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
 M
O
R
P
H
E
M
E

Bound
Free S

Lexical Functional Derivational Inflectional

Nouns, Adj. Conj. Makes new Indicate

& Verbs Preposition words & grammatical
changes function of a
s, Prn & grammatical word. (Eng
Man Articles category. -08)
Horse
And Cat’s
Lion Goodness
On Dogs
Happy Careful
That A takes/(ing)
Red Foolish Smiled/Eaten
The
Badly Fastest/Taller