Download Morphemes Introduction Morphemes are what make up words. Often

Morphemes
Introduction
Morphemes are what make up words. Often,
morphemes are thought of as words but that is not
always true. Some single morphemes are words
while other words have two or more morphemes
within them. Morphemes are also thought of as
syllables but this is incorrect. Many words have
two or more syllables but only one morpheme.
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Banana, apple, papaya, and nanny are just a few
examples. On the other hand, many words have
two morphemes and only one syllable; examples
include cats, runs, and barked.
Definitions
•
morpheme: a combination of sounds that have
a meaning. A morpheme does not necessarily
have to be a word. Example: the word cats
has two morphemes. Cat is a morpheme, and s
is a morpheme. Every morpheme is either a
base or an affix. An affix can be either a
prefix or a suffix. Cat is the base morpheme,
and s is a suffix.
•
affix: a morpheme that comes at the beginning
(prefix) or the ending (suffix) of a base
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morpheme. Note: An affix usually is a
morpheme that cannot stand alone. Examples:
-ful, -ly, -ity, -ness. A few exceptions are able,
like, and less.
•
base: a morpheme that gives a word its
meaning. The base morpheme cat gives the
word cats its meaning: a particular type of
animal.
•
prefix: an affix that comes before a base
morpheme. The in in the word inspect is a
prefix.
•
suffix: an affix that comes after a base
morpheme. The s in cats is a suffix.
•
free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand
alone as a word without another morpheme. It
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does not need anything attached to it to make a
word. Cat is a free morpheme.
•
bound morpheme: a sound or a combination
of sounds that cannot stand alone as a word.
The s in cats is a bound morpheme, and it does
not have any meaning without the free
morpheme cat.
•
inflectional morpheme: this morpheme can
only be a suffix. The s in cats is an
inflectional morpheme. An inflectional
morpheme creates a change in the function of
the word. Example: the d in invited indicates
past tense. English has only seven inflectional
morphemes: -s (plural) and -s (possessive) are
noun inflections; -s ( 3rd-person singular), -ed
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( past tense), -en (past participle), and -ing (
present participle) are verb inflections; -er
(comparative) and -est (superlative) are
adjective and adverb inflections.
•
derivational morpheme: this type of
morpheme changes the meaning of the word or
the part of speech or both. Derivational
morphemes often create new words.
Example: the prefix and derivational
morpheme un added to invited changes the
meaning of the word.
•
allomorphs: different phonetic forms or
variations of a morpheme. Example: The final
morphemes in the following words are
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pronounced differently, but they all indicate
plurality: dogs, cats, and horses.
•
homonyms: morphemes that are spelled the
same but have different meanings. Examples:
bear (an animal) and bear (to carry), plain
(simple) and plain ( a level area of land).
•
homophones: morphemes that sound alike but
have different meanings and spellings.
Examples: bear, bare; plain, plane; cite, sight,
site.
Fifteen Common Prefixes and Ten Common
Suffixes
The following tables and tip are adopted from
Grammar and Composition by Mary Beth
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Bauer, et al.
Prefix Meaning
to,
adtoward
around,
circumabout
Prefix Meaning
inter-
between
mis-
wrong
post-
after
re-
back, again
sub-
beneath, under
trans-
across
un-
not
with,
comtogether
away
defrom, off
Suffix
Meaning
away,
-ly
in a certain way
disapart
the result of
-ment
ex-
from, out
being
in-
not
the state of
in-
in, into
-ness
being
-tion (-ion, -
the act of or the
sion)
state of being
-less
without
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Suffix
Meaning
capable of
-able (-ible)
being
-ance (the act of
ence)
making or
-ate
applying
-ful
full of
the state of
-ity
being
Suffixes can also be used to tell the part of
speech of a word. The following examples
show the parts of speech indicated by the
suffixes in the chart.
Nouns: -ance, -ful, -ity, -ment, -ness, -tion
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Verb: -ate
Adjectives: -able, -ful, -less, -ly
Adverb: -ly
Morphology
Morphology is the study of word structure. For
example in the sentences The dog runs and The
dogs run, the word forms runs and dogs have an
affix -s added, distinguishing them from the bare
forms dog and run. Adding this suffix to a nominal
stem gives plural forms, adding it to verbal stems
restricts the subject to third person singular. Some
morphological theories operate with two distinct
suffixes -s, called allomorphs of the morphemes
Plural and Third person singular, respectively.
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Languages differ writing to their morphological
structure. Along one axis, we may distinguish
analytic languages, with few or no suffixes or other
morphological processes from synthetic languages
with many suffixes. Along another axis, we may
distinguish agglutinative languages, where suffixes
express one grammatical property each, and are
added neatly one after another, from fusional
languages, with non-concatenative morphological
processes (infixation, Umlaut, Ablaut, etc.) and/or
with less clear-cut suffix boundaries.
Morpheme
In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is
the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic
meaning.
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In spoken language, morphemes are composed of
phonemes, the smallest linguistically distinctive
units of sound.
The concept morpheme differs from the concept
word, as many morphemes cannot stand as words
on their own. A morpheme is free if it can stand
alone, or bound if it is used exclusively along side
a free morpheme.
English example: The word "unbreakable" has
three morphemes "un-", (meaning not x) a bound
morpheme, "-break-" a free morpheme, and "-able".
"un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both are
affixes.
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Types of morphemes
•
Free morphemes like town, dog can appear with
other lexemes (as in town hall or dog house) or
they can stand alone, or "free".
Free morphemes fall into two categories .
First :The set of ordinary nouns , adjectives and
verbs this is called ( lexical morphemes ) eg) boy
, man , sad , long , follow , break …
Second :This set consists largely of the
functional words in the language such as
conjunctions , prepositions and pronouns this is
called ( functional morphemes) eg)and , but , on
, near , the , that , it ……
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•
Bound morphemes like "un-" appear only
together with other morphemes to form a
lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be
prefixes and suffixes. Unproductive, non-affix
morphemes that exist only in bound form are
known as "cranberry" morphemes, from the
"cran" in that very word. This also falls in two
categories :
First :Inflectional morphemes modify a word's
tense, number, aspect, and so on. (as in the dog
morpheme if written with the plural marker
morpheme s becomes dogs).
Noun +
-'s , -s
Verb +
-s , -ing , -ed , -en
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Adjective +
-est , -er
Second: Derivational morphemes can be added
to a word to create (derive) another word: the
addition of "-ness" to "happy," for example, to
give "happiness." ( -less , -ness , pre- , un- , …..)
•
Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme, e.g. the
plural marker in English is sometimes realized
as /-z/, /-s/ or /- ɪz/.
Free morpheme
In linguistics, free morphemes are morphemes that
can stand alone, unlike bound morphemes, which
occur only as parts of words. In the English
sentence colorless green ideas sleep furiously, for
example, color, green, idea, and sleep are all free
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morphemes, whereas -less, -s and -ly are all bound
morphemes
Bound morpheme
Bound morphemes are morphemes that can occur
only when attached to root morphemes. Affixes are
bound morphemes. Common English bound
morphemes include: -ing, -ed, -er, and pre-.
Morphemes that are not bound morphemes are free
morphemes.
Allomorph
An allomorph is a linguistics term for a variant
form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a
unit of meaning can vary in sound (phonologically)
without changing meaning. It is used in linguistics
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to explain the comprehension of variations in sound
for a specific morpheme.
Allomorphy in English
English has several morphemes that vary in sound
but not in meaning. Examples include the past
tense and the plural morphemes.
Example In the English language the past tense
morpheme is -ed. It occurs in several allomorphs
depending on its phonological environment,
assimilating voicing of the previous segment or
inserting a schwa when following an alveolar stop:
•
as /əd/ in 'hunted' or 'banded',
•
as /d/ in 'buzzed',
•
as /t/ in 'fished'
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morphological description
The girl's wildness shocked the teachers
The
girl
- ness
's
wild
shock
(Functional) ( lexical ) (inflectional) (lexical)
(derivational ) (lexical )
the
teach
er
s
ed
( inflectional ) (Functional ) (lexical)
(derivational) ( inflectional)
This shows the different categories of morphemes.
Morphemes:
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1.Free:
a. Lexical
b. Functional
2. Bound:
a. Derivational
B. Inflectional
Problems in Morphological Description
So far we have only considered examples of
English words in which the different morphemes
are easily identifiable . thus what is the inflectional
morpheme which makes sheep the plural of sheep ,
or men the plural of man ?
A related question concern the inflection which
makes went the past of go .
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And yet another question concern the derivation of
an adjective like legal . If al is the derivational
suffix , as it is in forms like institutional , then what
is the stem ? No it is not leg
A full description of English morphology will have
to take account of both historical influences and the
effect of borrowed elements .
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