MORPHOLOGY

Morphology

Study of the structure of words

Morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function

For example, the word reopened consists of three morphemes.

One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re-
(meaning ‘again’),

and a minimal unit of grammatical function is -ed (indicating past tense).

Morphemes Free Morphemes

and its types Lexical

Functional

Bound Morphemes

Derivational

Inflectional
 Set of separate English word-forms

Independent words which carry meaning

When they are used with bound morphemes

The basic word-form involved is known as the

Free Morphemes stem

For example, in the word careless,

the stem (free) is care and the bound morpheme is

– less.
 Free morphemes fall into two categories

First category is lexical morphemes

Includes nouns, adjectives, and verbs

Lexical Morphemes They carry the ‘content’ of messages we

convey

Lexical morphemes are also described as

‘open’ class of words

We can add new lexical morphemes to

the language rather easily.
 The other group of free morphemes are called functional
morphemes

They include articles (the, a, an),

conjunctions (and, nor, or, but, so)

(at, in, on, above) prepositions,

Functional Morphemes (He, she, her, them, they ) pronouns

Because we almost never add new functional morphemes to

the language

They are described as a ‘close’ class of words.

Bound Morphemes:

Elements of meaning structurally dependent on the words they are added to

‘bound’ category includes the set of affixes (prefixes and suffixes).

For example, in the word undressed, un- and –ed are bound morphemes.

Bound morphemes can not stand alone; they must be connected to free
morphemes.
 One type of bound morphemes is known
as derivational morphemes.

Prefixes and suffixes used to make new

words of a different grammatical
Derivational category from the stem.

Morphemes: For example, the derivational morpheme

–ness changes the adjective good to the
noun goodness.

The noun care can become the adjective

careful or careless via the derivational
morphemes –ful or –less.
Inflectional The second type of bound morphemes contains what are called inflectional
morphemes.
Morphemes: These are not used to produce new words in the English language

Indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word,

e.g. plural, singular, tense, comparative, or possessive form.

English has eight inflectional morphemes.

They are –’s (possessive), -s (plural), -s (3rd person present singular), -ing
(present participle), -ed (past tense), -en (past participle), -est (superlative),
and –er (comparative).

Noun ’s, -s

Verb s, -ing, -ed, -en

Adjective est, -er

Allomorphs
An allomorphs is any of the differents forms of a morpheme

Allomorphs are different forms of the same morpheme, or basic unit of meaning.

These can be different pronunciations or different spellings.

Examples of allomorphs:

1. The plural morphemes in English, usually written as s , has at least 3 allomorphs: s as in judges yudgis z as in dogs dogz IZ as in boxes
boksiz

The past form morpheme ed usually has also three allomorphs: d as in ‘hunted’ h>ntd t as in ‘fished’ fistt id as in ‘buzzed’ buzid
Root
Root is the morpheme carrying the main meaning of the word

Root is not always free, there are bounds roots as well

1. What are the roots of these words ? - Running - Happiness - Helpful (Run ,
Happy, Help) these roots are called free morphe
2. Root Roots can be added by prefix and suffix. examples : Un-happy ,
Happiness But there are roots which cannot be added by prefix and suffix
(noun) examples : table, cat Root also can be follow by the others root
example : pencil case, telephone
Affix
An affix is a morpheme which only occurs when attached to
some other moepheme such root, stem, base.

Prefix re-read, un-tidy, un-kind

Suffixe quickly, walk-ed, book-s, walk-er

infix, –cub- , incubus, incubate, concubine,

Base
Base

Any unit which affixes of any kind can be added.

The affixes attached base could be inflectional or derivational affixes.

example

boy boys/ boyish

All roots are bases.

Bases are called stem only in the context of inflectional morphology.

7
Morphological Words built on multiple morphemes are said to contain
a root word to which other morphemes are added.
analysis For example, the word "frog" contains only one
morpheme, which has the meaning of a small
amphibious creature that is green and leaps.

Within the realm of morphological analysis, two classes

of morphemes are defined.

While affixes are added to existing root words or roots

to modify the meaning

For example, the para- in paratrooper represents the

word parachute.
Clitics
Must always be pronounced with another word, but behave like
words in terms of meaning and function. (ex: enclitic 'm in
English: I am → I'm)

a word in which a grammatical element is treated as an

independent item in syntax but forms the same phonological
unit with the word that precedes or follows it: they’re; they’ve;
isn’t.
Cliticization
In "what's happening?" the "s" in "what's" is a clitic. ... We hear
clitics every day in sentences like "This'll be fine" and "C'mon
over here." There are two kinds of clitics: "enclitics" and
"proclitics."

(Linguistics) (of a word) incapable of being stressed, usually

pronounced as if part of the word that follows or precedes it.

Enclitics: she's (she is or she has), don't (do not).

Proclitics: d'you (do you), 'tis (it is).

Postpositions
Prepositions come before noun phrases, and postpositions come after
them.

Postpositions are something like English prepositions and include

words like "among," "for," "to," and "with."

Ex. with me

between us

about me

ahead of you (plural)

toward you (singular)

without them
Internal Change
Internal modification occurs when a phoneme (or a group of phonemes) in a word is replaced by another one and
thus creates a new item.

Although the process itself is not very productive in English, a variety of changes can be introduced with it, like word-class
change or tense change.

Words that can be decomposed into separate components, called morphemes, also contain internal structure
(morphology).

The acquisition, representation, and use of morphological information are central issues in the study of language

Morphological processes that alter a word's internal structure

Suppletion

Suppletion is a form of morphological irregularity whereby a change in a grammatical category triggers a change in
word form,

with a different (suppletive) root substituting for the normal one (e.g. in the past tense of go, the irregular form went
replaces the regular goed).

Suppletion refers to the use of distinct forms to encode regular semantic and/or grammatical relations.

Standard examples of the phenomenon in English include the forms of the verb “be” and the verb “go,” the degrees of
some adjectives, and finally, the non-derived forms of ordinals from corresponding cardinals, cf.
Stress Placement and Tone

(The tick indicates that the stress falls on the following syllable). For example, in English there is a distinction between
weak and strong verbs. Weak verbs form the past tense through the addition of a suffix -ed, while strong verbs change
their vowel: sing/sang, drive/drove.
 Reduplication is a morphological process
in which the root or stem of a word (or
part of it) or even the whole word is
repeated exactly or with a slight change

Reduplication
Reduplication is the standard term for
this phenomenon in the linguistics
literature.
Derivation
Applying Derivation
Morphological derivation, in
linguistics, is the process of
forming a new word from an
existing word, often by adding
a prefix or suffix, such as un-
or -ness. For example,
unhappy and happiness derive
from the root word happy.
Complex
Derivation
Constraints
on derivation
Morphological
representations word
classes
In linguistics, morphology (/mɔːrˈfɒlədʒi/)
is the study of words, how they are
formed, and their relationship to other
words in the same language. It analyzes
the structure of words and parts of words
such as stems, root words, prefixes, and
suffixes.
Compounding
Two or more stems to form a new word that is stored as a single entry in the
lexicon,

e.g., ‘blackbird’ or ‘three-year-old’.

The meaning of a compound is not affected by spelling.

Some are represented as one word as in ‘housefly’, hyphenated as in ‘extra-

terrestrial‘ and out-of-pocket’, or separated by a space as in ‘kill joy‘.

Compounds can be composed of many parts of speech. Some examples from

English include:
Examples:

noun- noun: ‘horseshoe

noun- verb such: ‘trouble-shoot’

adjective –verb: ‘high-jump’

adjective-adjective: ‘bittersweet’

adjective-noun: ‘jumping bean’

verb-noun: ‘spelling bee’

verb-preposition: ‘push-up’

preposition-verb: ‘out-cast’
Types of Compounding can be classified into two categories:
A-Endocentric. B- Exocentric
Compoundin
Both belong to same grammatical category
g
An endocentric compound consists of a head with
the basic meaning of the whole compound and
modifiers which restrict this meaning, for example,
dog-house

Exocentric compounds do not have a head, and their

meaning cannot be clearly guessed from its
constituent part. E.g. white-collar
Other Types of Words
Formation
Conversion
Clipping
Blends
Backformation
Acronyms
Onomatopoeia
Inflection
Inflection vs Derivation
Category Change
 Phenomena of Inflection in
Number

Inflection, formerly flection or accidence, in linguistics,

the change in the form of a word (in English, usually the addition of
endings)

to mark such distinctions as tense, person, number, gender, mood, voice,

and case.
Phenomena
of Inflection Inflection is the change of form a noun, adjective,
verb, etc., undergoes to distinguish its case, gender,
in Noun Case mood, number, voice, etc. Inflection occurs when
the word is used to express various meanings. When
words are inflected, letters are added to the base
form of words.
Phenomena of Inflection in
Pronoun

Pronouns have the most detailed inflectional system in English:

depending on the specific example, they can show distinctions to
indicate whether a word is singular or plural, the subject or object of a
sentence, or singular or plural possessive.
Phenomena of Inflection in
Tense Making
These inflections indicate TENSE. The -s inflection indicates the
PRESENT TENSE, and the -ed inflection indicates the PAST TENSE.
Verb endings also indicate PERSON. Recall that when we looked at
nouns and pronouns, we saw that there are three persons, each with a
singular and a plural form.
 Inflection most often refers to the pitch
Phenomena of and tone patterns in a person's speech:
where the voice rises and falls. But
Inflection in inflection also describes a departure from

Gender
a normal or straight course. When you
change, or bend, the course of a soccer
ball by bouncing it off another person,
that's an example of inflection.
Non leaner and Non-linear morphology is a term which is used for
theoretical frameworks in which the morphemes
Templatic that make up a derived word are each represented
Morphology at an independent, autonomous level of
representation. Other terms used for this
framework are Autosegmental
Phonology/Morphology and Multilinear
Phonology/Morphology.

Templatic Morphology is a form of word structure

represented by a template in which roots are
accompanied by a sequence of slots in fixed
positions, filled by mutually exclusive systems of
contrasting affixes.