UNIT 1: MORPHOLOGY

As the diagram shows, morphology is the branch of grammar that studies

the structure of words and word formation. The word morphology itself comes
from the Greek word morpheme, which means “form’. Morphology is to words
what syntax is to sentences. That is, morphology is concerned with the structure
of words just as syntax is concerned with the structure of sentences. In the
following list, all the words except the last can be divided into parts, each of
which has some kind of independent meaning.
unhappiness un - happi - ness
horses horse - s
talking talk-ing
yes yes
Yes has no internal grammatical structure. We could analyse its
constituent sounds, / j /, / e /, / s /, but none of these has a meaning in isolation.
By contrast, horse, talk, and happy, plainly have a meaning, as do the elements
attached to them (the ‘affixes’): un- carries a negative meaning; -ness expresses
a state to convey a sense of duration. The smallest meaningful elements into
which words can be analysed are known as morphemes; and the way
morphemes operate in language provides the subject matter of morphology.
1. The word as the minimal free form of language
Most linguists believe that the word is best defined in terms of the way in
which it patterns syntactically. One widely accepted definition of this type is as
follows:
A word is a minimal free form because it is an element that can occur in
isolation and/or whose position with respect to neighboring elements is not
entirely fixed. For example, the sound sequence /h˄ntәz / hunters is a word and
can occur in different positions within the sentence, as shown below:
The hunters pursued the bear.
 The bear was pursued by the hunters.
In contrast, the units -er and - s do not count as words here since they
cannot occur in isolation and their positioning with respect to adjacent elements
is completely fixed. Thus, we cannot say * erhunt or “serhunt, but only hunters.
Hunters is a minimal free form because a larger unit such as the hunters cannot
be identified as a single word but as a phrase or group of words. Although this
unit can function independently and can occur in different positions in a
sentence, it is not a minimal free form since it consists of two smaller free forms
- the and hunter.
So, while such units as hunters can be treated as a minimal free from we should
seek the answers for treating the meaningful units such as -er and -s in the
sound sequence hunters in terms of their distinctive features and their roles in
the word. These linguistic units are called morphemes which will be defined in
the sections below.

2. Morpheme and allomorph

Words, though they may be definable as minimal free forms, are not the
minimal meaningful units of language we are looking for, since they can often
be broken down further. As we can see, the word hunters consists of three
meaningful parts: hunt, -er and –s. The traditional term for these minimal
meaningful units is sign. A more common term in linguistics is morpheme.
Morpheme can be defined as the smallest meaningful unit of language
(any part of a word that cannot be broken down further into smaller meaningful
parts, including the whole word itself). The word 'hunters' can be broken down
into three meaningful parts: 'hunt'; ‘-er’ and the plural suffix '-s'; neither of these
can be broken down into smaller parts that have a meaning. Therefore 'hunt';
-‘er’ and '-s' are all morphemes.
In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic
unit that has a semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes are
composed of phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound),
and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes (the smallest
units of written language).
E.g. the word ‘hunters’ is composed of 5 phonemes / h /; /˄/; /n/; /t/; /ә/ and /z/;
but this word is composed of 6 graphemes ‘h’, ‘u’, ‘n’, ‘t, ‘e’, ‘r’ and ‘s’.
The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many
morphemes cannot stand as words on their own. A morpheme is free if it can
stand alone, or bound if it is used exclusively alongside a free morpheme. Its
actual phonetic representation is the morph, with the morphs representing the
same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.
English example:
The word "unbreakable" has three morphemes: "un-" (meaning not x), a
bound morpheme; "-break-", a free morpheme; and "-able", a bound morpheme.
"un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both are affixes.
The morpheme plural-s has the morph "-s", IPA: [s], in cats ([kæts]), but "-es",
[-әz/ iz], in dishes ([disiz]), and even the voiced "-s", [z], in dogs ([dɒgz]).
These are the allomorphs of "-s". It might even change entirely into -ren in
children.
Thus, allomorphs are phonetic variants of a morpheme in a particular context,
e.g. the plural marker in English is sometimes realized as [-z], [-s ] or [-әz/Iz].
3. Types of morphemes
Morphemes can be classified according to a variety of ways.
3.1. Lexical and Grammatical morphemes
The distinction between lexical and grammatical morphemes is not well
defined although many linguists seem to agree that it is a useful division to
make. Lexical morphemes (also content morpheme) have a sense (i.e. meaning)
in and of themselves. A lexical morpheme has a relatively more specific
meaning than a grammatical or function morpheme. A lexical morpheme
names a concept/idea in our record of experience of the world (e.g. boy and big
are typical of lexical morphemes. Content morphemes fall into the classes of
noun, verb, adjective, adverb. Grammatical morphemes (function morphemes),
on the other hand, don’t really have a sense in and of themselves; instead, they
express some sort of relationship between lexical morphemes. Function
morphemes generally fall into classes such as articles ('a', 'the'), prepositions
('of', 'at'), auxiliary verbs ('was eating', 'have slept'), etc. Prepositions, articles
and conjunctions (e.g. of, the, and but…) are typical of grammatical
morphemes.
3.2. Free and Bound morphemes
In contrast to the division between lexical and grammatical morphemes,
the distinction between free and bound morphemes is straightforward. Free
morphemes are morphemes that can stand alone as an independent word. They
may be lexical (e.g. 'item'). Free morphemes like town, dog can appear with
other lexical items (as in town hall or dog house).
Bound morphemes (or affixes), on the other hand, are morphemes that
cannot stand alone as an independent word, but must be attached to another
morpheme/word (affixes, such as plural '-s', are always bound). Roots are
sometimes bound, e.g. the 'kep-' of 'kept' or the '-ceive' of 'receive'. Bound
morphemes like "un-" appear only together with other morphemes to form a
lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes.
Unproductive, non-affix morphemes that exist only in bound form are known as
"cranberry" morphemes, from the "cran" in that very word.
3.3. Root and Affixes
Affixes are bound morphemes which attach to a base (root or stem).
Prefixes attach to the front of a base; suffixes to the end of a base; infixes are
inserted inside of a root. An example of a prefix is 're-' of 'rewrite'; of a suffix, '-
al' of 'critical'.
3.4. Base, Stem and Root morphemes
Another distinction between base, stem and root morphemes can be said
to be still controversial among linguists. Root morphemes are (usually free)
morphemes around which words can be built up through the addition of affixes.
The root usually has a more specific meaning than the affixes that attach to it.
For example, the root 'kind' can have affixes added to it to form 'kindly',
'kindness', 'kinder', 'kindest'. The root is the item you have left when you strip
all other morphemes off a complex word. In the word dehumanizing, for
example, if you strip off all the affixes -ing, -ize, and de-, human is what you
have left. It cannot be divided further into meaningful parts. It is the root of the
word.
Base can be defined as an element (free or bound, root morpheme or
complex word) to which additional morphemes are added. It is also called a
stem. A base can consist of a single root morpheme, as with 'kind' of 'kindness'.
But a base can also be a word that itself contains more than one morpheme. For
example, we can use the word 'kindness' as a base to form the word 'kindnesses';
to make 'kindnesses', we add the plural morpheme, spelled '-es' in this case, to
the base 'kindness'.
3.5. Inflectional and Derivational morphemes
This distinction applies only to the class of bound, grammatical
morphemes. The more familiar term for the class of bound grammatical
morphemes is affix consisting of prefix and suffix as mentioned above.
Derivational morphemes are those that can be added to a word to create
(derive) another word with new meaning and/or new syntactic category. For
example, the addition of "-ness" to "happy," for example, to give "happiness."
Inflectional morphemes do not change the meaning or syntactic
category of a word. They just modify a word’s form to mark the sub-
grammatical classes to which this word belongs. An inflectional morpheme can
mark a word's grammar category such as tense, number, aspect, and so on (e.g.
plural marker -s as in the word dogs or possessive marker ‘s as in Tom’s car).
Besides these distinctions, morphemes can be defined in terms of their
position within the word as prefix (the ones that occur in front of a base form);
suffix (the one that is added to the end of the base form). The main classes of
bound morphemes are the prefixes and suffixes; but infixes are also possible -
an infix which is inserted within a stem. The nearest we get to this in English is
emphatic forms such as abso-blooming-lutely awful. Other instances of this kind
of affixes can be found with expletives, providing a kind of extra emphasis, as
in the following examples:
guaran-damn-tee
abso-bloody-lutely

3.6. The difference between Lexical and Grammatical Morphemes

Lexical morphemes can be distinguished from grammatical morphemes
according to the following criteria:

1) Morphemic status:
Lexical morphemes tend to come as free, independent words.
Grammatical morphemes tend to appear as bound morphemes or affixes
(prefixes or suffixes).
2) Word size:
Lexical morphemes tend to be large (long).
Grammatical morphemes tend to be small (short).
3) Stress:
A lexical morpheme in English carries one primary word-stress.
Grammatical morphemes tend to be unstressed.
4) Meaning:
Lexical morphemes tend to be semantically complex with a cluster of
highly specific semantic features. Grammatical morphemes tend to be
semantically simple to code a single general feature.
5) Class size:
Lexical morphemes come in a few large class. Grammatical morphemes
 come in many small classes.
6) Membership:
The membership of a lexical class is relatively open; new members join
regularly and old members drop out. The membership of a grammatical
morpheme is relatively closed and
grammatical change is usually involved when members are added or subtracted.
7) Function:
Grammatical morphemes partake in making structure of clause. The function
of lexical morphemes is to create new words from existing ones.
Criterion morphemic word stress meaning class membership function
status size size
Lexical free large stressed complex large open knowledge
morpheme
Gram. bound small un- simple small closed grammar
morpheme

3.7. Morpheme problems

Not all words can be analysed into morphemes so easily. In English, for
example, it is difficult to know how to analyse irregular nouns, and verbs: feet is
the plural of foot, but it is not obvious how to identify a plural morpheme in the
word, analogous to the -s ending of horses. Another example is that the extra - r
turns up in the plural of child in English - child-r-en. This extra -r in English
word form children does not seem belong to anywhere. Its use is automatic in
this word. Effects of this kind complicate morphological analysis - and add to
its fascination.

Morphemes

Lexical Grammatical

Free Bound Free Bound

 Nouns Prepositions
Verbs Articles
Adjectives Conjunctions
Inflectional Derivational
E.g. compress E.g. subvert E.g. at E.g. girls E.g. teacher
depress invert the works unhappy
repress convert and worked happiness
suppress pervert but taller happily

Figure 1. Division of morphemes into various types