MORPHOLOGY (LINGUISTICS)

WHAT'S MORPHOLOGY?

 a) Morphology is the study of the structure of

words.
-Paradoxically, however, the concept of word itself
defies simple definition. In English, for
example, words tend to be smaller than the
sentence, and we combine words to form
sentences. One tricky thing, however, is that in
many languages, a single word can have
"sentence" meaning
SUMMING UP THE TOPICS :
 Morphology is the study of word structure and word
formation.
 Words, though impossible to define in absolute terms,
can be thought of as the units that are combined to form
sentences in a language such as English.
 Just as sentences can be broken down into smaller
units (words), we can break words down into smaller,
meaningful parts.
 The smallest meaningful part of a word is called a
morpheme.
 Note: not all words have more than one morpheme.
Words that have only one morpheme are also called
monomorphemic words (e.g. pig). Words with more than
one morpheme are called polymorphemic words, as in
foolishness (fool + ish + ness).

MORPHEMES:
minimal unit in which there is an arbitrary union of a
sound and a meaning (lexical meaning or grammatical
function).
A morpheme: may be represented by a single sound (
„a‟ in “amoral” )
: may be represented by a single
syllable ( “child” “ish” )
: may be represented by more than one
syllable
2 syllables: (camel ,lady , water)
3 syllables: (crocodile)
4 syllables: (elevator)
MORPHEMES
Homonyms (a.k.a
Homograph
Homophones)

one of two or more words One of two or more words

pronounced alike but spelled identically but
differ in meaning or
differ in meaning or pronunciation
spelling. Example:
Example: to too two Bow and arrow
Bow of a violin
Bow of a ship
Bow a tie
Japanese bow
TYPES OF MORPHEMES
Free Morphemes :
is a morpheme that by itself can function as a word in
a language
Examples : Boy , desire , gentle , man.
CONTENT VERSUS FUNCTION WORDS
Content Words Function Words

 Content Words: The  Function Words: A word

nouns, verbs, adjective
s, and adverbs that
constitute the major
part of the vocabulary.
Content words are
referred to as OPEN
CLASS words because
we can add new words
to these classes
that does not have clear
lexical meaning but has a
grammatical function.
Function words include:
conjunctions, prepositions,
articles, auxiliaries,
complementizers, and
pronouns. Function words
are referred to as CLOSED
CLASS words because we
can not add new words to
these classes.
Bound Morpheme:
is a morpheme that cannot stand by itself to form a
word; it must be joined to other morphemes It is
bound because although it has meaning, it cannot
stand alone. It must be attached to another
morpheme to produce a word.
Examples : -ish -ness -ly dis- trans-
Free morpheme : bad
Bound morpheme : ly
Word : badly
AFFIXES
 Affix: is a bound morpheme that occurs before
(prefix), after (suffix), in the middle of (infix), and
around (circumfix) stems (root morphemes)
Prefix: un-, pre-, bi-
Suffix: -ing, -er, -ist, -ly
Infix: un-freaking-believable
Morphemes that are inserted between other
morphemes
Circumfix:
Morphemes that are attached to another morpheme
both initially and finally. Also known as:
discontinuous morphemes
ROOTS & STEMS
 Root : is a non-affix lexical morpheme that cannot
be analyzed into smaller parts. Roots may or may
not stand alone as a word
Examples : Paint (paint-er) Read (re-read)
Ceive (con-ceive)
 Stem : is that part of a word to which grammatical/
inflectional affixes are added. It may consist
amongst others
a). Solely single root morpheme such as e.g.
(Simple stem such as dog)
b). Two root morphemes e.g. ( compound stem as in
blackbird)
c). A root morpheme plus a derivational suffix e.g.
(a complex stem as in unscrew)

a) cats: single root morpheme: cat + inflectional

suffix –s
b) crowbar: two root morphemes (crow + bar) ) +
inflectional suffix –s
c) inventions: : root morpheme invent + lexical suffix -
ion+ inflectional suffix -s
WORD FORMATION (WORD COINAGE)
In linguistics, the ways in which new words are made
on the basis of other words or morphemes.
COMMON TYPES OF WORD
FORMATION
Coinages
Nonce words
Borrowing
Calquing
Clipping
COINAGES
Coinage is the word formation process in which a new
word is created either deliberately or accidentally
without using the other word formation processes and
often from seemingly nothing .For example, the
following list of words provides some common coinages
found in everyday English:
 Aspirin
 Escalator
 heroin
 Band-aid
 Factoid
 Frisbee
 Google
 linoluem
NONCE WORDS
Nonce words are new words formed through any
number of word formation processes with the
resulting word meeting a lexical need that is not
expected to recur. Nonce words are created for a
single occasion. For example, the following list of
words provide some nonce words with definitions
as identified in the Oxford English Dictionary
 Cotton-wool: to stuff or close ears with cotton wool.

 Twi-thought: an indistinct or vague thought

BORROWING
ARE ALSO REFERRED TO AS LOANWORDS
 Borrowing is the word formation process in which a word from one
language is borrowed directly into another language. For example, the
following common English words are borrowed from foreign languages:
 algebra – Arabic
 bagel – Yiddish
 cherub – Hebrew
 chow mein – Chinese
 fjord – Norwegian
 galore – Irish
 haiku – Japanese
 kielbasa – Polish
 murder – French
 near – Sanskrit
 paprika – Hungarian
 pizza – Italian
 smorgasbord – Swedish
 tamale – Spanish
 yo-yo – Tagalog
CALQUING

 Calquing is the word formation process in which a borrowed

word or phrase is translated from one language to another.
For example, the following common English words are
calqued from foreign languages:
 beer garden – German – Biergarten
 blue-blood – Spanish – sangre azul
 commonplace – Latin – locus commūnis
 flea market – French – marché aux puces
 free verse – French – vers libre
 loanword – German – Lehnwort
 long time no see – Chinese – hǎo jiǔ bu jiàn
 pineapple – Dutch – pijnappel
 scapegoat – Hebrew – ez ozel
 wisdom tooth – Latin – dēns sapientiae
 Calques are also referred to as root-for-root or word-for-word
translations
CLIPPING
 Clipping is the word formation process in which a word
is reduced or shortened without changing the meaning
of the word. Clipping differs from back-formation in that
the new word retains the meaning of the original word.
For example:
 advertisement – ad
 alligator – gator
 examination – exam
 gasoline – gas
 gymnasium – gym
 influenza – flu
 laboratory – lab
 mathematics – math
 memorandum – memo
 photograph – photo
 public house – pub
 raccoon – coon
 reputation – rep
 situation comedy – sitcom
 telephone – phone
The four types of clipping are back clipping, fore-
clipping, middle clipping, and complex clipping.
Back clipping is removing the end of a word as in
gas from gasoline. Fore-clipping is removing the
beginning of a word as in gator from alligator.
Middle clipping is retaining only the middle of a
word as in flu from influenza. Complex clipping is
removing multiple parts from multiple words as in
sitcom from situation comedy
IDENTIFYING MORPHEMES
1. Segmentation of words into minimal sound-
meaning constituents
 basic strategy
 comparing and contrasting forms that are
partially similar in sound and meaning
 associating shared sound with shared meaning
 continuing to do so until forms cannot be broken
into smaller sound-meaning units
 EXAMPLES
1. segmenting repayment into its constituent
morphemes:
comparing  contrasting  isolating
1. repayment : payment  re- payment
2. payment : pay  pay-ment
re- pay-ment
  
prefix+root+suffix
2. segmenting instructions into its constituent
morphemes:
 comparing  contrasting  isolating
1. instructions : instruction  instruction-s
2. instruction : instruct  instruct-ion
3. instruct : construct in-struct
in-struct-ion-s
   
prefix+root+suffix+suffix
3. segmenting inconsistent into its constituent
morphemes:
comparing  contrasting  isolating
1. inconsistent : consistent  in- consistent
2. consistent : consist  in-consist-ent
3. consist : desist, insist, persist con-sist
 in- con-sist –ent
   
prefix+prefix+root+suffix
 identifying the meaning of the various forms

 the meaning of re-pay-ment =

the meaning of re- + the meaning of pay- + the
meaning of -ment
 the meaning of in-struct-ion-s =
 the meaning of in- + the meaning of -struct + the
meaning of -ion + the meaning of –s
  the meaning of in-con-sist-ent =
 the meaning of in- + the meaning of con- + the
meaning of -sist + the meaning of -ent
2. Bound roots
 in segmenting a word into its constituent
morphemes,
not all morphemes obvious
  some of the segmentations, or breaks, are
less obvious
compare: -sist in consist
re- in rewrite
-er in writer
 some root morphemes never occur alone
in modern English, morphemes such as -ceive, -
mit, -fer have lost their independent meaning –
their meaning depends on the entire word in
which they occur