1. First: What is Morphology?  It is the ”study of forms” (Yule).  It is the study of word structure.  It is “the system of categories and rules involved in word formation and interpretation” (O’GRADY).  It is “the identification, analysis and description of the structure of words” (Wikipedia)  As a result, when we study morphology, we examine the different categories of morphemes that make up words and the different morphological processes through which new words are formed.morphemes

2. What is a MORPHEME?  A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries information about the meaning or function. It is “the minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function”.  Example:  The word “hospitalize" has two morphemes: hospital (with the meaning of a place where patients are treated) and –ize (which indicates that the entire word functions as a verb with the meaning of ’being admitted to a hospital‘).

3. What is a Free Morpheme ?  A free morpheme is a morpheme that can be a word by itself.  Examples: cut, car, book, and pray

4. What is a Bound Morpheme ?  A bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand alone as an independent word. It must be attached to another element.  Examples: -ed, -s, re-, in-, and –ness.  NOTE: Refer to page 76 for an important observation.

5. What is a Lexical Morpheme ?  Words that have meaning by themselves—boy, food, door—are called lexical morphemes.

6. What is a Functional Morpheme ?  words that function to specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and another— words like at, in, on, -ed, -s—are called functional morphemes. NOTE: Sometimes functional morphemes are referred to as grammatical morphemes.

7. Derivational Morphemes  “Morphemes that change the meaning or part of speech of a word they attach to” (Clark, 1998).  Examples:  happy and unhappy  happy and happiness

8. Inflectional Morphemes:  “Morphemes that serve a purely grammatical function, never crating a new word but only a different form of the same word, are called inflectional morphemes” (Clark, 1998).  Examples:  Car and Cars  Look and Looked

9. Inflectional Morphemes: STEMSUFFFIXFUNCTIONEXAMPLE WAIT-s3 rd per. sg. presentShe waits there at noon. WAIT-edPast tenseShe waited there last night. WAIT-ingProgressiveShe is waiting there now. EAT-enPast participleAhmed has eaten the apples. CHAIR-spluralThe chairs are in the room. CHAIR-’sPossessiveThe chair’s leg is broken. FAST-erComparativeJill runs faster than Joe. FAST-estSuperlativeI have no idea what the fastest car is.

10. Tree Diagrams:  Some practice with tree diagram.  Reformer  Reconstruction  Unbreakable  Nonrefundable  Irreplaceability  Overgeneralization*  Activation  Unhappiness *

11. If you are asking about my web site, then here it is http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aabanomey/default.aspx