MORPHOLOGY

Jhoanna Marrie N. Navales

Morphology
 The term morphology is Greek and is a make-up of morph–
meaning shape/form, and ology which means the study of
something.
 Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named
for the first time in 1859 by the German linguist August
Schleicher who used the term for the study of the form of
words.
MORPHOLOGY is the
study of word structure.
Morpheme
 A word or a part or a part of a word that has a meaning
and that contains no smaller part that has a meaning.
(Merriam-Webster)
 Meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word such as
dog, or a word element, such as –s at the end of dogs, that
can’t be divided into smaller meaningful parts.
Examples And Observations

 A prefix may be a morpheme:

“What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on
before you get on?”
 Individual words may be morphemes:
“They want to put you in a box, but nobody’s in a
box. You’re not in a box.”
 Contracted word forms may be morphemes.
“They want to put you in a box, but nobody’s in a
box. You’re not in a box.”
Types of Morpheme

 Free Morpheme
 Bound Morpheme
Free Morpheme
 A morpheme that can stand alone as a word
 Also called an unbound morpheme or a free morpheme
 Many words in English are made up of a single free
morpheme. For example, each word in the following
sentence is a distinct morpheme: “I need to go now, but you
can stay.” None of the nine words in that sentence can be
divided into smaller parts that are also meaningful.
 Free Morphemes can be further subdivided into
two:
1. Content words which are usually nouns,
verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
2. Function words which includes auxiliary
verbs (do, has, will, is), prepositions (in, at, though,
over), articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, but,
for, so), and pronouns (I, you, him, us).
Examples:
 Simple words: the, run, on, well
 Compound words: keyboard, greenhouse, bloodshed,
smartphone.
 “The farmer kills the duckling.” (Free morphemes: the,
farm, kill, and duck)
Note: It is important to notice here that, in this sentence,
not all these free morphemes are words in the sense of
minimal free forms– farm and duck are cases in point.
Bound Morpheme
 Morphemes that can only be attached to another part of
the word.
 Is a word element that cannot stand alone as a word,
including both prefixes and suffixes.
 Examples:
pre-, dis-, un-,-ful, -able, -ment, -ly, -ise
pretest, discontent, intolerable, receive
 There are two types of bound Morpheme:
Derivational Morphemes
 Also called as Lexical Morphemes
 An affix of a root or base words to create a new word or a new
form of an existing word.
 Examples:
1. normalize
2. beautiful
3. forehead
4. farmer
5. helpful and helpless
Inflectional Morpheme
 Used to show some aspects of the grammatical function of a word.
 Inflection exists in many languages , but compared to other languages
of the world there is relatively little inflection in English. Today, there
are only eight inflectional morphemes in English;
1. plural –s 5. 3rd person singular present tense -s
2. possessive –’s 6. past tense -ed
3. comparative –er 7. progressive -ing
4. superlative –est 8. past participle -en
Examples:
 She has got two guitars.
 Zeynep’s hair is long.
 Zeynep has longer hair than Derya.
 Zeynep has the longest hair.
 Zeynep plays the guitar.
 She played the guitar at the party.
 She is playing the guitar at the party.
 She has taken the guitar at the party.
Difference Between Derivational And Inflectional
Morpheme
DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME INFLECTIONAL MORPHEME
 Derivational morphemes often change  Inflectional morphemes never
the part of speech of a word. change the grammatical
 The verb read becomes the noun
reader when we add the derivational
category of a word.
morpheme –er. It is simply because  Tall and taller are both
that read is a verb, but reader is a adjectives. The inflectional
noun. morpheme -er simply produces
 Some derivational morphemes do not a different version of the
change the grammatical category of a
word. (e.g. happy and unhappy are
adjective tall.
both adjectives; fill and refill are both
verbs)
Other Examples
DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME INFLECTIONAL MORPHEME
• delicate delicacy • {-s pl.} dogs, oxen, mice
• social Socialist • {-s sg.ps.} boy’s
• similar similarity • {-s pl.ps.} boys’, men’s
• wise wisdom • {-s 3d} vacates
• alert alertness • {-ing v} discussing
• true truth • {-d pt} chewed, rode
• social socialite • {-d pp} chewed, eaten
• cynic cynicism • {-er cp} bolder, sooner
• arrogant arrogance • {-est sp} boldest, soonest
• brilliant brilliance
• absent absentee
 MORPHOLOGY

MORPHEMES
BOUND
FREE
MORPHEME
MORPHEME

AFFIXES
ROOTS (Prefix-Suffix)

DERIVATIONAL INFLECTIONA
MORPHEME L MORPHEME

PREFIX SUFFIX
(do not always involve (involve a change of SUFFIX
a change of word class) word class) (do not change world
class)
MIND TEST!
1. All are examples of morphemes, except:

a.) kingdom
b.) neighborhood
c.) farm
d.) none of the above
2. The word modernizes is a/an:

a.) Derivational Morpheme

b.) Inflectional Morpheme
c.) Both
3. Give the plural word of the following:

 Woman
 Foot
 Mouse
 Tooth
 Sheep
 Deer
4. Give the derivation of the following words.

 Deviation
 Allowance
 Socialist
 Socialite
 Persistence
 Marriage
 Amaranthine
 5. WHAT IS
MORPHOLOGY?
MARAMING SALAMAT!
(Is maraming a free morpheme or a bound
one?)