DAVID STIVENS CASTRO SUAREZ

KEITLYN DAIANA DUQUE ARBOLEDA

FOREIGN LANGUAGES
IV SEMESTER

EXERCISES
1. Divide each of the following words into their smallest meaningful parts:
landholder, smoke-jumper, demagnetizability.
Answer: land-hold-er, s-moke, jump-er, demagne-tizability.
2. Each of the following sentences contains an error made by a nonnative
speaker of English. In each, identify and correct the incorrect word.
a. I am very relax here. I am relaxed here
b. I am very boring with this game. I am very bored with this game
c. I am very satisfactory with my life. I am very satisfied with my life
d. Some flowers are very attracting to some insects. Some flowers are very
attractive to some insects
e. Many people have very strong believes. Many people have very strong
belief
f. My culture is very difference from yours. My culture is very different from
yours
g. His grades proof that he is a hard worker. His grades proved that he is a
hard worker
h. The T-shirt that China drawing. (from a T-shirt package from China). The
t-shirt that china drew.

3. Some native speakers of English use forms such as seen instead of saw,
come instead of came, aks instead of ask, clumb instead of climbed, drug
instead of dragged, growed instead of grew. Are these errors? If they are, are
they the same kinds of errors made by the nonnative speakers of English
listed in Exercise 2? If not, what are they?
Answer: they are clearly not the same type of error listed before, in this case
it would maybe have to do with dialect and colloquialism depending if they
are writing or just talking.

4. Identify the free morphemes in the following words:

kissed, freedom, stronger, follow, awe, goodness, talkative, teacher, actor.
Answer: awe, follow
5. Use the words above (and any other words that you think are relevant) to
answer the following questions:
a. Can a morpheme be represented by a single phoneme? Give examples.
By more than one phoneme? Give examples. Answer: it is normally
represented for different phonemes, for example: “the”, its pronunciation
varies depending of what follow is it, sometimes might pronounce like “thuh”
and others like “thee”. Another case is when it has to do with pluralization,
bugs /z/ and bats /s/.
b. Can a free morpheme be more than one syllable in length? Give
examples. Can a bound morpheme? Give examples.
Answer: yes, it can, because a free morpheme is any morpheme can stand
on its own as a word. Examples: piano, giraffe, penguin.
Bound morphemes can also be more than on syllable, for example,
telescope (tele), hinterland (hinter).
c. Does the same letter or phoneme—or sequence of letters or phonemes—
always represent the same morpheme? Why or why not? (Hint: you must
refer to the definition of morpheme to be able to answer this.)
Answer: it is not possible, because, the phoneme is the individual sound of a
morpheme, and morpheme are the smallest parts of a word, which means
that phonemes are necessary in order to create morphemes.
d. Can the same morpheme be spelled differently? Give examples.
Answer: it is possible, one example is, through, through can also be spelled
like thru and they both have the same pronunciation and meaning, another
one is threw, in this case is the same as before (the same pronunciation but
not the same spelling) but the meaning is not the same.
e. Can different morphemes be pronounced identically? Give examples.
Answer: yes, there are some words in English that have an identical
pronunciation and have different meaning like for example site and sight,
there are even some words are spelled and pronounced the same but have a
different meaning, like Fly (verb) and Fly (noun).

f. A morpheme is basically the same as:

i. a letter (correct)
ii. a sound
iii. a group of sounds
iv. none of the above

6. The words district and discipline show that the sequence of letters d-i-s does
not always constitute a morpheme. (Analogous examples are mission,
missile, begin, and retrofit.) List five more sequences of letters that are
sometimes a morpheme and sometimes not.
7. . Can an English word have more than one prefix? Give examples. More than
one suffix? For example, More than one of each? Give examples. Divide the
examples you collected into their root, derivational, and inflectional
morphemes. Answer: is possible to have more than one prefix and suffix in a
sentence, for example: Anti-dis-establish-ment-ar-i-an-ism (in this case we
have an example where there are two prefixes and five suffixes).

8. . . Check your dictionary to see how it deals with inflected and derived word
forms. Does it list all the inflections of regular inflected words? Just irregular
ones? Does it accord derived forms their own entries or include them in the
entries of the forms from which they are derived? It does, the inflected form is
shown in boldface, either in full or cut back to a convenient and easily
recognizable point. Full details about the kinds of entries at which inflected
forms are shown and the kinds at which they are not shown.

9. Does your dictionary list bound morphemes? Which kinds?

 WORDS AND MORPHEMES

Words are potentially complex

units, composed of even more
basic units, called morphemes

morpheme is the smallest

part of a word that has
grammatical function or
meaning.

There are words that are Morphemes that must be

not necessary attached to a attached as word parts are
morpheme, it is a free said to be bound.
morpheme

Affixes

Affixes are classified according to

whether they are attached before
or after the form to which they are
added. Prefixes are attached
before and suffixes after.

Morphemes are also classified

as Root, Derivational and
Inflectional

A root morpheme is the Derivational morphemes are Inflectional morphemes do

basic form to which other
morphemes are attached
added to forms to create not create separate words.
separate words They merely modify the
word in which they occur in
order to indicate
grammatical properties