2. - Morphology and Morpheme
- Types of Morphemes
Free Morpheme Bound Morpheme
- Morphological Description
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3. Morphology: The study of structure of
the words and word formation.
Morpheme: The smallest meaningful
unit in the grammar of a language.
Types of Morphemes:
A. Free Morpheme:
1. lexical 2. functional
morpheme
B. Bound Morpheme:
1. derivational 2. inflectional
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4. A. Free Morpheme
The type of morpheme that can stand
alone as words by themselves.
Example: friend boy tree
Free morphemes have two categories:
1. Lexical Morpheme
A morpheme which has a complete lexical
meaning all on its own (lexicon means a list of
word)
Referred also as OPEN CLASS because we
can add morphemes to these words.
These are nouns, verbs and adjectives.
Example: girl (n.) jump (v.) red (adj.)
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5. 2. Functional Morpheme
• Words that do not have clear meaning but has
grammatical functions.
• These are conjunctions, prepositions, articles,
auxiliaries and pronouns.
• Referred also as CLOSED CLASS because it
cannot be added to other morphemes.
Example: he - she - we - but - nor - and
B. Bound Morpheme
These are AFFIXES that must be attached to the
word.
AFFIXES:
a) Prefix - unclean
b) Infix - nowadays
c) Suffix - adjustment
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6. Bound morphemes have also two
categories:
1. Derivational morpheme
They are combined with root word or
main word known as stem. They change
either the semantic meaning of a word or
change part of speech of the affected
word.
Example of Class Changing:
pay (v.) - payment (n.)
pay (v.) - payer (n.)
Example of Class Maintaining:
pink (adj.) - pinkish
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7. Root words are the basic part of word that
carries meaning.
Stem is when a root morpheme is combined
with affix morpheme.
Example:
root: teach + affix: -er stem:
teacher
2. Inflectional Morpheme
Morphemes that are used to indicate
aspects of the grammatical function of a
word.
Example: boy’s - boys
cleaned - cleaning - cleans
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8. Morphological Description
The difference between Inflectional and
Derivational Morpheme is:
Inflectional morpheme never change the
grammatical category of the word.
Example: old (adj.) - older
(adj.)
While Derivational Morpheme can
change the grammatical category of a
word.
Example: play (v.) - player (n.)
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