Lim Kay Yie
Kong Moon Moon
Rosaida bt ibrahim
Nor hayati bt jamaludin


Morphology is the study of the structure and formation of words.
Its most important unit is the morpheme , which is defined as the "minimal unit of meaning".
(Linguistics textbooks usually define it slightly differently as "the minimal unit of grammatical analysis".)

Consider a word like: " unhappiness ". This has three parts:
There are three morphemes, each carrying a certain amount of meaning. un means "not", while ness means "being in a state or condition". Happy is a free morpheme because it can appear on its own (as a "word" in its own right).

Stem
•A stem is a base morpheme to which another morphological piece is attached.
•It can be simple, made up of only one part, or complex, itself made up of more than one piece.
Example:
Word reconsideration. We can break it into three morphemes: re, consider , and ation .
Consider is called the stem.
Root
•A root is like a stem in constituting the core of the word to which other pieces attach, but the term refers only to morphologically simple units.
Example:
Disagree is the stem of disagreement, because it is the base to which
-ment attaches, but agree is the root. Taking disagree now, agree is both the stem to which disattaches and the root of the entire word.

Affix
• An additional element placed at the beginning or end of a root, stem, or word, or in the body of a word, to modify its meaning.
Example:
Reconsideration
 reand ation are both affixes
Prefix
• A letter or group of letters attached to the beginning of a word that partly indicates its meaning.
•Common prefixes include anti (against), co(with), mis(wrong, bad).
Example: dis= apart, away , dis appears .”
Suffix
• A letter or group of letters attached to the end of a word that partly indicates its meaning.
Example: -ful = have , beauti ful

Bound morphemes have to be attached to a free morpheme, and so cannot be words in their own right. Thus you can't have sentences in English such as
"Jason feels very un ness today".
 Morphological processes
1. Inflection
•Process of changing the form of a word so that it expresses information such as number, person, case, gender, tense, mood and aspect, but the syntactic category of the word remains unchanged.
• As an example, the plural form of the noun in English is usually formed from the singular form by adding an s .
car / car s table / table s dog / dog s

• Other examples of Inflection:
By adding a) ’s (possessive) b) -ing c) -er d) -est
(verb suffix meaning “in process” : is reading)
(comparative: smarter)
(superlatve suffix: smartest) e) -ed (past tense or irregular variants, as in bought and ate) f) “perfect” suffix on verbs ( -en, as in he has taken the cake.)

2. Derivation
- Derivation does change the category. Linguists classify derivation in English according to whether or not it induces a change of pronunciation.
- For instance, adding the suffix ity changes the pronunciation of the root of active so the stress is on the second syllable: activity.
-The addition of the suffix al to approve doesn't change the pronunciation of the root: approval.

 In Nouns
- age (appendage)
- al (arrival)
- ance (acceptance)
-ness (kindness)
-tion (absorption)
-ism (socialism)
-er
-icle
(babysitter)
(particle)
 In Verbs
-ate
-ize
-en
-ify
(satiate)
(regularize)
(harden)
(glorify)
- ity (personality)
- let (outlet)
-ment (government)
-ful (handful)
-ship (friendship)
-ist (socialist)
-ant
-ure
(assistant)
(departure)
-re unde-
(rewrite)
(undo)
(deregulate)

 In Adjectives
-able (readable)
-al (accidental) anti-
-ary
-ent
-ful
-ish
(anti-war)
(visionary)
(confident)
(beautiful)
(boyish)
-less
-ive
-in
(priceless)
(active)
(intolerant)
-like
-ory
(childlike)
(regulatory)
-ous (porous)
-semi (semilogical)
-super (supermarket)
-trans (trans-Siberian)
-ultra (ultrasensitive)
 In Adverbs
-ly (slowly) -wise (timewise)
 In Members of More Than One World Class
-an
-ly
(American [noun and adjective])
(friendly [adjective], eagerly [adverb]) post(postscript [noun], postdate [verb]) pre(preview [noun and verb])

Inflectional
Derivational
Always follow any derivational suffixes.
Eg: authorizing
{author} + {-ize} + {-ing}
Always precede any inflectional suffixes.
Eg: statements
{state} + {ment} + {s}

Inflectional
Derivational
Never change part of speech of base.
Eg: boy (noun singular) boys (noun plural)
Often change part of speech of base.
Eg: boy (noun)
Boyish (adjective)

Inflectional
Derivational
Combine with almost all members of single part of speech.
Eg: human>humans pencil>pencils
Usually can combine with only a few subgroups of bases belonging to one or two parts of speech.
Eg: human> humanize
*humanify
*humanate

Inflectional
Derivational
-Has grammatical meaning.
Eg:
{-s} > humans
Creates plural of a word that retains its original meaning.
-
Has some lexical meaning.
Eg:
{-ize} > humanize
Creates verbs meaning “to cause to become”

Analysing morphemes
You can do this in 3 ways :-
1. By dividing it up with hyphens e.g. truth-ful-ness
2. By using a tree diagram OR hierarchical structure
N
A
N truth - ful - ness

Dividing with hyphens
Divide into base form + morphemes truth = one morpheme truthful = base form + bound morpheme
(truth ful) truthfulness = base form + bound + bound
(truth-ful-ness)

Constructing tree diagrams (1) i.
Divide the word into its constuent morphemes e.g. greed-i-ness ii.
Decide the root and its grammatical category : greed = noun (N) iii. Decide the grammatical category of all the new words created by the other morphemes greedy = adjective (A) greediness = noun (N)

Constructing tree diagrams (2) i.
Write the divided word at the bottom of the page greed-i-ness ii.
Write the grammatical category of the root and join it to the word:
N greed iii. Write the grammatical category of all the new words created by the other morphemes
A and join them up
N greed-i greed-i-ness

Now write the word and connect up all the categories.
Can you label the boxes?

Greed >
Greedy >
Greediness

Ingo Plag. (2003). Word-Formation in English.
Cambridge University Press.
Jeffrey P. Kaplan. (1989). English Grammar
Michael Newby. (1987). The Structure of English.
Cambridge University Press.
Thomas P. Klammer. (1992). Analyzing English