Morpholog Y

Morpholog y

What is Morphology?  The study of forms i.e. the subdisciplines of

inflections as well as of the study of word classes and their classificational criteria. Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics

 It is the branch of grammar that studies the

structures or forms of words, primarily through the use of morpheme construct.

Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics - David Crystal

 The study of grammatical structure of words

and the categories realized by them.

Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics

What is Word?  Word is a speech sound or a series of

speech sounds that symbolize and communicate meaning.

Word = Sound + Meaning

Terms in Morphology  Morpheme  Allomorph

Morpheme A

meaningful linguistic unit, minimal, unable to be further divided or broken into smaller meaningful parts.

Example: Readable = read+able > 2 morphemes Unhappiness = un+happy+ness > 3 morphemes

Two forms of words  Simple forms They consist of single free morpheme. These are unable to be analyzed further into smaller, meaningful segments. Ex. an, the, that, boy, happy, take, dog, but, etc.

 Complex forms Words that have more than one morpheme i.e. a base and a derivational affix. Ex. Unhappy, replacement, readability, boyhood, enable etc.

 Compound forms they consist of two (or more) free stems which are independent words by themselves. Ex. Over-ripe, elevator-operator, happy-go-lucky etc.

Allomorph  One of the various distinct forms of a

morpheme.

Allomorph Ex. 1: English Plural Suffixes - s : books, marks - es: beaches, dishes - en: oxen, children

Allomorph Ex. 2: Negative Prefixes - im- : impossible - il- : illegal - ir- : irresponsible - un- : ungraceful - in- : independent - dis- : disagree

Two Classifications of Morphemes

 Free Morpheme  Bound Morpheme

Free Morpheme

A free morpheme is independent. It can occur alone by itself as a word in the language Ex. man, love, sincere, good, bad

Bound Morpheme

A bound morpheme is dependent. It is always attached to another morpheme. Ex. Affixes: enlarge, quickly, widen Base: cranberry

Classes of Word

 Open Class  Closed Class

Open-Class Words  Major parts of speech > content words, e.g.

nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs  They are changeable from one part of speech

to another  The open classes are open to affixations

Closed-Class Words  They belong to grammatical or functional

classes > function words  They are not derivable.  They are closed to affixations. Ex. auxiliaries, conjunctions, pronouns, determiners, prepositions, and interjections.

Branches of Morphology Inflectional Morphology  Concerned with the changes in the form and meaning of words  It does change the form and meaning but does not change the word class

Derivational Morphology  Concerned with the derivation of new words from older ones  It essentially changes the word class

Lexical

Functional

Nouns, Adj. & Verbs

Conj. Preposition s, Prn & Articles

Man Horse Lion Happy Red

And On That The

Bound

Free

M O R P H E M E S

Derivational Makes new words &

Inflectional

grammatical category.

Indicate grammatical function of a word. (Eng -08)

Goodness Careful Foolish Badly

Cat’s Dogs A takes/(ing) Smiled/Eaten Fastest/Taller

changes