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Morphology is involve in the internal structure of words, very much in the same way that phonology is involve in meaning-distinguishing speech sounds. We can break down words into smaller units by analysing their structure and identify systematic processes that allow speakers to add new words to the lexicon and indicate grammatical information such as tense and number.
For instance, we can examine the word books. It can be break down into smaller unit;
books = book+ s
we can see that books can be broken down into two parts, the first part refers to a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other various material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side and the second part indicating a grammatical category,in this case number and specifying plural.The same approach can easily be applied to other kinds of words.
pinched = pinch + -ed
While books is a noun pinched is a verb, yet the same rules apply. Pinched can be segmented into the first part that describes a kind of action (Pinch) and the second part that adds the information past tense (-ed). Tense is another grammatical category that can be encoded morphologically in English.
Morphemes
In linguistic terminology, the minimal parts of words that were analysed above are called morphemes. Morphemes come in different varieties, depending on whether they are
- free or bound and
- inflectional or derivational
Free morphemes
Free morphemes can stand by themselves (i.e. they are what what we conventionally call words) and either tell us something about the world (free lexical morphemes) or play a role in grammar (free grammatical morphemes). Print, house, pretty, fire, go,and girl are instances of free lexical morphemes, while and, but, the and to are examples for free grammatical morphemes. For instance,The word house itself consists of one morpheme, and because it can stand by itself it can be called a free morpheme. In the word houses which is a bound morpheme, because it cannot stand by itself as it would have no meaning. In the second example above the bound morpheme s was attached to house – a free morpheme, which in this case can be also called a stem. Stem is what a bound morpheme is attached to. there are two morphemes which is free, and
Bound morphemes
Not all morphemes can be used independently, however. Some need to be bound to a free morpheme. In English, the information “plural number” is attached to a word that refers to some person, creature, concept or other nameable entity (in other words, to a noun) when encoded in a morpheme and cannot stand alone. Take the word ‘reactor’ as an example. Based on the information above it could be stated that it consists of two morphemes: a stem actor and a derivational morpheme re-.
Derivational morphemes
Derivational morphemes derive new words. In the following examples, derivational morphemes are added to produce new words which are derived from the parent word.
happy – happiness – unhappiness
love –beloved – loving
install – installing – uninstall
In all cases the derived word means something different than the parent and the word class may change with each derivation. As shown in the examples above, sometimes derivation will not cause the world class to change, but in such a case the meaning will usually different from that of the parent word, often expressing opposition or reversal.
tie – untie
load – reload
Derivation always derives new words from existing ones, while inflection is limited to changing word form.
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| Reload :) |
Inflectional morphemes
Inflection (the process by which inflectional morphemes are attached to words) allows speakers to morphologically encode grammatical information. That may sound much more complicated than it really is – recall the example we started out with.
The word books consists of two morphemes
- the free lexical morpheme books that describes various material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side and
- the bound inflectional morpheme -s that denotes plural number
Examples for the morphological encoding of other grammatical categories are tense (past tense -ed as in talked), aspect (progressive aspect as in talking), case (genitive case as in Azim’s car) and person (third person -s as in Azim drives a Proton).
Affixes
Linguists use the term affix to describe where exactly a bound morpheme is attached to a word. Prefixes are attached at the onset of a free morpheme, while suffixes are attached to the end. Infixes are affixes that occur in the middle of a word are very rare in English.
Morphs, morphemes, allomorphs
When I look at certain inflectional endings that occur in English,I notice that they are usually but not always predictable. Here are a few examples for the plural morpheme.
one car – two cars; one rose – two roses…
but
one mouse – two mice
one man – two men
one foot - two feet
A vowel change instead of a suffix marks the plural in mice, men and feet.
morphs
morphs is a concrete part of a word that cannot be divided into smaller parts
morphemes
the meaning-distinguishing, abstract dimension of morphs, e.g. something like the plural morpheme
allomorphs
different realizations of the the same morpheme, e.g. -s, -en and nothing for the plural morpheme in dogs, oxen and fish_
Base, stem and root
Finally, in order to make the segmentation of words into smaller parts a little clearer, we need to differentiate between the base, the stem and the root of a word in morphological terms.
base: reproduced
stem: reproduce(ed)
root: (re) produce (ed)
The stem is the base with all inflectional suffixes removed, whereas the root is what remains after all affixes have been taken off.
Summary of topic morphology
- morphemes
- free morphemes
- lexical
- grammatical
- bound morphemes
- derivational
- inflectional
- free morphemes
- affixes
- prefix
- suffix
- infix
- morph – morpheme – allomorph
- base – stem – root
Throughout the topic, I had gain better understanding of English and how each morphemes functions in word formation and giving meaning to the word. I realised that this is an essential knowledge that every English speaker especially the language teacher should know. I hope from now onwards, I can speak and use proper English.
References;
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-morphology.htm
http://www.wisegeek.com/topics/linguistic-morphology.htm#
http://www.comunicazione.uniroma1.it/materiali/14.58.09_scheda6.pdf
References;
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-morphology.htm
http://www.wisegeek.com/topics/linguistic-morphology.htm#
http://www.comunicazione.uniroma1.it/materiali/14.58.09_scheda6.pdf
