Linguistics
The ninth week
Chapter 3 Morphology
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Morphemes
Key points
1. the definition of morphology
2. the definition of morpheme
3. the classification of morphemes
Difficult points
1. Free morphemes
2. Bound morphemes
Morphology
Morphology is the study of the internal
structure, forms and classes of words.
Morphemes
A morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or
grammatical function.
Ex. Tourists: -tour (one minimal unit)
-ist (meaning “person who
does something”)
-s (a third unit of grammatical
function indicating plurality)
Free morphemes
The morphemes that can stand alone as
words are called free morphemes.
Root and stem
A word must contain an element that can
stand by itself, that is, a free morpheme,
such as talk. Such an element is called a
root. When they are used with bound
morphemes, the basic word-form involved is
technically known as the stem.
Lexical and functional morphemes
Lexical morphemes refer to ordinary nouns,
verbs and adjectives.
Functional morphemes refer to conjunctions,
articles, prepositions and pronouns.
Open and closed class of words
lexical morphemes are called an open
class of words because we can create
new lexical morphemes.
functional morphemes are called a
closed class of words because no new
fellow members can be added.
Bound morphemes
Bound morphemes are those that can not
be used independently but have to be
combined with other morphemes, either
free or bound, to form a word.
Occurrence position:
Prefixes
Suffixes
infixes
Function:
Derivational morphemes
Inflectional morphemes
Eight English inflectional morphemes:
(i) –‘s (possessive)
(ii) –s (plural)
(iii) –s (3rd person present singular)
(iv) –ing (present participle)
(v) –ed (past tense)
(vi) –ed (past participle)
(vii) –en (past participle)
(viii) –est and –er (superlative and comparative
degree)
The chart of the different categories
of morphemes
Lexical morphemes (work, house, kind)
Free morphemes
Morphemes
Functional morphemes (and, if, or, but)
Derivational morphemes (-er, -ness, -
ly)
Bound morphemes
Inflectioanal morphemes (-ed, -er, -est)
Lexical morphemes
Free morphemes
Functional morphemes
Morphemes
Derivational morphemes
Bound morphemes
Inflectional morphemes
Assignments
1. Define the following terms:
(1)morphology (2) free morpheme
(3) morpheme (4) stem
2. Identify the structure of the following words:
wording person existentialism
international statesman spokesman
walkman bicyclist assignment
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