MORPHEMES

•Definition of Morpheme:
◦ A morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria:
1. It is a word or a part of word that has meaning.
2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts.
3. It recurs in differing verbal environments with a relatively stable meaning.

Let us examine the word “straight”

1. It is a word that has meaning and we can find it in any dictionary.
2. It cannot be divided without violation of meaning.
3. It recurs with a relatively stable meaning in such environments such as [straightedge,
straighten, and a straight line].
Morphemes can be divided into:
Free Morphemes Bound Morphemes
◦ A free morpheme is one that can be ◦ A bound morpheme is the one that cannot
uttered alone with meaning. be uttered with meaning. It always
annexed to one or more morphemes to
◦ For instance , in replay to “what are you
going to do?” you might answer “Eat form a word .
“ which is a free morpheme. ◦ For instance, ante, re-, -ly, -er, and un.
◦ More examples: speaker and undo.
Bases: A base morpheme is the part of a
word that has the principal meaning.
Free bases Bound bases
◦ A free base is one that can be uttered ◦ A bound base is the one that cannot be
alone with meaning. uttered alone with meaning.
◦ For instance, lighten and friendship ◦ A good number of bound bases in English
come from the Latin and Greek.
◦ For instance, sentiment, consent, dissent
and assent.
Difficulties in Morphemic Analysis.
The identification of morphemes is not as tidy a business as may appear and that there are
serious difficulties in morphemic analysis.
◦ The first difficulty is that you have your own individual stock of morphemes just as you have a
vocabulary that is peculiarly your own. For instance, the word “automobile” can be considered
as one morpheme meaning “car” and can be thought as two morphemes auto “self” and mobile
“moving”.
◦ The second difficulty is that persons may know a given morpheme but differ in degree to which
they are aware of its presence in various words . It is likely , for instance , that most speakers of
English know the agentive suffix /-ər/ (spelled –er, -or, -ar) and recognize it in countless words
like singer and actor.
◦ The third difficulty is that morphemes may fade away into disuse as the decades and centuries
roll by, affecting our view of their morphemehood. For instance the word
“ungainly” meaning “not gain”. It is not in common use as in current dictionaries it is called “rare”
or “obsolete” or “dialectal”.
◦ The fourth difficulty results from the fact that metaphors die as language change. For instance
the morpheme -prehend- (seize) in comprehend. The metaphor seems to be dead, and the
meaning of the word today is merely “understand”.
◦ The last difficulty is the additive meanings. Meaning is very elusive, and when morphemes
combine in a word, their meaning tend to be unstable; they may even disappear altogether. For
example, the morpheme pose (place). In “pose a question” the meaning is clear. But in suppose
and repose the meaning appears to have evaporated.
Affixes: An affix is a bound morpheme
that occurs before or after a base.
Prefixes Suffixes
◦ Prefixes are those bound morphemes that ◦ Suffixes are those bound morphemes that
occur before a base, as in important and occur after a base, as in failure and noisy.
reconsider.
◦ Suffixes can pile up to the number of three
◦ Prefixes are commonly single, except for or four like normalizers.
the negative un- before another prefix.
◦ There are two kinds of suffixes:
◦ Prefixes are a small class of morphemes,
1. Inflectional suffixes.
numbering about seventy-five.
2. Derivational suffixes.
Inflectional Suffixes
◦ There are eight kinds of inflectional suffixes which can be schematized as follows:
◦ 1. Noun plural {-S pl} dogs, oxen
◦ 2. Noun possessive {-S ps} boy’s
◦ 3. Third-person singular {-S 3d} vacates
◦ 4. Present participle {-ING vb} discussing
◦ 5. Paste tense {-D pt} chewed, rode
◦ 6. Past participle {-D pp} chewed, chosen, swum
◦ 7. Comparative {-ER cp} bolder
◦ 8. Superlative {-EST sp} boldest
The words to which these suffixes are attached are called stems. The stem includes the base or
bases and all the derivational affixes.
Characteristics of inflectional suffixes:
◦ 1. They do not change the part of speech.
Examples: cough, coughed (both verbs)
◦ 2. They come last in a word.
Examples: shortened, villainies.
◦ 3. They go with all stems of a given part of speech.
Examples: He eats, drinks, dreams.
◦ 4. They do not pile up; only one ends a word.
Examples: flakes, working, higher.
The exception here is the plural possessive of the noun, as in “The students’ worries.”
Derivational Suffixes
Theses suffixes consist of all the suffixes that are not inflectional.
◦ Among the characteristics of derivational suffixes there are three that will be our immediate
concern.
◦ 1. The words with which derivational suffixes combine is an arbitrary matter.
Example: the verb fail combines only with –ure to make a noun, failure.
◦ 2. In many cases, but not all, a derivational suffix changes the part of speech of the word to
which it is added.
Example: the noun act becomes an adjective by the addition of –ive, and to the adjective active
we can add –ate, making it a verb, activate.
◦ 3. Derivational suffixes usually do not close off a word. They can be followed by anther
derivational or inflectional suffix.
Example: the word fertilize, which ends in a derivational suffix, one can add another one –er, and
to fertilizer one can add the inflectional suffix –s, closing off the word.
Suffixal Homophones
◦ Some suffixes, both inflectional and derivational, have homophonous forms.
We can divide these homophones into inflectional and derivational homophones.
◦ 1. Inflectional homophones
• the inflectional morpheme {-ER cp} has two homophones:
◦ The first is the derivational suffix {-ER n}, which is attached to verbs to form nouns. It is often
called the agent –er and conveys the meaning of “that which performs the action of the verb
stem,” as in teacher. It also be attached to non verbal stems, e.g., New Yorker, teen-ager. The
–er on such words convey a meaning of “that which is related to”.
◦ The second derivational -er morpheme appears at the end of words like chatter, flicker and
glitter. This {-ER rp}, conveys the meaning of repetition.
•The verbal inflectional suffix {-ING vb} has two homophones:
◦ The first one is the nominal derivational suffix {-ING nm}, which is found in words like meetings.
◦ The second The second homophone of (-ING vb) is the adjectival morpheme {- ING aj} , as in a
charming woman. There are two tests by which the verbal [-ING vb) can be distinguished from
the adjectival {- ING aj}
◦ 1. The verbal (-ING vb) can usually occur after as well as before the noun it modifies, e.g.,
I saw a burning house.
I saw a house burning.
◦ 2. The adjectival (ING aj) can be preceded by a qualifier like very, rather, quite, or by the
comparative and superlative words more and most, as in
This is a very comforting thought.
◦ 2. Derivational homophones.
◦ The adverbial derivational suffix (-LY av) is added to most adjectives to form adverbs of manner,
as in rich, richly; kind, kindly; formal, formally; happy, happily. A small group of adjectives does
not take this [-LY av), among them big, small, little, tall, long, fast.
This adverbial [-LY av) has as a homophone the derivational suffix (-LY aj), an adjectival
morpheme.
Examples: love, lovely; friend, friendly; mother, motherly; live, lively; day, daily; hour, hourly.
Immediate Constituents
◦ Immediate constituent, also called IC, is the way of dividing / cutting a word into parts of which
it seems to have been composed. This analysis is completed when the constituent is no further
can be divided.
◦ Here are three recommendations on IC division:
◦ 1. If a word ends in an inflectional suffix, the first cut is between this suffix and the rest of the
word. So: pre conceiv|ed.
◦ 2. One of the IC’s should be, if possible, a free form.
For instance, in|depend ent.
◦ 3. The meanings of the should be related to the meaning of the word.
For instance, re|strain.
Allomorphs
◦ Allomorphs are different forms of the same morpheme, have the same meaning and are in
complementary distribution.
◦ We will go back to the past-tense ending, the morpheme {-D pt}. This morpheme has three
phonemic forms: such as wanted /-əd/, ended helped /-t/ m and opened /-d/. Each of these
three pronunciations is allomorphs of the same morpheme.
This is expressed in the formula:
{-D pt} = /-ǝd/~/-t/~/-d/
◦ The same was true of the plural morpheme {-S pl}, where the addition of /-əz/, /-z/, or /-s/ was
also determined by the kind of sound immediately preceding the suffix.
Conditioning: Phonological and
Morphological.
◦ The plural morpheme {-S pl} has further allomorphs, as shown by the /-ən/ of ox-oxen and by
the /∅ / (zero) suffix of sheep-sheep. These two, /-ən/ and /∅ /, are in CD (complementary
distribution) with all the others in that they stay in their own territory, associate only with specific
words, and do not overlap in positions where /-əz/, /-z/, and /-s/ are found.
◦ In such cases, when we can describe the environment that requires a certain allomorph only by
identifying specific morphemes, we say that the selection of allomorphs is morphologically
conditioned.
To describe by formula these five allomorphs of {-S pl} we write:
{-S pl} = /-əz/~/-z/ ~ /-s/∞/-ən/∞/∅ /
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