SUPERVISED BY: Dr. HARYATI BAKRIN
PREPARED BY: OSAMA G. ELWESHAHI
MATRIC NO.: 819790
BASIC DEFINITIONS
Morphology
 Morpheme
 Morph
 Allomorphs
 Morphological awareness
 Kinds of morphemes

 The
study of the smallest meaningful unit in a certain language
is called morphology. (Murray, 1995)
 It is the study and description of how words are formed in a language
 It is concerned with the inner structure of words & the rules of
constructing words
Morph-ology
Means f+o+r+m
means study
It is the minimal meaningful part of a word.
• It is a word or a part of a word that can not
be
divided into smaller meaningful units.
e.g.
UNHAPPINESS
un-
happy -ness
Prefix (Negative) root Suffix (noun)
When the morpheme remains the same and the pronunciation changes, this is what
we call MORPH.
e.g. The plural Morpheme in English ( -S )that has three different ways of
pronunciation:These are what we call the allomorphs of the plural morpheme {-S}.
Mats
Mat
+
Dogs
s
/mæt/ / S /
Dog +
/dɔg/
houses
s
/z/
house
/haʊs/ or /haʊz/
+
s
/ˈhaʊsəz/ or /ˈhaʊsɪz/
SO, if we have two or more phonologically distinct
morphs of the same morpheme, they are called
allomorphs.
e.g.
/s/,
/z/
&
/əz/ or /ɪz/
are phonologically distinct allomorphs that indicate
pluralization of the plural suffix {-s} occurring
respectively in MATS, DOGS & HOUSES
Who can give any other examples?
It is the cognition that words are constructed of meaningful units
morphologically called prefixes-, roots & -suffixes that are
used to form new longer words. (Thomas, 1993)
prefix-
root
- suffix
Morphemes
that only occur when attached to
some other morphemes such as a root or stem or
base.
Affixes are bound morphemes.
Depending on their position: prefix-, -suffix, -infix-,
circumfixes.
- attached before a root, stem or base, like re-, un- and inre-make un-kind
re-read un-tidy
in-decent
in-accurate
-attached after a root(or stem or base), like –
ly, -er, -ist, -s, -ing & – ed.
kind-ly
quick-ly
wait-er book-s walk-ed
play-er mat-s jump-ed
-
inserted inside the root itself
-
common in some languages but rare in English
- the only infix in English is /-m-/ in a few words of Latin origin
e.g.: incumbent, succumb and decumbent
I can add more infixes which are:
Nowadays
,
Abso-bloody-lutely
Abso-bleedin’-lutely
(( Quincy Jones, song in the film Walk, Don’t Run, 1966)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8GRM-pjpv8
&
Passers-by
Mother-in-law
(R.L Trask, The Penguin Dictionary of English Grammar, 2000)
(Trask, 2000)
- morphemes are attached before and after a word
- They are exact opposites the infixes; they round/circle the root
word.
rc
e.g.:
Ci
um
em …. en
embolden
en …. en
enlighten
es
fix
ROOT
*The morpheme that can’t be divided into any other smaller
parts or the part of a word left when all affixes are removed is
called ROOT.
•
The central morpheme, or the key element to which others are
added.
Carefulness
{ care } is the root
Root have a lexical meaning , but some ( lingu, arrong ) have a
full meaning only when they join to other elements.
Any word to which an affix is added is called BASE.
All roots are bases but not vice versa
Bases can be plain roots ( e.g. switch )
Or
More than one plain root ( e.g. window-seat )
Or
A root + one or more affixes ( e.g. ex-husband )
Any base to which a grammatical affix is added is called STEM.
A special kind of base.
All stems are bases but not vice versa because some lexical
categories ( e.g. prepositions )don’t take grammatical affixes.
 Morphologically
speaking, morphemes are divided into two kinds:
Lexical Morpheme & Grammatical Morpheme.
a) Lexical Morpheme
 Any other morphemes except grammatical morphemes are called
Lexical Morphemes.
 A Lexical Morpheme has a meaning that can be understood in and
of itself. They include N., V. Adj. & Adv. ( girl, eat, good, well, …etc. )
b) Grammatical Morpheme
 A Grammatical Morpheme can be understand only when they occur
with other words. For example, Prep., Conj., Art. And all prefixes and
suffixes. ( {of}, {and}, {the}, {ness}, {to}, {pre}, {a}, {but}, {in} & {ly} )
Both Lexical and Grammatical morphemes are subdivided into Free
morphemes and Bound morphemes:
A- Free Morphemes occur independently as words.
Free Lexical Morphemes
nouns, ( man )
verbs, ( play )
adjectives ( happy )
& adverbs ( hard )
&
Free Grammatical Morphemes
( Functional )
conjunctions,( and, or, but, …)
prepositions, ( in, on, for …)
articles, ( a, an, the, …)
& pronouns ( I, he, we, they, …)
The prefixes and suffixes that we use in making new
words or making words of a different grammatical
category from the stem are called bound derivational
morphemes.
e.g.
{act} ( V )
reaction
{react} ( V )
{reaction} ( N )
A list of derivational morphemes includes;
suffixes: -ish, -less, -ly …etc.
prefixes: re-, pre- , un- , ex- , mis- , co- …etc.
B) BOUND INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES
The morphemes that are used to indicate aspects of the
grammatical function of a word.
e.g.
play + ( - ed ) = played
( Past tense )
English language has eight inflectional morphemes.
1. { -'s } (possessive) with nouns
*Mouhamed's brother
2. { _s } (plural)
* cars
3. { -ing } (present participle)
*reading
4. { –s } (3rd person singular) with verbs
*He plays
5. { -ed }(past tense)
*played
{ –en } (past participle)
*forgotten
7. { – er } (comparative) with adjectives
*taller
8. { –est } (superlative)
*tallest
 We
have to take into our consideration that
Affixes are not independent and they are added to other
elements. They are divided into:
1- Lexical Affixes: form lexical words and they are attached to
bases ( derivational )
2- Grammatical Affixes: add grammatical meaning to the
meaning of their stems (inflectional)
Murray, T. E. (1995). The Structure of English: Phonetics,
Phonology, Morphology. Allyn and Bacon.
Thomas, L. (Ed.). (1993). Beginning syntax. Wiley-Blackwell.
Trask, R. L. (2000). The Penguin dictionary of English grammar.
Penguin UK.
OSAMA GABER IBRAHIM ELWESHAHI
ARAB REPUBLIC OF EGYPT
A TEACHER OF ENGLISH
00201141718435
( EGYPT )
00966508475704
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00601123542135
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osama.elweshahi@gmail.com