Download Morphology

3. Morphology
a. Definition
b. Types
c. How to analyze
• Morphology is the study of the internal structure and classification
of words - how words are built up from smaller pieces
Inflectional morphology:
modification of word to
express different
gramatical categories
2 types
Derivational
morphology: creation of
a word from existing root
morpheme
Examples
• bags = bag + s
• unhappiness = un + happi + ness
• walking = walk + ing
• carelessness = care + less + ness
Morpheme: smallest unit that can carry meaning in a word.
Morpheme
Free morphemes: Can function as a word by
itself alone
Lexical
morphemes:
open-class
words
Functional
morphemes:
closed-class words
Bound morphemes: Cannot stand by itself to form a
word although it has meaning
Inflectional
morphemes
Derivational
morphemes
• Root: A morpheme that cannot be analyzed into smaller parts, often
play the main role in structure of a word. Root may or may not stand
alone as a word.
• Affixes: bound morphemes that occur before root morphemes
(prefix), after root morphemes (suffix), in the middle of root
morphemes (infix), or around root morphemes (circumfix)
Examples: prefix: unhealthy, disappear
suffix: worker, traditional
infix: nowaday
Examples:
• Sometimes we can recognize the signs/base/root morpheme in a new
word and can guess the exact or the nearest meaning of that word
without the need of looking it up.
For example: the prefix “un”; “dis”; “il” may represent the negative
meaning. When it is added to a word, we have the word of opposite
meaning to the original one.
When a suffix “tion”, “ment” or “ship” is add to a word, we may get the
noun from it.
In case of a suffix “able”, it’s likely to give the root the meaning of
“capable of” and make it an adjective
• We learn about morphology to understand the structure of words
and know how to create words from existing units so that we can
develop and master our vocabulary of a foreign language.
When we know about the rules and structures, we can teach them to
other learners and help them improve the vocabulary in daily use as
well as in doing exercises with numerous new words or the need of
using word forms