This document discusses morphemes and morphology. It begins by defining key terms like morpheme, morph, and allomorph. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a word, a morph is its actual form, and allomorphs are variant pronunciations of the same morpheme. There are two types of morphs: free forms that can stand alone as words, and bound forms that must be attached to other morphemes. Morphemes are also classified as lexical, carrying lexical meaning, or grammatical, specifying relationships. The document outlines characteristics of derivational and inflectional morphemes. It concludes by noting morphological differences among languages.
2. Outline of presentation
1. Morphemes
-morphology – morpheme -morph-allomorph
- the differences between them
2.Type of morphs according to the form:
- free forms
- bound forms
3. Type of morphs according to the meaning:
- lexical morphemes
- five characteristics of them
- derivational morpheme
- three characteristics of them
- grammatical morphemes
- five characteristics of them
-inflectional morpheme
- three characteristics of them
4. Morphological differences among languages
3. Morphology
morph ( form) + ology ( science of )
Morphology ( the science of word forms)
It is the study of the internal structure of words,
and the rules by which words are formed.
4. Morph :
It is a meaningful group of phones which can’t be subdivided into smaller
meaningful units, such as buses (bus – es), so it is a general term for all
morphemes.
Morpheme:
The set of morphs of similar form, like meaning and complementary
distribution
Allomorphs :
It is a morpheme that has two or more different pronunciations, also it is
phonologically distinct variant of the same morpheme.
/eksit/, /egzit/ ‘exit (verb)’ (/eksit/, /egzit/ are allomorphs)
/iz/, /s/, /z/ ‘noun plural suffix’ (/iz/, /s/, /z/ are allomorphs)
What is morph? morpheme? allomorph?
5. Morpheme
It is a short segment of language that meets three basic criteria:
- It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.
- It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments without changing its
meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder.
- It has relatively the same stable meaning in different verbal environment.
For example:
The pigs can not fly.
The – pig – s – can – not – fly.
6. Morpheme :
It is the smallest unit that carries a meaning.
Morph:
It is the actual form of morpheme that make a deal in building the structure
of the word or the word itself.
Allomorphs :
It is the variant of pronunciation of a morpheme.
The differences between
morpheme , morph and allomorph
7. Type of morphs according to the form:
- free morph :
A free morph is commonly referred to as a base word and is the smallest unit of meaning that can
stand alone. It can stand by itself because of they already had a meaning.
such as : girl , boy ,open, tour, green , love , etc.
- Bound morph:
A bound morph is a form which must always be combined with another morpheme within a word, it
can’t stand by itself. They need to be attached to another form of morpheme. Such as :
-prefixes( re , im , in , dis , un, ….)
-suffixes (ing , ed, er , ly , ….)
- Stem (recep of reception , decis of decision)
8. Simple word:
A simple word consists of a single free morpheme
Such as cat , dog
Complex word:
It consists of two or more morphemes
such as cat s (two morphemes)
un happi ly ( three morphemes)
9. Type of morphs according to the meaning:
-lexical morphemes
Words that have meaning by themselves—boy, food, door—are called lexical morphemes.
-grammatical morphemes
Those words that function to specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and another words
like at, in, on, -ed, -s—are called grammatical morphemes.
10. Five characteristics of the lexical morphemes
1.content:
Their presence is determined by what they are talking about.
2.concretencess:
They tend to express relatively concrete meaning.
3.Infrequency:
They are relatively infrequent.
4.Open-set membership:
They are members of large sets which regularly get new members basically nouns, verbs ,
adjectives and etc.
5.stress:
They always have a stressed syllable.
11. Three characteristics of the derivational affixes
The affixed forms of lexical morphemes are termed derivational affixes. These are their
characteristics:
1.Funcation change:
they change the part of speech of the word or morpheme to which they are added, so
deriving new words. For example: un +happy = unhappy
2.No productivity:
One can’t readily or confidently ‘produce’ or predict novel uses of the derivational affixes. For
example, imagine a new noun glick; a verb derived from this might be glickify, glickize, or
glickate.
3.suffixability:
They may be followed by other suffixes.
Such as formalize , formalization
12. - derivational morpheme
They are the morphemes that are used to make a new word or different meaning. They can
change the class of the word. There are two affixes that are categorized as the member of
derivational morphemes:
Prefixes :
They are always used or added in front of or before the main verb. They can change the
meaning of the word.
Such as unhappy ( un happy) / dislike (dis like)
Suffixes :
They are the opposite of the prefixes . They are always used in the end of the main word.
They can change the function of the word.
Such as goodness (good ness) adjective + suffix = noun
slowly (slow ly) adjective + suffix= adverb
13. Five characteristics of the grammatical morphemes
1.Syncategorematically:
Their presence is determined by the grammar of the language.
2.Abstractness:
They tend to have very abstract meaning(relationship in the grammar)
3. Frequency:
They are very frequent.
4.closed-set membership:
They are members of sets which get new members relatively infrequently, including
pronouns, propositions and etc.
5.stress:
They typically lack stressed syllables.
14. Three characteristics of the inflectional affixes
The bound forms of grammatical morphemes are termed as inflectional affixes. These are
their characteristics:
1. No Function change:
They don’t change the part of speech of the word or morpheme to which they are added.
For example: jump or jumped (in both jump is a verb)
2. productivity:
One predicts new uses of the inflectional affixes in the new words. For example if glock is a new noun ,
its plural will be glocks.
3.Nonsuffixability:
They may not ordinarily be followed by other suffixes.
for example : Formalizability has three derivational suffixes (formal-iz-abil-ity), but adding the plural
suffix closes the word: formalizabilities.
15. - Inflectional morpheme:
They are the morphemes that aren’t used to produce a new class or new word in the
language, but to indicate aspect of the grammatical function of a word.
English has 8 inflectional morphemes, that all of them are suffixes.
The list of inflectional morphemes includes:
s – is an indicator of a plural form of nouns ,such as cats – trees
s’ – marks the possessive form of nouns , such as my friend’s car
s – is attached to verbs in the third person singular, such as plays - eats
ed – is an indicator of the past tense of verbs, such as played - cooked
ing – indicates the present participle, such as walking - running
en – marks past participle, such as broken , eaten
er – is attached to adjectives to show a comparative form, such as smaller, shorter
est – is an indicator of the superlative form of adjectives, such as smallest, shortest
16. Morphological differences among languages
Languages differ morphologically in a number of ways, for example:
1.The types of grammatical meaning that must be expressed,
2.How much grammatical and inflectional morphology they have,
3. How much bound morphology they have,
4. Whether there tend to be prefixes or suffixes, …..
5. How much morphological fusion there is (as in a word like men, in which
forms of the two meanings ‘man’ and ‘noun plural’ are not neatly separable,
but are fused.)
