I. MORPHOLOGY
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A. A definition
Morphology has its roots in the Greek morphe meaning shape or structure and - ology meaning study of. By
working out that morph+ology means study of structure, you are actually looking at word structure (i.e.
morphology).
Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. Words are at the interface among
phonology, syntax and semantics
There are many current approaches to morphology. For expository purposes, this article will describe the
phenomena in a fairly traditional way: treating words as combinations of discrete meaningful units (morphemes)
put together by concatenation. A contemporary morphologist would call this a "morpheme-based" theory;
alternatives are lexeme-based morphology and word-based morphology.
The components of a word form are called morphemes. Word formation rules describe how to select
morphemes from the lexicon and to combine them.
Important concepts:

Inflection

Derivation

Compounding
Morphemes make up words and are the smallest units of grammar: roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Native
speakers recognize the morphemes as grammatically significant or meaningful. For example, "schoolyard" is
made of "school" + "yard", "makes" is made of "make" + a grammatical suffix "-s", and "unhappiness" is made of
"happy" with a prefix "un-" and a suffix "-ness".
Inflection occurs when a word has different forms but essentially the same meaning, and there is only a
grammatical difference between them: for example, "make" and "makes". The "-s" is an inflectional morpheme.
In contrast, derivation makes a word with a clearly different meaning: such as "unhappy" or "happiness", both
from "happy". The "un-" and "-ness" are derivational morphemes.
These examples also illustrate the other two kinds of morphemes, unbound (which are meaningful on their
own) and bound (which have meaning when combined with another morpheme). Thus, the word "schoolyard"
consists of two unbound morphemes ("school" and "yard"), while the word "makes" has one unbound ("make")
and one bound, and "unhappiness" has one unbound and two bound.
A word may consist of two bound morphemes: the word "morpheme" itself illustrates this, since it consists, or
traditionally consisted, of two bound morphemes ("morph" and "eme"). But as the example of "morpheme"
reveals, bound morphemes may become unbound ones: "morph" has been adopted in linguistics for the
phonological realization of a morpheme, and the verb "morph" was coined to describe a transition between
morphological states (usually biological). A more familiar example is if we adopt the suffix "-ish" as a separate
word, and use "ish" by itself to mean "somewhat, a bit, so-so". The suffix "-ism" is often applied in a similar way
to mean "a system of beliefs or an ideology" (e.g. Darwinism).
A morpheme may have different realizations (morphs) in different contexts. For example, the verb morpheme
"do" of English has three quite distinct pronunciations in the words "do", "does" (with suffix "-s"), and "don't" (with
"-n't"). Such alternating morphs of a morpheme are called its allomorphs. Other examples are in past participles
of verbs: "walked", "eaten", "drunk": one verb has a regular "-ed" allomorph, one has a less common "-en"
allomorph, and one changes the vowel inside the verb. This last case is a problem for description, because you
can't separate the morpheme "drink" from the morpheme for past participle. The two appear fused.
In some languages, of which Latin forms a prime example, several inflections are often fused into one
phonetic form. These are called fusional languages. For example, dominus "master" has plural domini, while
domina "mistress" has plural dominae. The ending -us contains the ideas of masculine and singular, and in
addition is only used in the nominative case. In the accusative singular it is dominum, and in the genitive plural it
is dominorum. It is impossible to isolate separate morphemes for case, or gender, or number. In contrast to
fusional languages, agglutinative languages such as Turkish use multiple morphemes in the one word but they
are all phonetically separable.
The Semitic languages show an extreme of fusion, in that word roots are often represented by fixed
consonants, usually three, and their inflection and derivation is done with internal vowel patterns as well as
affixes. For example, in Arabic we find kataba "he wrote", yaktubu "he writes", kaatib "writer", kitaab "book",
maktab "office". All these forms use the consonant cluster KTB.
Suppletion is the replacement of a regular form by an unrelated word. In English "go" has the past tense
"went", and "be" has various unrelated parts such as "am" and "was".
The term Gesamtbedeutung is used to describe the general semantic meaning of a particular morpheme,
independent of grammatical function. The morphemes "-ing" and "-or" (as in "eliminating" and "eliminator") may
be said to share a common Gesamtbedeutung, namely that of agency.
A cranberry morpheme is one that exists only in one bound form, such as the "cran-" of "cranberry". It is
unrelated to the word "cran" meaning a case of herrings, and though it actually comes from "crane" the bird, it is
not at all clear why. Phonetically, the first morphemes of "gooseberry" and "raspberry" also count as cranberry
morphemes, as they don't occur by themselves, but the spelling gives an obscure clue to their origin. Compare
these to "blackberry", which has two obvious unbound morphemes.
B. What is the difference between a lexeme and a morpheme?
The differences between these two linguistic elements are dramatic. Here are the major ones.
Comparison of Lexemes and Morphemes
Lexemes
Morphemes
Refer to real world
Refer to
categories
May be derived
Cannot be derived
Always
sound
associated
Sounds
predetermined
grammatical
with
Often not associated with
sound
always
Sounds often depend on
stem
Are infinite in number
Belong to a small, closed
class
Let's examine these differences. Lexemes, remember, are basically noun, verb, and adjective stems or whole
words: "violin", "play", "small" are lexemes. They refer to things, actions, states, and qualities in the real world.
Suffixes like "-ing", "-s", "-ed", prefixes like "re-", "ex-", "un-", particles like "the", "not", "so" and prepositions like
"of", "for", "to" are morphemes. They refer to grammatical categories like Progressive Aspect ("-ing": "am going"),
Plural Number ("-s": "cars"), Past Tense (-"ed": "walked"), Negation ("un-, not": "unwanted"), Definite ("the": "the
cat"), Possession ("of": "of my friend").
Lexemes like "violin", "play", and "small" are subject to derivation, a process which generates new words from
others: "violin" > "violin-ist", "play" > "play-er", "small" > "small-ness". Morphemes do not undergo derivation
even if they are not affixes which mark derivations themselves. We do not find words derived from "the", "that",
"of", "for", "it".
Lexemes always comprise a sound plus a meaning but morphemes may have either one but not the other.
For example, if "-er" means 'someone who does something', as in "runner", "player", "driver", what sound has
that meaning in "(a) cook", "(a) guide", "(a) cut-up"? With these verbs, all we have to do is use them in a noun
position, e.g. "the cook guided us through the kitchen", and we know that the speaker is using the noun, not the
verb. (Leads one to wonder why we have affixes at all, doesn't it?)
On the other hand, morphemes some time show up with sound but not meaning. Take the adjectives that end
on "-ic", e.g. "histor-ic", meaning 'having the property of history' from "history". There are lots of these
derivations: "climat-ic", "theatr-ic", "semant-ic". But look at this series: "dram-at-ic", "spasm-at-ic", "enigm-at-ic".
The meaning of these adjectives is the same as that of the "syntactic" class: 'having the properties of X', where
'X' is the meaning of the underlying word. However, they contain an extra morpheme, "-at". Why is that? Well, for
some reason known only to the ancient Greeks, who enjoyed the same derivation, before adding "-ic" you had to
insert a suffix "-at" if the stem ended on an 'm'. So, when English borrowed these words from Greece, the rule
came with it. The suffix "-at" probably had no meaning in Greek but it certainly has none in English, where it is
simply required of all words borrowed from Greek ending on 'm' when the suffix "-ic" is applied. So not only do
we find morpheme meanings without morphemes, we find morphemes without morphemic meaning.
The sounds of lexemes are always predetermined and remain (more or less) the same wherever they occur in
a phrase. The sound of a morpheme on the other hand, especially prefixes and suffixes may vary wildly.
An important difference between lexemes and morphemes is that the former, but not the latter, belong to an
open, unlimited class. That means that there is no limit on the number of noun, verb, and adjective stems in any
language. New lexemes may be derived by compounding, affixation, and other rules; they may be borrowed
from other languages or simply made up. The number of morphemes, however, is limited to around 200. ProtoIndo-European languages have fewer than 100. We are currently being inundated by new lexemes describing
the categories, states and qualities of new technology. We never meet a new preposition (of, for, by, with),
pronoun (he, she, it, or article a, the. The fact that the number of morphemes and the categories they refer to is
fixed suggests that they determine the grammar of a language.
So, what is going on when we speak is a bit more subtle than stringing 'words' together in phrases. Assuming
that on is a word does not distinguish between the lexeme on in 'The oven is on' and the morpheme on in 'on the
table'. Why is this important? It helps us understand the important difference between grammar and vocabulary.
The meaning of on the morpheme, but not that of the lexeme may expressed by a suffix in some languages (cf.
Finnish and Hungarian, for example). It helps us understand why children begin learning lexemes around the
age of one, about a year before they begin learning grammar, represented by morphemes. They only begin
picking up morphemes around the age of two, when they begin using phrases.
Finally, it helps explain why chimpanzees can learn what seem to be lexemes but not
morphemes(morphemes represent grammar, the essential core of language). Morphemes convey the categories
of grammar itself, so if we want to understand language itself, we must understand first and foremost
morphemes. Lexemes are not going to tell us much about language.
Remember, the magic word is LINGUISTICS, a very new science, indeed. Morphology is the study of words
and their parts: morphemes and lexemes. It examines the grammatical and semantic categories they convey as
well as the sounds and sound changes caused by combining them. It also explores the relations of words in
sentences.
C. Free and bound morphemes
Different linguists have suggested various terms for types of morphemes but free and bound seem to fit well.

A free morpheme is one which carries meaning in its own right. It can stand up on its own and make sense,
like sun, hamster, cold and rain.

A bound morpheme is one which cannot normally stand up on its own and make sense-it needs to be
attached to a free morpheme, for example re-, de-, -ist, -al. This group includes all prefixes (something which is
attached to the beginning of a word) and suffixes (something which is attached to the end of a word), plural
forms and tense endings.
These have been sorted out into free and bound morphemes:
FREE
BOUND
blue
-er
woman
-est
open
-ish
short
mega-
see
hyper-
track
-ing
Clearly, these two groups are dependent upon one another for anything to make sense, even though the free
morphemes seem to carry the meaning more. The two groups complement each other.
a. Types of free morphemes
There are two distinct types of free morphemes.

Lexical morphemes include adjectives, nouns and verbs

Functional morphemes includes word classes such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns
The lexical, free morphemes in the following sentence are in bold. The functional, free morphemes are plain.
She let herself into the house with the Yale.
b. Types of bound morphemes

Derivational morphemes are the 'bits' you can add to a word to make new words, i.e. prefixes and suffixes

Inflectional morphemes are the 'bits' you add to change tense, number or case. The only case ending we
have left now is 's to show possession, for example: the student's mark was unexpectedly high.
The derivational, bound morphemes in this example are in bold. The inflectional, bound morphemes are in red.

The group's wildness thrilled the watchers
c. Irregularities
As with everything in English, this seems to be a nice, neat system but there are problems. Take the example
earlier construct. This looks like con + the rest, i.e. a derivational , bound morpheme.
But there is no verb to struct in the language. The word oral looks as though it has the derivational morpheme al, but what is left indicates otherwise, as or- is not recognisable as a morpheme.
d.. Allomorphs
Allomorph is the term used to describe morphemes which do the same job. For example, there are numerous
allomorphs that do the job of making something negative. You can use in-, im-, or il- as in the examples:
insensitive, improper and illegal.
Look at these plural words. The allomorphs which make them plural are in bold.
1. Raquets
2. Potatoes
These are allomorphs. There is also the zero plural as in sheep and the irregualar plural, as in children.
II. Word Formation
A. Affixes
Lacking an exact correspondence between its sounds and its written symbols, English spelling can be
frustratingly inconsistent and can pose problems for even the best spellers. Although it would be impossible to
formulate a set of rules that would cover the spelling of all English words, many spelling difficulties arise in
connection with suffixes, and the six basic rules given here for determining spelling changes in a word root when
a suffix is added are intended as an aid in learning and understanding the correct spelling of a large number of
English words.
Adding a Suffix to a Word
1. Adding a suffix to a one-syllable word:
a.
ords of one syllable that end in a single consonant preceded by a single vowel double the final
consonant before a suffix beginning with a vowel: bag, baggage; hop, hopper; hot, hottest; red, redder; run,
running; stop, stopped. There are two notable exceptions to this rule: bus (buses or busses; busing or bussing)
and gas (gasses or gases; gassing; gassy).
b.
If a word ends with two or more consonants or if it ends with one consonant preceded by two or more
vowels instead of one, the final consonant is not doubled: debt, debtor; lick, licking; mail, mailed; sweet,
sweetest.
2. Adding a suffix to a word with two or more syllables:
a. Words of two or more syllables that have the accent on the last syllable and end in a single consonant
preceded by a single vowel double the final consonant before a suffix beginning with a vowel: admit, admitted;
confer, conferring; control, controller; regret, regrettable. There are a few exceptions: chagrin, chagrined;
transfer, transferred, transferring but transferable, transference.
b. When the accent shifts to the first syllable of the word after the suffix is added, the final consonant is not
doubled: prefer, preference; refer, reference.
c. If the word ends with two consonants or if the final consonant is preceded by more than one vowel the final
consonant is not doubled: perform, performance; repeal, repealing.
d. If the word is accented on any syllable except the last the final developed; interpret, interpreted. However,
some words like cobweb, handicap, and outfit follow the models of web, cap, and fit, even though these words
may not be true compounds. A few others ending in g double the final g so that it will not be pronounced like j:
zigzag, zigzagged.
e. Adding a suffix beginning with a vowel to a word ending in a silent
Words ending with a silent e usually drop the e before a suffix beginning with a vowel: force, forcible; route,
routed; glide, gliding; operate, operator; trifle, trifler. However, there are many exceptions to this rule:
f. Many words of this type have alternative forms (the preferred form is given first): blame, blamable or
blameable; blue, bluish or blueish. And in certain cases, alternative forms have different meanings: linage or
lineage (number of lines) but lineage (ancestry).
g. Many words ending in ce or ge keep the e before the suffixes -able and -ous: advantage, advantageous;
change, changeable; trace, traceable.
h. Words ending in a silent e keep the e if the word could be mistaken for another word: dye, dyeing; singe,
singeing.
i. If the word ends in ie, the e is dropped and the i changed to y before the suffix -ing. A word ending in i
remains unchanged before -ing: die, dying; ski, skiing.
j. Mile and acre do not drop the e before the suffix -age: mileage, acreage.
3. Adding a suffix beginning with a consonant to a word ending in a silent e:
a. Words ending with a silent e generally retain the e before a suffix that begins with a consonant: plate, plateful;
shoe, shoeless; arrange, arrangement; white, whiteness; awe, awesome; nice, nicety. However, there are many
exceptions to this rule. Some of the most common are abridge, abridgment; acknowledge, acknowledgment;
argue, argument; awe, awful; due, duly; judge, judgment; nine, ninth; true, truly; whole, wholly; wise, wisdom.
4. Adding a suffix to a word ending in y:
a. Words ending in y preceded by a consonant generally change the y to i before the addition of a suffix, except
when the suffix begins with an i: accompany, accompaniment; beauty, beautiful; icy, icier, iciest, icily, iciness; but
reply, replying.
b. The y is retained in derivatives of baby, city, and lady and before the suffixes -ship and -like: babyhood,
cityscape, ladyship, ladylike.
c. Adjectives of one syllable ending in y preceded by a consonant usually retain the y when a suffix beginning
with a consonant is added: shy, shyly, shyness; sly, slyly, slyness; wry, wryly, wryness; but dryly or drily,
dryness. These adjectives usually also retain the y when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added, although most
have variants where the y has changed to i: dry, drier or dryer, driest or dryest; shy, shier or shyer, shiest or
shyest.
d. Words ending in y preceded by a vowel usually retain the y before a suffix: buy, buyer; key, keyless; coy,
coyer, coyest; gay, gayer, gayest; but day, daily; gay, gaily or gayly.
e. Some words drop the final y before the addition of the suffix -eous: beauty, beauteous.
5. Adding a suffix to a word ending in c:
a. Words ending in c almost always have the letter k inserted after the c when a suffix beginning with e, i, or y is
added: panic, panicky; picnic, picnicker. This is done so that the letter c will not be pronounced like s.