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A WORD AND ITS PARTS:

ROOTS, AFFIXES AND THEIR SHAPES

1. Taking Words Apart

 In this material, we will focus on these smaller parts of words, generally called
Morphemes.

 The are of grammar concerned with the structure of words and with relationships
between words involving the morphemes that compose them is technically called
Morphology.

2. Kinds of Morpheme

Morpheme is smallest unit of words. In English. there are 2 types of morpheme they
are free morpheme and bound morpheme. There are two types of morphemes-free
morphemes and bound morphemes. "Free morphemes" can stand alone with a specific
meaning, for example, eat, date, weak, sing, pen. "Bound morphemes" cannot stand
alone with meaning. Morphemes are comprised of two separate classes called (a) bases
(or roots) and (b) affixes.
A "morpheme" is a short segment of language that meets three basic criteria:
 It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.
 It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments without changing its
meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder.
 It has relatively the same stable meaning in different verbal environments.
A "base," or "root" is a morpheme in a word that gives the word its principle
meaning. An example of a "free base" morpheme is  woman in the word womanly. An
example of a "bound base" morpheme is -sent in the word dissent.
 Free morpheme (bebas)
Every morpheme can be classified as either free or bound. Since the categories are
mutually exclusive, a given morpheme will belong to exactly one of them. Free morphemes
can function independently as words (e.g. town, dog) and can appear within lexemes (e.g.
town hall, doghouse).

Free morpheme is morpheme that can stand by themselves as single words. . Ex:
smart, sing, pen, make 
 Lexical morpheme (content words/ open class words): carry the content of word include:
noun, verbs, adjective, adverb. Ex: beauty, play, sing 
 Functional morpheme (function words): include Pronoun, article, conjunction, preposition.
Ex: and, from, in, or, etc.

 Bound morpheme (terikat)


Bound morphemes appear only as parts of words, always in conjunction with a root
and sometimes with other bound morphemes. For example, un- appears only accompanied by
other morphemes to form a word. Most bound morphemes in English are affixes, particularly
prefixes and suffixes. Examples of suffixes are -tion, -sion, -tive, -ation, -ible, and -ing.
Bound morphemes that are not affixed are called cranberry morphemes.Classification of
bound morphemes Bound morphemes can be further classified as derivational or inflectional
morphemes. The main difference between derivational morphemes and inflectional
mrphemes is their function for words.

Bound morpheme is the roots which are cannot stand by themselves.

 Derivation morpheme: change either the meaning and word class of root into which
they are attached. Ex: develop – development : V – N; dan tambahan lain yang
merubah kelas kata: re, ment, ly, ing, 
 Inflexional morpheme : don’t change the class of words adn meaning of roots into
word they are attacted. Ex: book – books; dan tambahan lain yang tidak merubah
kelas kata: s, es, est, ed,
 Functional morpheme (function words): include Pronoun, article, conjunction,
preposition. Ex: and, from, in, or, etc.

Bound morpheme – affixations


 Prefix – an affix attached to the front of a base. Ex: re – play = replay 
 Suffix – an affix attached to the end of a base. Ex: kind- ness kindness 
 Infix – an affix that is occurs within a base

3. Kinds of Morpheme: Root, Affixes, Combining for


 Root
Root is the basic words which can stand alone without affixes
Example : read, perform, brain, book
 Affixes
Affixes is term for prefix and suffixes. An "affix" is a bound morpheme that
occurs before  or after a base. An affix that comes before a base is called a "prefix."
Some examples of prefixes are ante-, pre-, un-, and dis-, as in the following words:
antedate
prehistoric
unhealthy
disregard
An affix that comes after a base is called a "suffix." Some examples of suffixes
are -ly, -er, -ism, and -ness, as in the following words:
happily
gardener
capitalism
kindness
 Derivational Affixes
An affix can be either derivational or inflectional. "Derivational affixes" serve
to alter the meaning of a word by building on a base. In the examples of words with
prefixes and suffixes above, the addition of the prefix un- to healthy alters the
meaning of healthy. The resulting word means "not healthy." The addition of the
suffix -er to garden changes the meaning of garden, which is a place where plants,
flowers, etc., grow, to a word that refers to 'a person who tends a garden.' It should be
noted that all prefixes in English are derivational. However, suffixes may be either
derivational or inflectional.
 Inflectional Affixes
There are a large number of derivational affixes in English. In contrast, there are
only eight "inflectional affixes" in English, and these are all  suffixes. English has the
following inflectional suffixes, which serve a variety of grammatical functions when
added to specific types of words. These grammatical functions are shown to the right of
each suffix.
-s     noun plural
-'s     noun possessive
-s     verb present tense third person singular
-ing     verb present participle/gerund
-ed     verb simple past tense
-en     verb past perfect participle
-er     adjective comparative
-est     adjective superlative
Many words in English are made up of a single free morpheme. For example, each
word in the following sentence is a distinct morpheme: "I need to go now, but you can stay."
Put another way, none of the nine words in that sentence can be divided into smaller parts
that are also meaningful.

 Prefixes
Prefixes is non morphemes that precede the root.
Example: En – large
↓ ↓
Prefix root
 Suffixes
Suffixes is non-root morpheme which follow the root or placed after the
root.
Example: Perfom – ance
↓ ↓
Root suffixes
 Combining Form
Combining form is combination of two roots or more to make new word.
Example: Photo – graphy
↓ ↓
Root root

4. Morphemes and their Allomorphs


"A word can be analyzed as consisting of one morpheme (sad) or two or more
morphemes (unluckily; compare luck, lucky, unlucky), each morpheme usually expressing a
distinct meaning. When a morpheme is represented by a segment, that segment is a morph. If
a morpheme can be represented by more than one morph, the morphs are allomorphs of the
same morpheme: the prefixes in- (insane), il- (illegible), im- (impossible), ir- (irregular) are
allomorphs of the same negative morpheme."

a) Morphemes as Meaningful Sequences of Sounds

"A word cannot be divided into morphemes just by sounding out its syllables.
Some morphemes, like apple, have more than one syllable; others, like -s, are less
than a syllable. A morpheme is a form (a sequence of sounds) with a recognizable
meaning. Knowing a word's early history, or etymology, may be useful in dividing it
into morphemes, but the decisive factor is the form-meaning link.

"A morpheme may, however, have more than one pronunciation or spelling.
For example, the regular noun plural ending has two spellings (-s and -es) and three
pronunciations (an s-sound as in backs, a z-sound as in bags, and a vowel plus z-
sound as in batches). Similarly, when the morpheme -ate is followed by -ion (as in
activate-ion), the t of -ate combines with the i of -ion as the sound 'sh' (so we might
spell the word 'activashun'). Such allomorphic variation is typical of the morphemes
of English, even though the spelling does not represent it."

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. A morpheme is not


identical to a word. The main difference between them is that a morpheme sometimes
does not stand alone, but a word, by definition, always stands alone. The linguistics
field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. When a morpheme
stands by itself, it is considered as a root because it has a meaning of its own (such as
the morpheme cat). When it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an
affix because it has a grammatical function (such as the –s in cats to indicate that it is
plural). Every word comprises one or more morphemes.
Examples

"Unbreakable" is composed of three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme


signifying "not"), -break- (the root, a free morpheme), and -able (a free morpheme
signifying "can be done").

 Derivational morphemes

Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root, change the semantic meaning or the
part of speech of the affected word. For example, in the word happiness, the addition of the
bound morpheme -ness to the root happy changes the word from an adjective (happy) to a
noun (happiness). In the word unkind, un- functions as a derivational morpheme since it
inverts the meaning of the word formed by the root kind. Generally, affixes used with a root
word are bound morphemes.

 Inflectional morphemes

Inflectional morphemes modify the tense, aspect, mood, person, or number of a verb, or the
number, gender, or case of a noun, adjective, or pronoun, without affecting the word's
meaning or class (part of speech). Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are
adding -s to the root dog to form dogs, or adding -ed to wait to form waited. An inflectional
morpheme changes the form of a word. English has eight inflections.

Allomorphs

Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme that differ in pronunciation but are semantically
identical. For example, the English plural marker -(e)s of regular nouns can be pronounced
/-s/ (bats), /-z/, (bugs), or /-ɪz, -əz/, (buses), depending on the final sound of the noun's plural
form. Allomorphs of the plural morpheme for regular nouns: /s/ (e.g. in cats /kæts/), /ɪz, əz/
(e.g. in dishes /dɪʃɪz/), and /z/ (e.g. in dogs /dɒɡz/).

 Zero morphemes/null morphemes

Generally, these types of morphemes have no visible changes. For instance, sheep is both the
singular and the plural form. The intended meaning is thus derived from the co-occurring
determiner (in this case, "some-" or "a-").

5. Identifying morphemes independently of meaning


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
 EXAMPLE
 Segmenting repayment into is constituent morphemes
→comparing →contrasting →isolating

1. repayment : payment → re-payment


2. payment : pay → pay-ment
re – pay – ment
↓ ↓ ↓
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
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
- Receive, conceive, perceive
- Permit, remit, omit, commit, transmit, admit
- Refer, confer, prefer, defer, transfer.

6. Conclusion: Ways of classifying word-parts


In this material has been concered with classifying these parts, and discussing
further their relation to word meanings.We have introduced the following
distinctions:
 Morphemes and allomorphs, bound and free
 Roots, affixes and combining form
 Prefixes and suffixes

Allomorph, concerned as it is with differences in how a morpheme is


pronounced, may seem at first to have little connection with meaning. At the
same time, one must acknowledge that, in large swathes of English vocabulary (
in words such as unhelpfulness, un-Clintonish ).
MORPHOLOGY

RESKI 10535111831
SRI WAHYUNI 105351119018
SARINA 105351119218

FAKULTAS KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN


PROGRAM STUDI PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS
UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH MAKASSAR
2019

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