
Inflectional
morphemes
indicate aspects of
grammatical
function of a word.
e.g. suffix –ed in
walked indicate
past tense
11. Derivation Vs. Inflection
It changes the
category and/or the
type of meaning of
the word to create a
new word.
e.g. suffix –ment in
government
It does not change
either the
grammatical
category or the type
of meaning found in
the word.
e.g. suffix –s in
books
12. English Inflectional Morphemes
Nouns
–s plural
–’s possessive
Verbs
–s third person singular present
–ed past tense
–en past participle
–ing progressive
Adjectives
–er comparative
–est superlative
15. Analyzing words
The girl’s wildness shocked the teacher
The functional
girl lexical
-s inflectional
Wild lexical
-ness derivational
Shock lexical
-ed inflectional
The functional
Teach lexical
-er derivational
16. Analyze different types of
morphemes
The young boy played with his friends.
The
Young
Boy
Play
-ed
With
His
Friend
-s
Functional
Lexical
Lexical
Lexical
Inflection
Functional
Functional
Lexical
inflectional
17. Allomorphs
Sometimes, because of historical or
phonological reasons, the same
morpheme can have different
forms (different realizations)
impossible, incredible, illegal,
irrelevant
These different realizations are
called allomorphs.
18. The unpredictability of
morphology (I)
Morphology, that is words, do not
always combine following a logical
rules
Consider the unpredictability of
morphology in the following slides
20. The unpredictability of
morphology (III)
ADJECTIVE
(relate to place X)
NOUN
(a citizen of place X)
• American
• Polish
• Scottish
• Spanish
• American
• Pole
• Scot
• Spaniard
