Chapter III morphology

by WJQ

Morphology

Morphology refers to the study of the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed.

Morpheme: The most basic element of meaning is called morpheme.

e.g. Grassland ---grass land

beautiful – beauty ful

beautifully—beauty ful ly

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful grammatical units of language that make up words.

E.g.

Boys

technique

unladylike

ungentlemenly

renormalization

Types of morphemes:

Morphemes can be classified into root morphemes and affixational morphemes, or simply root and affixes. (semantically)

structurally, they fall into two classes: free morphemes and bound morphemes.

Free morphemes / bound morphemes

Free morphemes are morphemes which can be used as a word to make sentences.

Bound morphemes are those which cannot be used as a word to make sentences. (must be attached to a free morpheme)

E.g. opener operator

Inflectional morpheme

When an affix, usually suffix in English, indicates the tense of a verb, the plurality of a countable noun, or the comparative/ superlative degree of an adjective, etc. it is termed as inflectional morpheme.

E.g. --ed worked ; --en eaten -- s books ; --’s Tom’s --er shorter ; -- est longest --ing studying

Derivational morpheme

Derivational morpheme usually changes the part of speech as well as the meaning of a word to which it is attached.

E..g nation al

dis comfort

kind ness

Affix

Affix: is the collective term for the type of morphemes that can be used only when added to another morpheme (the root or stem). Naturally affixes belong to the type of bound morphemes.

prefixes in- dis- un-… suffixes -ness - tion… infix foot / feet goose / geese

root

Root is the basic part of a word that cannot be further divided into smaller but still meaningful units. e.g. opener

Free morphemes tend to words roots. but : -- ceive receive deceive perceive -- tain contain retain retain some roots are bound morphemes.

fill the blanks:

WOED ROOT DERIVATIOANL INFLECTIONAL

personalizes

buildings

accepted

fortunate

misallocations

Morphs / morphemes / allomorphs

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful grammatical units of language that make up words

Morphs 语子 are the realization of morphemes in general and

Allomorphs are the realizations of a particular morpheme.

e.g. --s / -- es books / bags watches mouse – mice ox – oxen tooth – teeth sheep – sheep ( morphologically conditioned)

e.g. 2 in—

injustice

imperfect

irregular

illegal

(phonologically conditioned)