PE3011 English Language Studies and Teaching I
Lecture 9 : Morphology
(Reading : Fromkin and Rodman, ch. 3)
What makes a word a word?
Which of the following can be considered a word?
man
woman
chair
chairperson
pre
prefer
preferring
pro
professional
What are the principles you use to decide if each of
the above is a word or not?
Morphology
Morphology is the study of the structure or forms of
words.
What is a word?
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I. Lexeme: One way to see the meaning of a
word
You don’t know the word ‘patronizing’. When you
look up the word from your dictionary, which item
will you look up?
Patronize (patronise): an abstract word, which comes
with different forms ‘patronize, patronizing,
patronized, etc.’
Patronize:
 a lexeme which comes with different realizations in
different contexts
 a lexeme which has a particular unit of meaning
which can stand on its own
A lexeme is the smallest, independent unit of meaning
What are the lexemes of the following items?




Confrontation
Connotation
Realization
Kicking
II. Morphemes: another way of looking at words
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 Small units of meaning which cannot exist on
their own
 The meaning each unit (morpheme) represents
can be ideational or functional
 They are building blocks of some English
words.
e.g.,
‘un-’ in the word ‘undo’
(an ideational meaning of ‘not’)
‘es’ in ‘flashes’ (a functional meaning of plural
marking or subject-verb agreement marking)
‘trans’ & ‘ion’ in the word ‘transportation’
(what meanings do the two morphemes carry?)
Some words seem to come with some morphemes but
the letters in them actually are not morphemes
FUN
Onion
F+ un (x)
On + ion(x)
Do Ex. 2 (p.99) Fromkin & Rodman
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Morphemes Vs Syllables
Morphemes can be syllabic or non-syllabic
e.g.,
‘un~’ // as in the word ‘undo’
‘~s’ /s/ as in the word ‘boys’
Types of Morphemes
There are two major kinds of morphemes : Roots and
Affixes
Roots
a morpheme which forms the base of a word, which
usually contributes to a key/core part of meaning of a
word.
e.g., manly, problematic, terrifying
Roots as free morphemes
 Roots that stand on its own
e.g. MAN BOOK TABLE
RED CAT BOY
BIG
 They are normally what we mean when we talk
about “words”.
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Roots as bound morphemes:
 incapable of occurring in isolation
 they must always be attached to some other
morpheme(s).
e.g. -MIT
perMIT, reMIT, comMIT, adMIT
Affixes
 bound morphemes
 are attached to roots.
Prefixes
A prefix is an affix attached before a root.
e.g. RE-make, UN-kind, IM-possible, DIS-trust,
IN-accurate
Suffixes
A suffix is an affix attached after a root.
e.g. kind-LY, wait-ER, art-IST, book-S, read-S,
kind-NESS, care-FUL, care-LESS
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Infixes
incorporated inside the root;
rare in English;
fairly common in some other languages.
e.g.
in Kamhmu (a language spoken in South East Asia)
see (to drill)
toh (to chisel)
hiip (to eat with a spoon)
hoom (to tie)
srnee (a drill)
trnoh (a chisel)
hrniip ( a spoon)
hrnoom (a thing with which to tie)
What is the infix here? What is its function?
the infix -rn- is added to verbs to nominalize verbs
In English, infixes are occasionally used by
emotionally aroused speakers.
e.g.
The car hit a kangaBLOODYroo.
HalleBLOODYluja
III. Compounding: another way to look at words
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A free morpheme + a free morpheme
a.
V-ing + Noun
ironing board
driving licence
swimming pool
chewing gum
sailing boat
shopping centre
writing-pad
c.
Verb + Noun
kill joy
scarecrow
spoil sport
e.
Adjective + Noun
loudspeaker
honeymoon
greenhouse
high brow
b.
d.
Noun + Noun
apron string
city centre
clock tower
Bowland Tower
Lake District
tea spoon
skin head
Noun + Agentive Noun
bookmaker
bus driver
screwdriver
Do Ex. 3 p.99 (Fromkin & Rodman)
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IV. Functions of morphemes: Inflectional and
Derivational Morphemes
IV.1
Derivational Morphemes
added to words to change nature of a word:
IV.1.1 changing the meaning of the base to which
they are attached
e.g. kind
trust
UN-kind
DIS-trust
happy
moral
UN-happy
A-moral
IV.1.2 changing the grammatical category that a word
belongs to
e.g. care
care-ful
boy
exact
sing
predict
haste
alcohol
care-FUL
careful-NESS
boy-ISH
exact-LY
sing-ER
predict-ION
haste-N
alcohol-IC
IV.2
Inflectional Morphemes
Added to change form a word to give a grammatical
fit into a particular grammatical slot.
GIRL
 GIRLS (plural marker)
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WALK  WALKED (tense marker)
SHORT SHORTER (comparative marker)
e.g. long
read
read
book
long-ER
read-S
read-ING
book-S
short
play
John
short-EST
play-ED
John’S
Do Ex. 4 p.99 (Fromkin & Rodman)
V. Generativity of morphemes
Some of these rules are productive, meaning that they
can be used freely to from new words from the list of
free and bound morphemes. For instance, the
derivational morpheme -ABLE (a suffix can be
conjoined with any verb to derive an adjective).
e.g., ?
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