MORPHOLOGY
Morphology
The study of internal structure of words,
and of the rules by which words are
formed
Morphology: the word of language
Important part of our linguistic knowledge
Word
“A unit of expression which has universal
intuitive recognition by native speaker, in
both spoken and written language”
(Crystal)
“The smallest of linguistic unit which can
occur on its own in speech or writing”
(Richard & Schmidt)
Conti….
“A unit of meaning”
(Finch)
“A minimal free form”
(Bloomfield)
Content words
Noun, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
Denote concept such as objects, action,
attributes and ideas
Open class words
Function words
Grammatical function
Conjunctions, preposition, articles,
pronouns,
Articles indicate definite or indefinite noun
Preposition indicate relationship or
possession
Closed-class
Morpheme
“the minimal unit of meaning or grammatical
function”.
The minimal grammatical linguistic unit- is
thus an arbitrary union of a sound and
meaning that cannot be further analysed.
Every word in every language is
composed of one or more morphemes.
boy (one syllable)
desire, lady,
boy + ish
desire + able
boy + ish + ness
desire + able + ity
gentle + man + li +ness
un + desire + able +ity
un + gentle + man + li+ness
anti +dis + establish +ment+ari + an + ism
lexical (child, teach)
free
functional (and, the)
Morphemes
bound
inflectional (re,ness)
derivational (‘s, -ed)
Bound Morphemes
Cannot normally stand alone or typically
attached to another form
All affixes (prefixes and suffixes) in English
Prefix
Bound morphemes which occur only
before other morphemes.
Examples:
un- (uncover, undo)
dis- (displeased, disconnect),
pre- (predetermine, prejudge)
Suffixes
Bound morphemes which occur
following other morphemes.
Examples:
-er (singer, performer)
-ist (typist, pianist)
-ly (manly, friendly)
Infixes
Bound morphemes which are inserted
into other morphemes.
Example:
fikas "strong"
fumikas "to be strong"
(Bontoc Language)
Free Morphemes
Can stand by themselves as a single word
Example: girl, system, desire, hope, act,
phone, happy..
Set of separate English word form such as
basic noun, adjectives, verbs, etc.
Rules of word formation
Knowledge of individual morphemes, their
pronunciation and their meaning and the
knowledge of the rules for combining
morphemes into complex words.
V+ify→verb
V+ify→
+ify+ication→noun
The form that result from addition of a
derivational morpheme is called a derived
word
Derivational Morphology
Derivational morphemes derive a new
word by being attached to root
morphemes or stems
They can be both suffixes and prefixes
in English. Examples: beautiful, exactly,
unhappy, impossible, recover
Change of Meaning
Examples: un+do (the opposite meaning
of ‘do’) sing+er ( deriving a new word with
the meaning of a person who sings).
The Hierarchical Structure of
Words
A word is not a simple sequence of
morphemes. It has an internal structure.
Hierarchical structure is an essential
property of human language.
Word Coinage
Invention of totally new terms
Words are used usually without capital
letters e.g,Kleenex, Xerox, etc
Compound
Joining of two words
together to form third
Involves two nouns
(frequently)
Book+case=bookcase
Wall+paper=wallpaper
Lambs+wool=lambswool
Acronyms
Words derived
from the initial s of
several words
Random Access
Memory
Video Cassette
Recorder
Some Commonly Used Acronyms
CD
Radar
Laser
ATM
PIN
GB
Compact Disk
Radio Detecting and Ranging
Light amplification by stimulated
emission of radiation
Automatic teller machine
Personal identification number
Giga Byte
Back-formation
Specified reduction process
Word of one type is reduced to form a
word of another type (usually N → V)
Continued…….
Television ………Televise
Donation………...Donate
Emotion………… Emote
Editor …………... Edit
Clipping
Abbreviation of longer
words may become
lexicalised
Blends
Smog
Motel
Broast
Brunch
Grammatical Morphemes
Have not any clear lexical meaning
have only clear sense in a sentence , e.g.
to , it and etc
Inflectional Morphemes
Inflectional morphemes signal grammatical
information such as number (plural),
tense, possession and so on. They are
thus often called bound grammatical
morphemes
They are only found in suffixes
in English.
Examples: boys, Mary’s , walked
Inflectional Morphemes
Inflectional morphemes signal grammatical
information such as number (plural),
tense, possession and so on. They are
thus often called bound grammatical
morphemes
They are only found in suffixes
in English.
Examples: boys, Mary’s , walked
Conti….
No change of Meaning
Examples:
walk vs. walks
toy vs. toys
Never change the syntactic category of the
words or morpheme to they which they are
attached.
They are always attached to completed
words Examples:
walk vs. walked or
walks (V--> V)
Conti….
In English, inflectional morphemes
typically follow derivational morphemes
Examples:unlikelihood, unlikelihoods (not
*unlikeslihood)
English Inflectional Morphemes
-s
third person singular present
She waits at home.
 -ed past tense
She waited at home.
-ing progressive
She is eating the donut.
-en past participle
Mary has eaten the donuts.
-s
plural
She ate the donuts.
-’s possessive
Disa's hair is short.
-er comparative
Disa has shorter hair than Karin.
-est superlative
Disa has the shortest hair.
Morph
Phonological realization of a morpheme
Allomorphs and variants
The appearance of one morph over
another
Morphological analysis
Speaker of a language have the
knowledge to perceive the component
morphemes and morphological rules for
their combination