Morphology
Overview
We all have an internal mental dictionary
called a lexicon
 Morphology is the study of words (the
study of our lexicon)
 To look at morphology, we must consider
both form and meaning

Affixes
Affixes are parts of words that “affixed” to
other parts of words
 We have prefixes, suffixes, and infixes
 Prefix goes at the beginning (pre-)
 Suffix goes at the end (-ing)
 Infix goes in the middle (-en-)

Derivation vs. Inflection

Inflection is the creation of different grammatical
forms of all words.

cat -> cats
In English, inflectional affixes are always suffixes

P. 151 gives a chart of inflectional affixes
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Derivation is the process of creating words out
of other words.

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

cat -> catty
Cat is the root on which catty is built.
The form of the root is the stem.
The added pieces are affixes.
Morphemes


The parts that words are made of are called
morphemes.
A stem may contain more than one morpheme
“Cattiness”
 Root= cat
 Stem = catty (contains two morphemes= root and
one affix)
 Second affix = “ness”
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Free morpheme-- can be used as words by
themselves
Bound morpheme-- morphemes that cannot
stand alone (such as affixes)
Bound root-- root word that cannot stand alone
(transfer, infer, confer, defer, prefer, etc.)
Content morpheme-- morpheme with
identifiable meaning or something that indicates
a change in meaning
Function morpheme-- serve a “function” in the
sentence but not necessarily with an identifiable
meaning
Practice

P. 176 #2
Recap: Derivational vs.
Inflectional
Morphological Processes
(Ways to Make Words)

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Affixation (making new words by adding affixes
to stems)
Compounding (making new words from two or
more independent words)
Reduplication (making new words by doubling
an entire free morpheme or part of it)
Alternations (making new words by morphemeinternal modifications)
Suppletion (making new words that are
phonetically unrelated to the shape of the root)
Affixation

making new words by adding affixes
(prefix, suffix, infix) to stems
Tagalog example of an infix
Verb stem
sulat ‘write’
bili ‘buy’
kuha ‘take’
Infinitive
sumulat ‘to write’
bumili ‘to buy’
kumuha ‘to take’
Compounding
making new words from two or more
independent words
 English: girlfriend, blackboard, airconditioner, life-insurance salesman
 German: Wunderkind ‘child prodigy’,
muttersprache ‘native language’

Reduplication


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making new words by doubling an entire free
morpheme or part of it
English: Do you like him as a friend or do you
like-like him?
Indonesian: rumah ‘house’
vs.
rumahrumah ‘houses’
Tagalog: bili ‘buy’
vs.
bibili ‘will buy’
Alternation
• making new words by morpheme-internal
modifications
English: ring, rang, rung,
man vs. men
strife vs. strive
Suppletion
• Making new words that are phonetically
unrelated to the shape of the root
• We often think of these as being irregular
English:
• is vs. was
• go vs. went
Morphological Types of
Languages
Analytic
 Made up of
sequences of free
morphemes
 Each word consists
of a single morpheme
with no affixation
 Example: Mandarin
Chinese (p. 163)
Synthetic
 Made up of bound
morphemes attached to
other morphemes
 Involves affixation
 Example: Hungarian (p.
164)
 Three types of synthetic
languages: agglutinating,
fusional, and
polysynthetic
Agglutinating Languages
Fusional Languages
Polysynthetic Languages