Morphology Morphology Morphology Dr. Amal AlSaikhan Morphology

Morphology I. Basic concepts and terms Morphemes Free and bound morphemes Lexical and functional morphemes Derivational and inflectional morphemes http://www.ta-u.com/vb/showthread.php?t=218303 Morphology

Morphology Morphology is the study of morphemes.  Morphemes are words, word stems, and affixes, basically the unit of language one up from phonemes. Although they are often understood as units of meaning, they are usually considered a part of a language's syntax or grammar. 

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed Phonology-----phones, phonemes Morphology---Morphemes A Morpheme is A minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function How many morphemes are in (reopened)

1_ open 2- re- prefix meaning again 3- the suffix -ed indicating past tense

Types of Morphemes Lexical vs grammatical morphemes Lexical morphemes - adjectives- nouns- verbs OPEN CLASS OF WORDS grammatical or functional morphemes--conjunctions- prepositions- articles- pronouns CLOSED CLASS OF WORDS

Free and bound morphemes We can make a broad distinction between two types of morpheme: There are free morphemes, that is, morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words, for example, open. Morphology

There are also bound morphemes, which are those forms that cannot normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form, exemplified as re-, -ist, -ed, -s. So, we can say that all affixes (prefixes and suffixes) in English are bound morphemes. Morphology

Continued… The free morphemes can generally be identified as the set of separate English word forms such as basic nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. When they are used with bound morphemes attached, the basic word forms are technically known as stems. Morphology

bound vs free morphemes Free means can stand alone by itself bound morphemes :affixes prefixes--bound morphemes that occur before a root Suffixes--bound morphemes that occur after a root Infixes--bound morphemes that occur inside the root

Roots A Non-affix lexical - content morpheme which cannot be analyzed into smaller parts . For example, boy - system. It is also the core of words to which bound morphemes are attached. Root+affix=stem Stem: a root morpheme combined with affix morphemes Example bake= core to which affixes such as -ed and -ing can be attached Yun-Pi Yuan

inflectional vs derivational morphemes Inflectional morphemes have grammatical function We have a limited number of Inflectional morphemes in English Dogs-noun plural boy's -noun singular possessive boys'- men's -noun plural possessive vacates -present third-person singular discussing -present participle played -past tense (simple past) eaten- past participle taller--comparative tallest-supperlative Yun-Pi Yuan

derivational morphemes From the word derive They change parts of speech They express semantic relationships They come before Inflectional morphemes confect-ion-er-s Yun-Pi Yuan

Morphemes Bound (Affixes) Derivational inflectional Free (stem) Lexical Functional

Examples … undressed carelessness un- dress -ed care -less -ness prefix- stem- suffix stem-suffix-suffix (bound)(free)(bound) (free)-(bound)-(bound) Morphology

Morphology