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Morphology

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31 views33 pages

Morphology

Uploaded by

devans2020narayanan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Anusha Das

Asst : Professor
Dept: of English
Bishop Moore College
Mavelikara
MORPHOLOGY
The part of linguistics that deals with the
study of the structure of words is called
morphology or morphemics.
It is the study of the internal structure of
words.
That is it is the study of how morphemes
are put together to form words.
The term morphology is Greek, morph-
meaning ‘shape, form’, and -ology 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.
THE MORPHEME
 The words ‘rewrite’ and ‘unfaithful’ consists of
different units such as, ‘re’ and ‘write’ and ‘un’,
‘faith’ and ‘ful’.

 Such units are called morphemes.

 Hence defined as the smallest meaningful units in the


structure of the language.

 “smallest meaningful unit” means, a unit which


cannot be divided further without destroying or
drastically altering the meaning.
EXAMPLES
 The clever girls tricked the naughty boys

The+clever+girl+s+trick+ed+the+naughty+boy
+s.

 The boys played football.


The+boy+s+play+ed+foot+ball.
Morphemes can be classified on the basis of
formal, functional and structural criteria.
On the basis of formal:- Lexical and
Grammatical
Functional:- Free morphemes and bound
morphemes.
Structural :- roots and affixes.
LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL
MORPHEMES
Lexical:- those morphemes which has
independent meanings.
They are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Grammatical:- grammatically significant but


semantically insignificant.
They are articles, prepositions and conjunctions.
FREE AND BOUND
MORPHEMES
Free morphemes are those morphemes
which can stand alone.
Eg:- laugh, man, tree etc
Bound morphemes are always attached to
other morphemes; they don’t make sense
when used in isolation.
Eg:- -ed,-ing,un-,pre-
ROOTS AND AFFIXES
Root or base constitutes the core or nucleus of
words and carries the principal semantic load.
Affix is a bound morpheme which is attached to
another morpheme.
Eg: friendship. Here friend is the root and –ship the
affix
Teachers. Here teach is the root and –er and –s are
the affixes.
STEM
 The form to which the affix is attached.
 Eg: friendships.
 friendship is the stem and affix is –s.
 The stem can be further divided into friend and –
ship.
 Here friend is stem and –ship is affix.
 Friend cannot be divided further without losing its
meaning, hence it becomes the root.
On the basis of structure stem is classified into
simple stems and derived stems.
Simple stem consists of a single morpheme.
Eg: Boy, girl
When one or more morphemes are attached to
simple stem it becomes a derived stem.
Eg: boyish, girlish
Unknowingly

Affix Stem

Knowingly

knowing -ly

Un
know -ing
CLASSIFICATION OF AFFIXES
Based on their position with regard
to the stem, affixes may be
classified into 3 types.

 Prefix, Infix, Suffix


PREFIX
 An affix that is attached at the beginning of a
stem is called a prefix ie., it precedes the stem.
 Eg:- un- in unhappy and re- in retain
 unhappy

prefix stem

happy
un
SUFFIX
An affix that is attached at the end of a stem
is called suffix, ie., it follows the stem.
Eg:- -ful in faithful, -ly in happily and –s in
runs
IN UNFAITHFUL, UN- IS THE PREFIX
AND
–FUL IS THE SUFFIX
 unfaithful

prefix
stem

faithful

stem suffix

faith -ful
Un-
INFIX
Infixes are inserted in the middle of a
stem.

This type of affix is uncommon in English.

Languages like Tagalog, Arabic and


Sudanese have infixes.
CLASSIFICATION OF AFFIXES
b) Derivational and Inflectional Affixes

 Derivational Affixes:-

That are used to derive words ( ie., by changing


words from one type to another.)

Eg: Child. By adding the derivational suffix –hood


we get childhood. Thus forming a new word.
INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
They are used to indicate the grammatical
relations.
Eg:- laugh . –s, -ing, -ed

In English there are inflectional suffixes,


derivational suffixes and derivational prefixes,
but no inflectional prefixes
INFLECTIONAL SUFFIX
 They are affixes which change only the form of a word
and not its class (‘class’ is the equivalent of ‘parts of
speech’ in traditional grammar) or meaning therefore
they do not create new words.

 Eg:- in ‘laugh, laughs, laughing, laughed’, -s, -ing and –ed


are inflected suffixes.
DERIVATIONAL SUFFIX
They create new words from the stem.
Eg:- from kind (adj)we get a new word kindly
(adv) by attaching the derivational suffix –ly
to it.
Thus derivation is a process of word
formation.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INFLECTIONAL
AND DERIVATIONAL SUFFIXES

1) Inflectional suffixes do not change the class


of a word

Eg: boy, boys (both nouns)


talk, talked (both verbs)
loud, louder (both adjectives)
Some derivational suffixes change the
class.
Eg., -or in operator and –er in worker,
change verbs into nouns.
2) Inflectional suffixes occur at the end
of words, not followed by other suffixes.
They are closing morphemes.
Eg:- laughs, teaching, friendships,
scholarships
3) they can be attached to all stems of a
particular class of words.
Eg:- She laughs, dances, sleeps and
dreams.
-s occurs with all the verb stems in
English. This is not so with derivational
suffixes.
 4)An inflectional suffix is not followed by another or
other suffixes, while derivational suffixes can be
followed by other derivational suffixes and/or
inflectional suffix.
 Eg:-
 come, comes [inflectional]
teach, teaching [inflectional]
organ/iz/ation/al [three
derivational suffixes]
INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES IN
ENGLISH
Nouns Verbs Adjectives/adverbs

1. Plural –s 1) Present tense singular –s 1. Comparative


(eg:- girls) (eg:- laughs) -er(eg:- higher)

2. Possessive –’s 2) Past tense –ed 2.superlative -est


(eg:- girl’s) (eg:- laughed) (eg:- highest)

3) Present participle -
ing
(eg:- laughing)

4) Past participle –en


(eg:- driven)
In English, suffixes may be either
derivational or inflectional, but all
prefixes are derivational.

Eg:- pre- in prefix, un- in unkind


etc are derivational.
TWO TYPES OF DERIVATIONAL
AFFIXES
Class changing Derivations

Class maintaining Derivations


CLASS CHANGING
DERIVATIONS
Class changing Derivations change the
class of the word.

Eg:- happy is an adjective and when we


attach –ness to it, it becomes a noun,
happiness.
There are derivations which do not
change the class of the stem. Such
derivational affixes are called class
maintaining derivations.
Eg:- kind is an adjective and after
attaching the class maintaining
derivation un- it remains an adjective,
unkind.
DIAGRAM REPRESENTING THE
CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEMES
Morpheme

Bound Morpheme [Affix]


Free Morpheme

Prefix Infix Suffix


(Derivational)

Class
Derivational Inflectional
Class
Changing Maintainin
g

Class Changing Class maintaining

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