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An Introduction To Morphology

The document discusses morphology, which is the study of words and how they are formed. It defines morphemes as the minimal units of words that have meaning and cannot be further subdivided. There are three types of morphemes: free morphemes that can stand alone as words, bound morphemes that must be attached to other morphemes to form words like prefixes and suffixes, and empty morphemes that have no meaning. Examples of different types of bound morphemes are provided, including prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes.

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105 views

An Introduction To Morphology

The document discusses morphology, which is the study of words and how they are formed. It defines morphemes as the minimal units of words that have meaning and cannot be further subdivided. There are three types of morphemes: free morphemes that can stand alone as words, bound morphemes that must be attached to other morphemes to form words like prefixes and suffixes, and empty morphemes that have no meaning. Examples of different types of bound morphemes are provided, including prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes.

Uploaded by

Kakar Kakar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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By

Anmol Arzoo
In linguistics,
❖ morphology is the study of words, how they are
formed, and their relationship to other words in
the same language.
❖ Morphology studies how these units of meaning,
or word parts, can be arranged in a language.
❖ Morphemes are the minimal units of words that
have a meaning and cannot be subdivided
further.
❖ That meaning is how language conveys
messages. Morphemes are more than just letters.
❖ When a number of letters are put together into a
word part that now has meaning, then we have a
morpheme.
❖A "morpheme" is a short segment of language
that meets three basic criteria:
❖ 1. It is a word or a part of a word that has
meaning.
❖ 2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful
segments without changing its meaning or
leaving a meaningless remainder.
❖ 3. It has relatively the same stable meaning in
different verbal environments
❖ There are three types of morpheme such
as
❖ Free morphemes
❖ Bound morphemes
❖ Empty morphemes
Definition:
❖ Free morphemes can stand alone with a
specific meaning.
❖ A morpheme that can stand as an
independent word.
for example, eat, date, weak
An example of a "free base" morpheme
is woman in the word womanly
❖A bound morpheme is one that must be
attached to another morpheme in order
to form a word.
An example of a "bound base" morpheme
is -sent in the word dissent.
This group includes prefixes, suffixes,
infixes, and circumfixes.
Following are examples of each of these:
Prefix: re- added to do produces redo
Suffix: -or added to edit produces editor
Infix: -un- added to man-un-kind
Circumfixes: ge- and -t to lieb (love)
produces geliebt (loved) in German.
Be-love-d= beloved
i. Prefix
ii. Suffix
Origin: the word prefix has been derived from
old French “prefixer”and from
Latin praefixus’ which mean ‘fixed in front’
Definition: A prefix is a group of letters placed
before the root of a word.
For example, the word “unhappy” consists of the
prefix “un-” [which means “not”] combined with
the root (or stem) word “happy”; the word
“unhappy” means “not happy.”
Prefix meaning Examples
Im- not, without, impossible, improper
Mis - bad ,wrong, mislead, misplace
Non- not, nonfiction, nonsense
pre- Before prefix, prehistory
pro- for, forward, profess, program
re- again, back react, reappear
un- against, opposite undo, unequal,
Origin: the word suffix has been derived
from Latin word suffixum which mean
to fix after.
Definition: A suffix is a group of letters
placed after the root of a word.
For example, the word flavorless consists
of the root word “flavor” combined with
the suffix “-less” [which means
“without”]; the word “flavorless” means
“having no flavor.”
Suffix Meaning Examples
-able able to, comfortable, portable
-er Comparative bigger, stronger
-est Superlative strongest, tiniest
-ful full of beautiful, grateful
-ily forming an adverb happily, lazily
-less without friendless, tireless
-ness denoting a state kindness, wilderness
A morpheme that has no meaning and is not
assigned to any morpheme.

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