Linguistics/Morphology

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of words, practiced by morphologists.

This chapter will largely follow the morpheme-based theory of morphology, but a description of other views of morphology will be presented at the end.

Classifying Morphemes

Morphemes are categorised thus:

• Bound morphemes: They cannot stand alone, i.e. they are affixes.
  • Derivational morphemes: We change the grammatical category or the meaning of the word. Examples are re-, de-, un-, -ness, -ly and so on.
  • Inflectional morphemes: We do not change the meaning or grammatical category of the word with these. We use them to mark plurality, tense, agreement, case and so on.
• Free morphemes. They can be used alone.
  • Lexical morphemes: They represent the concepts of the message we wish to bring across. Ship, orange and president are some examples. They are an open set of words in a language.
  • Functional morphemes: They are functional words, like determiners, pronouns, conjunctions and so on. Whatever, because and against are some examples.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linguistics/Morphology

In linguistics, Morphemes are indicated by brace marks ({} ).

LOOK AT SOME EXAMPLES :

     As we know that in English, the case of plurality is indicated by adding “s” to the singular nouns.

Singular                                                                    Plural                  

Ø Book                                                           Books

(Consist of morpheme {book} and morpheme {s})                   

Ø Table                                                          Tables

(Consist of morpheme {table} and mopheme {s})                  

Ø Bag                                                   Bags 

(Consist of morpheme {bag} and morpheme {s})                  

Ø Thus, in the example , each word has two Morphemes.

OTHER EXAMPLES:

In one of the patterns of tense marker in english grammar is indicated by adding “ed” to the past tense regular verbs.

Present                                                           Past

 

Ø Deliver                                                        Delivered

( Consist of morpheme {deliver} and morpheme {ed}

Ø Learn                                                 Learned

( Consisit of morpheme {learn} and morpheme {ed}

Ø Pick                                                   Picked

(Consist of morpheme {pick} and morpheme {ed}

Ø In these example, each word also has two morphemes. 

QUESTION :

v How many Morphemes do these words contain ?

·        Plays

·        Replay

·        Cheap

·        Cheaply

·        Cheaper

·        Able

·        Unable

·        Brighten

ANSWER :

Word :                                                        Number of  Morpheme

Play                                  { 2 } morphemes (play) and (s)

Replay                              {2} morphemes (re) and (play)

Cheap                               {1} morphemes (cheap)

Cheaply                            {2} morphemes (cheap) and (ly)

Cheaper                            {2} morphemes (cheap) and (er)

Able                                 {1} morphemes (able )

Unable                              {2} morphemes (un) and (able )

Brighten                           {2} morphemes (bright) and (en)

KINDS OF MORPHEMES :

There are two kinds of morphemes:

1.     FREE MORPHEME

2.     BOUND MORPHEME

MORPHEME

 

1. FREE MORPHEME

    A free morpheme is one that can be uttered alone with meaning, such as the words that we saw earlier :

ü {book}

ü {table}

ü {bag}

ü {deliver}

ü {learn}

ü {pick}

All of these morphemes are FREE MORPHEMES .

2.BOUND MORPHEME

   A bound morpheme cannot be uttered alone with meaning. It always added to one or more morphemes to form aword. The following morphemes are taken from the previous. Example:

·     {s}                              in                plays

·     {re}                            in                replay

·     {ly}                            in                cheaply

·     {er}                            in                cheapter

·     {un}                           in                unable

·     {en}                           in                brighten

All of these underlined morphemes are BOUND MORPHEMES .

EXERCISE :

Mention the free and bound morphemes of the following words :

1.     Undo

2.     Disagreement

3.     Beautiful

4.     Friendship

5.     Meaningless

ANSWERS:

WORDS :                      FREE MORPHEMES                       BOUND MORPHEMES

                                                                        

Undo                   {do}                                               {un}

Disagreement      {agree}                                           {dis}, {ment}

Beautiful             {beauty}                                         {ful}

Friendship          {friend}                                          {ship}

Meaningless        {mean}                                           {ing}, {less}

Whereas “ free morphemes”

Constitute words by

Them selvers

“bound morpehems” are

Never words but always parts of words

Ø BOUND MORPHEMES mostly refer to morphemes that can occur as affixes. The affixes which precede free morphemes (words) are called prefixes and those which follow free morphemes (words) are called sufixes .

SOME EXAMPLES:

·        DIS                                                   - LY

·        UN -                                                  -NEST

·        PRE  -                                               -ISH

·        TRANS –                                          -ITY

·        BI -                                                    -ER

Ø BOUND MORPHEMES Come in two varieties, “ DERIVATIONAL , and “ INFLECTIONAL “.

BOUND MORPHEME

 

 The core difference between the two being that the addition of the derivational morphemes creater new words or mostly changes the word classes/ identify/ category; while the addition of inflectional morphemes merely changes word form.

1.                 DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME

The basic concept of DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME is that they derive new words. In the following examples, DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME are added to produce new words which are derived from the “parent word” (root).

·                    Happy – happiness

          (adj)            (noun)

·                   Examine – examination

(verb)          (noun)

·                   Beauty-beautiful-beautifully

(noun)  (adj)         (adverb)

·                    Danger- dangerous

           (noun)    (adj)

o  In all cases, the derived words means something. Different than the  rook, and the word class may change wih each derivation.

o  Denivation does not always cause the change of words class, but in such a case the meaning of word will usually be significantly different from the root.

EXAMPLES :

·        VISIBLE –INVISIBLE

                     ( ADJ)        (ADJ)

·        CREATE – RECREATE

                     (NOUN)      (NOUN)

·        MARKET-SUPERMARKET

                     (NOUN)       (NOUN)

·        TERMINATE-DETERMINE

                      (VERB)         (VERB)

                      

2.     INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

o        Inflectional (the Process by which inflectional morphemes are attached to words ), allows speakers to Morphologically encode grammatical information see the following . EXAMPLE :

The word “girls” consist of two morphemes :

·        The free morpheme “girl” that describe a young female human being , and

·        The bound morpheme “s” that denotasi plural number.

Note that both “girl” (as singular) and “girls “ (as plural) are in the same word class, that is noun.

o        English is no longer a highly inflected language. But it has some inflectional endings, such as :

·        -s (third person singular present tense)

·        -ed (past tense)

·        -ing(progressive tense)

·        -en(past participle)

·        -s(plural)

·        -‘s(posessive)

·        -er(comprerative)

·        -est(superlative)

Example of Morphological encoding of other grammatical categories that can be considered as the inflectional markers are :

-         Past tense ( regular verb-ed)

·        Walk                    walked

(verb)            (verb)

-         Progressive (-ing form)

·        Walk           walking

(verb)                   (verb)

-         Person ( the addition of “s” for 3 ^rd  person singular.

·        Walk                    walks

(verb)                   (verbs)

-         Plurality (the “s” in plural form)

·        Car             cars

(noun)         (noun)

Whather or not word class

Changes and how significantly

Meaning is affected

“derivation” always create

New word existing ones, while

“inflection” is merely limited

To change word form

ALLOMORPH

Definition:

“An allomorph is one of two or more complementary morphs (the phonetics realization of morpheme), which manifest a morpheme in its different phonoligical or morphologicial environments ”.

(source : summer institute of linguistics (sl)  internasional ).

This is How Morph & Morpheme deal with Allomorph

“ A morpheme is indicated as one or more morphs(surface forms) in different environments. These morphs are called allomorphs “.

Compare with:

“ A phoneme is indicated as one or more phones (phonetic sounds )in different environments. These phones are called allophones.

The Allomorphs of a morpheme are derived from phonologicial rules and any morphophonemic rules that may apply to that morpheme.

EXAMPLE OF ALLOMORPHS :

1.     The plural morphemes in english , usually written as {s}, has least three allomorphs :

·        {s} as in ‘hats ( haets)

·        {z} as in ‘dogs (‘dagz)

·        (iz) as in boxes (‘baksiz)

http://www.slideshare.net/Andriyanieka12/6-morphology-morpheme-allomorph-18509326

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