MORPHOLOGY – BASIC CONCEPTS
Morphology is [...] a term for that branch of linguistics which is concerned with the ‘forms of words’ in different uses and constructions.
(Matthews, 1974, p. 3)
Morphology as a sub-branch of linguistics that deals with the internal structure of word forms.
(Bauer, 1983, p. 13)
Morphology is the subfield of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words and the interrelationship among words.
(Akmajian, Demers & Harnish, 1988, p. 55)
The area of grammar concerned with the structure of words and with relationships between words involving the morphemes that compose them is called morphology.
(Carstairs-McCarthy, 2002, p. 16)
Two domains: Lexical vs. inflectional morphology
Lexical (derivational) morphology– studies the way in which new items of vocabulary can be built up out of combination of elements (in-describe-able).
Inflectional morphology– studies the way words vary in their form in order to express grammatical contrast (as in case of horses, where the ending marks plurality).
Morpheme – the smallest meaningful unit of language (Plag, 2003, p. 12)
– the smallest linguistic unit with a lexical or a grammatical meaning (Booij, 2007, p. 8-9)
Criteria for delimiting morphemes:
1. It is a word or a part of a word that has a meaning
2. It cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts (including the whole word itself)
3. It can occur in different contexts with a relatively stable meaning
(Vidanović, 1994, p. 5)
Types of morphemes
BOUND MORPHEMES vs. FREE MORPHEMES
↓ ↓
Derivational vs. inflectional Content vs. function
BOUND vs. FREE MORPHEMES
Bound morpheme is a morpheme which cannot stand on its own as a word, i.e. it has to be attached to another morpheme. In the example excessively, -ive and -Iy are bound morphemes added (one at a time) to the base excessive;in sees, -s is a bound morpheme.
Free morpheme is a morpheme which can stand on its own, i.e. be a word.(e.g. bag, slave, chair, spoon, hand, wash, go, come, put, nice, happy etc.). In the word happily, happy is a potentially free morpheme since it can be used on its own.
Bound morphemes are further divided into derivational and inflectional morphemes.
Derivational morphemes make new words from old ones. Generally, they change the meaning or part of speech of a morpheme. Thus -ment added to the verb announce forms a noun (announcement).
Inflectional morphemes do not change the meaning or part of speech of a morpheme and express grammatical features, such as singular/plural or past/present tense. They mark third person singular present tense (e.g. needs) and past tense (burned) in verbs; in nouns, they mark plural (houses) and possessive genitive (Tom's), comparative ( bigger) and superlative (biggest) in adjectives.
Most common bound morphemes are affixes: prefixes and suffixes and some infixes.
Some English bound morphemes by category:
a. derivational
worker
useless
untruthfulness
interview
curiosity
colonize
b. inflectional
(she) works
(the) workers
(is) playing
(we) picked
(the) children*
John’s (house)
I After each word write a number showing how many morphemes it contains.
love ______
lovely ______
sense ______
nonsense ______
lead ______
mislead ______
childhood ______
troublesome ______
employee ______
employer ______
dirty ______
dirtily ______
eaten ______
play ______
reply ______
grandmother ______
weak ______
weaken ______
rainy ______
always ______
buildings ______
strangely ______
sleepiness ______
librarians ______
paper ______
blackboard ______
mistreatment ______
impatiently ______
Japanese ______
beautifully ______
illusion______
twenty ______
unsuccessfully ______
husbands ______
clockwise ______
magazine ______
international ______
island ______
unkindly ______
carrying______
vegetables ______
bookseller ______
sideways ______
ungentlemanly ______
deactivation ______
stupidity ______
unemployed ______
nationalism ______
sandwich ______
unfairly ______
inartistic ______
ex-wives ______
friendlier ______
ashore ______
irregular ______
mispronounce ______
neighbouring ______
infamous ______
spinster ______
disgracefully ______
standardized ______
unlawful ______
disappear ______
overexcited ______
Hungarian ______
possible ______
affirmative ______
air-conditioning ______
enlightening ______
II Divide the following words into morphemes. Identify each morpheme in the word as bound or free. For each bound morpheme state whether it is derivational or inflectional.
1. statements ......
2. previewing ......
3. nationality ......
4. appears ......
5. misidentified ......
6. exceptionally ......
7. revisited ......
8. management ......
9. deactivate ......
10. snowboarder ......
Base, root & stem
BASE is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added.
ROOT is that part of a word-form which remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed.
STEM is a part of the word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed, e.g. hot in hotter and hottest or announcement in announcements.
BOUND ROOTS
A bound root is a root which cannot occur as a free morpheme (word), i.e. it has to be attached to another morpheme.
It is sometimes hard attach the meaning to bound roots. A good number of bound roots in English come from Latin and Greek.
III Write the meanings of the italicized bound roots:
1) audience, audible, audition, auditory …………………………………......
2) suicide, patricide, matricide, infanticide …………………………………......
3) oral, oration, oracle, oratory ………………………………………………......
4) aquaplane, aquatic, aquarium, aquaduct …………………………………....
5) mortuary, mortat, moribund, immortal ……………………………………...
6) corps, corpse, corporation, corporeal …………………………………………
7) tenable, tenant, tenure, tenacious …………………………………..…………
8) pendulum, pendant, suspenders, impending …………………………………
9) manual, manicure, manuscript, manufacture …………………….…………
10) eject, inject, projectile, reject ………………………………..……………….
11) include, exclude,preclude, conclude ……………………………………......
12) conceive, deceive, receive, perceive…………………………………………
Adapted from:Stageberg, N. (1971). AnIntroductory English Grammar. New York: HRW.
N.B. A cranberry morpheme is a type of bound morpheme that only appears in one word, and whose meaning by itself is unclear or unknown to the everyday speaker.
Example: The English word cranberry seems morphologically complex, since it must be distinguished from words such as blueberry or blackberry. Still, cranhas no meaning and does not function as an independent word: cranberry is the only word in which cran appears.
Other examples: straw in strawberry, huckle in huckleberry, raspin raspberry, luke in lukewarm, etc.
IV Consider the following words:
(a) tigers (b) untimely (c) decorating (d) gruesome (e) consumed
speakers uniquely decentralising wholesome consumption
Divide them into morphemes noting any instances that you are not sure. What differences are there between the words in each pair?
Adapted from: Carstairs-McCarthy, A. (2002). An Introduction to English Morphology: words and their structure. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
WORD vs. LEXEME
WORD – the smallest meaningful unit of language which can be used alone.
LEXEME – an abstract unit of vocabulary represented concretely by one or more inflected word-forms according to the grammatical context.
A lexeme is represented in a dictionary by its citation form, e.g. SEEM stands for seem, seems, seeming, seemed; go, goes, going, went, gone represent the lexeme GOetc.
V In each of the following groups of word forms, identify those that are (or can be, according to context) forms of the same lexeme:
(a)woman, woman’s, women, womanly, girl
(b)greenish, greener, green, greens
(c)written, wrote, writer, rewrites, writing.
Adapted from: Carstairs-McCarthy, A. (2002). An Introduction to English Morphology – Words and Their Structure. Edinburgh. EdinburghUniversity Press.