1. Introduction to English morphology

2. What is morphology Morphology is the study of the structure of words.
Morphology analyzes the internal structure of words.
Words are made up of morphemes.

3. Why is morphology important?
The form of a word can give us important information about its function.
If we learn to analyze the structure of words we may understand the meaning of new words.
Morphology is very unpredictable.

4. Morpheme (I) A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit.
The meaning that a morpheme gives can be:
Grammatical (for instance: the part of speech, if the word is plural or singular, the tense of a verb, etc.)
Lexical (that is the ‘dictionary’ meaning’
Both grammatical and lexical

5. An example COWRITERS co- -write- -er- -s lexical: grammatical:
together
---
make marks on paper
verb
one who X’s
noun
---
plural

6. Morpheme (II)
A word that contains more than one morpheme is a morphologically complex word
One morpheme is the basic one, the core of the form  root or stem
The add-ons bound morphemes are affixes
E.g. ‘rearranged’
‘teachers’

7. Type of morphemes Free Vs. Bound Morphemes Free Bound
Can stand alone as separate words
Cannot occur on their own as separate words
Single morphemes
e.g. hunt, kill, the, play, child, book.
Affixes
-s in dogs
-ness in happiness
-ed in walked

8. Free Morphemes it’s divided into lexical and functional morphemes.
Lexical morphemes
Functional morphemes
As content words: carry the content of the message
as function words
Includes nouns, verbs, adjective, adverbs:
children, love, beauty, play, sing
Include pronouns, articles, conjunctions, prepositions: as, the, on, from, and, in, etc.
Open class word
Close class words

9. Bound Morphemes (I) Affixation
Prefix: An affix that is attached to the front of a base, e.g. re-play.
Suffix: An affix that is attached to the end of a base, e.g. kind-ness.
Infix: An affix that occur within a base, e.g. (in Indonesian) s-in-ambung.

10. Bound Morphemes (II)
It’s divided into derivational and inflectional morphemes.
Derivational morphemes make new words in a language- different grammatical category from the stem
e.g. suffix –ness in happiness
Inflectional morphemes indicate aspects of grammatical function of a word.
e.g. suffix –ed in walked indicate past tense

11. Derivation Vs. Inflection
It changes the category and/or the type of meaning of the word to create a new word.
e.g. suffix –ment in government
It does not change either the grammatical category or the type of meaning found in the word.
e.g. suffix –s in books

12. English Inflectional Morphemes
Nouns –s plural –’s possessive Verbs –s third person singular present –ed past tense –en past participle –ing progressive Adjectives –er comparative –est superlative

13. examples of English Derivational Morpheme
-ic : Noun  Adj ; alcohol  alcoholic
-ance : Verb  Noun ; clear  clearance
-ly : Adj  Adv ; exact  exactly
-ity : Adj  Noun ; active  activity
-able : Verb  Adj ; read  readable
-ship : Noun  Noun ; friend  friendship
re : Verb  Verb ; cover  recover
in : Adj  Adj ; definite  indefinite

14. Review Morphemes Free Bound Lexical Functional Inflectional
Derivational

15. The girl’s wildness shocked the teacher
Analyzing words
The girl’s wildness shocked the teacher
The  functional
girl  lexical
-s  inflectional
Wild  lexical
-ness  derivational
Shock  lexical
-ed  inflectional
Teach  lexical
-er  derivational

16. Analyze different types of morphemes
The young boy played with his friends.
The 
Young 
Boy 
Play 
-ed 
With 
His 
Friend 
-s 
Functional
Lexical
Inflection
inflectional

17. Allomorphs
Sometimes, because of historical or phonological reasons, the same morpheme can have different forms (different realizations)
impossible, incredible, illegal, irrelevant
These different realizations are called allomorphs.

18. The unpredictability of morphology (I)
Morphology, that is words, do not always combine following a logical rules
Consider the unpredictability of morphology in the following slides

19. The unpredictability of morphology (II)
-ese
Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Portuguese, Taiwanese
-an
African, Australian, American, Cuban, Jamaican, Mexican
-ian
Argentinian, Brazilian, Canadian, Egyptian
-ish
Spanish, Irish, British, Flemish, Polish, Scottish -i
Iraqi, Israeli, Kuwaiti, Pakistani -?
French, German, Greek, Dutch

20. The unpredictability of morphology (III)
ADJECTIVE
(relate to place X)
NOUN
(a citizen of place X)
American
Polish
Scottish
Spanish
Pole
Scot
Spaniard