TOPIC 3

Morphology

What is Morphology?

The study of word formation and the internal structure of words

Unit Content
1. Differentiate free and bound morphemes; 2. Distinguish between inflectional and derivational morphemes; 3. Demonstrate word formation processes; 4. Create suitable context for the usage of word formation; 5. Explain the relevance of the knowledge ; and 6. Apply the knowledge in classroom application.

What is Morpheme?
a

minimal meaningful language unit or carries certain grammatical function. include forms used to indicate past tense or plural

Read the sentence below..

arietiescanunderstandoneanotherand sharethesamewrittenlanguagemoreorl essandsharethesamewrittenlanguage People who speak a language in all its varieties can understand one another and share the same written language

What if we take some parts..

Types of Morphemes

FREE MORPHEMES
LEXICAL GRAMMATICAL

LEXICAL MORPHEMES

STRUCTURE MORPHEMES

major parts of speech: 1. Nouns 2. Verbs 3. Adjectives 4. Adverbs

Minor parts of speech: 1. Articles 2. Prepositions 3. Conjunctions

BOUND MORPHEMES
LEXICAL GRAMMATICAL

DERIVATIONAL MORPHEMES When a morpheme is added to a word, it results in either a different part of speech or the same part of speech with a different lexical meaning

INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES
have a strictly grammatical function mark properties: tense, number, gender, case, etc. never change the syntactic category of the words/ morphemes

(1) I play golf. (2) He plays golf. (3) John played golf. (4) John has played golf. (5) John is playing golf.

In sentence (2), the -s at the end of the verb is an agreement marker. It signifies that the subject of the verb is a third person, is singular, and that the verb is in the present tense. It doesn't add lexical meaning. The suffix -ed indicates past tense, and is also required by the syntactic rules of the language when verbs are used with have, just as -ing is required when verbs are used with forms of be. The plural suffix, which is attached to certain singular nouns, as in boy/boys and cat/cats.

CATEGORIES OF FREE MORPHEMES

FUNCTIONAL (CLOSED CLASS WORDS)

set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs carry the `content' of the messages we convey girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow, sincere, open, look We can add new lexical morphemes to the language = `open' class of words

the functional words in the language = conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns. and, but, when, because never add new functional morphemes to the language, they are described as a `closed' class of words

Derivational morphemes are of a different grammatical category from the stem, for example, the addition of the derivational morpheme -ness changes the adjective good to the noun goodness. The noun care can become the adjectives careful or careless by the addition of the derivational morphemes -ful or -less. Derivational morphemes include suffixes such as the -ish in foolish, -ly in quickly, and the -ment in payment. It also includes prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un-, and many more.

Inflectional morphemes are as follows: -s third-person singular present -ed past tense -ing progressive -en past participle -s plural -'s possessive -er comparative -est superlative

Inflectional morphemes are not used to produce new words in the language, but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. Inflectional morphemes are used to show if a word is plural or singular, if it is past tense or not, and if it is a comparative or possessive form. English has only eight inflectional morphemes as illustrated in the following sentences.

Shahril's two sisters are really different. One likes to have fun and is always laughing. The other liked to read as a child and has always taken things seriously. One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quieter than a mouse.

In English, all the inflectional morphemes are suffixes. Noun + 's, s Verb + s, ing, ed, en Adjective + est, er

Try this

Construct sentences to denote the previous eight types of inflectional morpheme.

An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word. For example, both old and older are adjectives. The -er inflection here simply creates a different version of the adjective without changing its grammatical category. However, a derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word. The verb teach becomes the noun teacher if we add the derivational morpheme -er.

So, the suffix -er in modern English can be an inflectional morpheme as part of an adjective and also a distinct derivational morpheme as part of a noun. Just because they look the same (-er), it doesn't mean they do the same kind of work.

Different patterns occur in other languages. We can try to work out how different forms in the languages are used to realize morphological processes and features. This first set of examples is from Bahasa Malaysia. Verb Adjective Noun makan pemakanan tuduh tuduhan cantikkan cantik kecantikan

Morphologically complex words consist of a root and one or more affixes. A root is a lexical content morpheme that cannot be analyzed into smaller parts. Some examples of English roots are paint in painter, read in reread, and ceive in conceive. A root may or may not stand alone as a word (paint does; ceive doesn't).

When a root morpheme is combined with an affix, it forms a stem, which may or may not be a word (painter is both a word and a stem; -ceive + er is only a stem). Other affixes can be added to a stem to form a more complex stem, as shown in the following:

root stem word

believe believe + able un + believe + able

verb verb + suffix prefix + verb + suffix

root stem stem stem word

system system + atic un + system + atic un + system + atic + al un + system + atic + al + ly

noun noun + suffix prefix + noun + suffix prefix + noun + suffix + suffix prefix + noun + suffix + suffix + suffix

Discuss
(a) What are the functional morphemes in the following sentence? When he arrived, the old man had an umbrella and a large plastic bag full of books. (b) Distinguish between inflectional and derivational morphemes. Provide four examples. (c) List the bound morphemes in these words: fearlessly, misleads, previewer, shortened, unhappier. (d) What are the inflectional morphemes in these expressions? It's raining; the fox jumped over the fence; the newest style; the singer's new songs.

THE STRUCTURE OF WORDS

A word is not a simple sequence of morphemes. It has an internal structure. For example, the word insignificantly is composed of three morphemes; in, sign, signify, significant and insignificantly. The root is a sign, a noun, to which we add the suffix -ify resulting in a verb, signify, to which cant is added to form an adjective. To this adjective, we add the prefix in- forming a new adjective and we add -ly to form an adverb insignificantly.

Tree Diagram

This tree represents the application of five morphological rules: 1. Noun + ify 2. Verb + cant 3. Adjective + ly 4. in + Adjective 5. in + Adjective Verb Adjective Adverb Adjective Adverb

Rule 1 attaches the derivational suffix, -ify to the root noun, forming a verb. Rule 2 takes the verb formed by rule 1 and attaches the derivational suffix -cant to form significant, an adjective. Rule 3 attaches suffix -ly to the word formed in Rule 2 to form an adverb. Rules 4 and 5 attach prefix in- to form an adjective and adverb (respectively). The diagram shows that the entire word insignificantly, that is composed of an adverb.

WORDS AND WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES

Borrowing Compounding Blending Clipping/Abbreviations Backformation

WORDS AND WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES

Conversion (i) Nouns used as Verbs (ii) Verbs becomes Nouns (iii) Verbs becomes Adjectives (iv) Compound Nouns become Adjectival or verbal functions Acronyms Word Coinage