İngilizcealanbilgisi.Com | Eleştiriye açık, geliştirilebilir bilgi kaynağı
MORPHOLOGY


Morphology is the study of word structure and concerns the classes of morphemes, and their
co-occurrence in sentences and combination as words.
Morphological rules express the possible combinations of morphemes as words.
It is shortly concerned with the properties of words and word-building rules.
What is the aim of Morphology?
Some words can be divided up into parts, while others don’t. For example, dancers can be divided into
“dance +er +s ”, and gentleman into “gentle +man .”
In contrast, you can’t divide the words like book or door.
What is a morpheme?
Consider the words like readable and singing. Just like dancers and gentleman, these words can be
divided up into read +able and sing +ing .In these examples, the words are divided into the smallest
parts which you can’t divide any more. These smallest parts are called morphemes .
If you divide a word into the smallest parts, and if one of these smallest parts does not have any
meaning, then it is not a morpheme. This is because each morpheme must have a meaning.
Let’s state this as a rule: Meaningfulness: Each morpheme must have a meaning.
The case of dancers :
dance: to move up and down or about in a quick or lively manner
er: the person who does the action
s: plural
Thus, morphemes must be the smallest parts of a word and they must have a meaning.
Morpheme = A morpheme is a smallest meaningful part of a word.
_________________________________________________________
Exercise: Which is a morpheme?
preregister
preempt
pregnant
prepay
The meaning of a word is the sum of the meaning of its parts.
Some examples:
un :not
happy :in a joyful state
un +happy :not in a joyful state
wash ‘wash ’
İngilizcealanbilgisi.Com | Eleştiriye açık, geliştirilebilir bilgi kaynağı
able ‘be able to be X ’d ’
wash +able ‘be able to be washed ’
-->Each morpheme contributes to the meaning of the word.
________________________________________________
• Exercise::How many morphemes do these words have?
(a) prepay
(b) penniless
(c) poisonous
•Free vs. Bound morphemes
Some morphemes can constitute a word by itself, and the other cannot. For example, dance can form a
word by itself; but neither er nor s cannot: they must attach to another element.
The morphemes which can form a word by itself are called free morphemes, and those which must
attach to something are called bound morphemes .
________________________________________________
Exercise: Which is a free morpheme and which is a bound morpheme?
(a) civility
(b) penniless
Free morphemes:
Lexical morphemes: nouns, adjectives, and verbs (CONTENT words of a language (open class): we
can and regularly add new words to them)
Functional morphemes: conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns (Grammatical
(FUNCTION) words: conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns have been referred as "closed"
classes.
Bound morphemes:
Derivational morphemes: these are used to make new words in the language
Good+ness= goodness
Fool+ish=foolish
Inflectional morphemes: These are not used to produce new words but rather to indicate aspects of the
grammatical function of a word:
's (possesive)
-s (plural)
-s (3rd person singular)
-ing (present participle)
İngilizcealanbilgisi.Com | Eleştiriye açık, geliştirilebilir bilgi kaynağı
-ed (past tense)
-en (past particple)
-est (superlative)
-er (comparative)
The
girl
Functional
lexical
shock
-'s
wild
inflectional
-ed
the
lexical
teach
er
ness
derivational
s.
Morphemes may have more than one phoneme, each of which is an allomorph of the morpheme.
/a/ /an/ Indefinite article
/iz/ /s/ /z/ Noun plural suffix
Morphs
Actual forms used to realise morphemes
Cat= single morph realising a lexical morpheme
Cats= two morphs, realising a lexical morpheme and an inflectional morpheme
The indefinite article:
a / /indefinite article
an / / indefinite article
The noun plural suffix:
/s/ noun plural suffix
/iz/ noun plural suffix
Allomorphs
Different realisations of morphs
Plural:
cat+plural
cat+s
sheep+plural sheep+ 0
man+plural men