This document defines and provides examples of key concepts in morphology, the study of word structure. It discusses morphology as examining the categories of morphemes that make up words. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning or function. Free morphemes can stand alone as words, while bound morphemes must be attached to other elements. Lexical morphemes have meaning themselves, while functional morphemes specify relationships between lexical morphemes. Derivational morphemes change meaning or part of speech, and inflectional morphemes mark grammatical functions without creating new words. The document provides examples to illustrate these morphological concepts.

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