MORPHEMES

March 25th, 2020

Free morphemes
1. Lexical Morphemes
• They are the Parts of speech (content words).
• They are open class.
• Allow the addition of new words into the language.

2. Functional morphemes
• They are the conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, articles
• They are considered closed class.
• Do not allow addition of new words.
 Derivational vs. Inflectional
morphemes
Derivational morphemes
• Use bound morphemes to create new words or change the word
category (suffixes and prefixes)

Inflectional
• Do not create new words.
• Indicate aspects of grammatical function.
• Eight inflectional morphemes in English
Eight inflectional morphemes (suffixes)
a. Two inflectional morphemes can be attached to nouns:
• -‘s (possessive case)
• -(e)s (plural)

b. Four inflections can be attached to verbs:

• -(e)d (past tense)
• -ing (present participle)
• -en (past participle)
• -s (3rd person singular)

c. Two inflections can be attached to adjectives:

• -er (comparative)
• -est (superlative)