1. First: What is Morphology?
 It is the ”study of forms” (Yule).
 It is the study of word structure.
 It is “the system of categories and rules involved in word
formation and interpretation” (O’GRADY).
 It is “the identification, analysis and description of the
structure of words” (Wikipedia)
 As a result, when we study morphology, we examine the
different categories of morphemes that make up words
and the different morphological processes through which
new words are formed.

2. What is a MORPHEME?
 A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that
carries information about the meaning or
function. It is “the minimal unit of meaning or
grammatical function”.
 Example:
 The word “hospitalize" has two morphemes:
hospital (with the meaning of a place where
patients are treated) and –ize (which indicates
that the entire word functions as a verb with the
meaning of ’being admitted to a hospital‘).

3. What is a Free Morpheme ?
 A free morpheme is a morpheme that can be a
word by itself.
 Examples: cut, car, book, and pray

4. What is a Bound Morpheme ?
 A bound morpheme is a morpheme that
cannot stand alone as an independent word. It
must be attached to another element.
 Examples: -ed, -s, re-, in-, and –ness.
 NOTE: Refer to page 76 for an important
observation.

5. What is a Lexical Morpheme ?
 Words that have meaning by themselves—boy,
food, door—are called lexical morphemes.

6. What is a Functional Morpheme ?
 words that function to specify the relationship
between one lexical morpheme and another—
words like at, in, on, -ed, -s—are called
functional morphemes.
NOTE: Sometimes functional morphemes are
referred to as grammatical morphemes.

7. Derivational Morphemes
 “Morphemes that change the meaning
or part of speech of a word they attach
to” (Clark, 1998).
 Examples:
 happy and unhappy
 happy and happiness

8. Inflectional Morphemes:
 “Morphemes that serve a purely
grammatical function, never crating a new
word but only a different form of the same
word, are called inflectional morphemes”
(Clark, 1998).
 Examples:
 Car and Cars
 Look and Looked

9. Inflectional Morphemes:
STEM SUFFFIX FUNCTION EXAMPLE
WAIT -s 3rd per. sg. present She waits there at noon.
WAIT -ed Past tense She waited there last night.
WAIT -ing Progressive She is waiting there now.
EAT -en Past participle Ahmed has eaten the apples.
CHAIR -s plural The chairs are in the room.
CHAIR -’s Possessive The chair’s leg is broken.
FAST -er Comparative Jill runs faster than Joe.
FAST -est Superlative I have no idea what the fastest car is.

10. Tree Diagrams:
 Some practice with tree diagram.
 Reformer
 Reconstruction
 Unbreakable
 Nonrefundable
 Irreplaceability
 Overgeneralization*
 Activation
 Unhappiness*

11. If you are asking about my web site, then here
it is
http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aabanomey/default.aspx