Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Instruction: After reading the content, answer the assessment at the end of this lesson.
You can send me your answer/output via Google Classroom (Classwork) prior or until the
date of submission. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact
me during the scheduled time. Thank you!
Objective: At the end of this topic the student will be able to:
1. Introduce to Morphology.
2. acquaint students with morphemes and characteristics of being a
morpheme.
3. recognize the major and minor types of morphemes in English language.
4. distinguish between the functions of related terms: root, stem, base.
5. recognize the features and functions of derivational and inflectional affixes.
Morphology
Morpheme
The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language. (lexical and grammatical meaning) A
morpheme must have a meaning, and it is the smallest unit of meaning (the smallest sound-meaning union
which cannot be further analyzed into smaller units).
The word lady can be divided into two syllables (la.dy), but it consists of just one morpheme, because
a syllable has nothing to do with meaning.
The word books contain only one syllable, but it consists of two morphemes (book+s) (Notice: the morpheme
–s has a grammatical meaning [Plural])
Words can have an internal structure, i.e. they are decomposable into smaller meaningful (lexical or
grammatical) parts. These smallest meaningful units we call morphemes.
read+erre+read en+abledark+en
Classification of Morphemes
2. Types of affixes:
Derivational
Derivational affixes (create new meaning) make new words by adding concrete meanings to old words:
un- V V untie
dis- V V dis-like
re- V V rewrite
ex- N N ex-wife
en- N V encourage
-hood N N child-hood
-ship N N leader-ship
-fy N V beauti-fy
-al V N refus-al
-er V N read-er
N – Ad : milk milky
Inflectional
Affixes can be divided into inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes. This reflects two
major morphological (word building) processes:
Inflectional Morphemes
Inflectional morphemes do not change grammatical category of the base to which they are attached.
They do not change the meaning of the base. They only carry relevant grammatical information, e.g. plural.
Thus, book and books are both nouns referring to the same kind of entity.
The number of inflectional affixes is small and fixed. NO new ones have been added since 1500.
-s N Plural book-s
present tense
Inflectional affixes make different grammatical forms of the same word. English has only 8 productive
inflections:
There are several unproductive inflections too, like the plural -en in oxen, and the participial -en in given.
re print s
FREE BOUND
most roots in English most prefixes and suffixes (Derivational and inflectional)
Compound words can be distinguished into three forms; they are solid, hyphenated and open
Word-formation processes
Major
Affixation: process of forming words by adding affxes to morphemes.
{ V + -able ! A: predict+ -able
{ V + -er ! N: sing+er
{ un + A ! A: un-productive
Compounding: word formation process by which new words are formed by combining two or more
independent words.
{ A + A ! A: bittersweet
{ N + N ! N: rainbow
{ V + V ! V: sleepwalk
{ P + P ! P: without
{ V + N ! N: pickpocket
{ N + V ! V: spoonfeed
{ P + V ! V: overdo
Reduplication: process of forming new words either by doubling an entire word (total reduplictation)
or part of a word (partial reduplication).
{ English: humpty-dumpty, higgledy-piggeldy
(partial reduplication)
Morpheme-internal Changes: a type of word formation process wherein a word changes internally
to indicate grammatical information.
{ : sing, sang, sung; swim, swam, swum
MINOR
ACRONYMS:
extreme form of reduction; -are formed from the initial letters of a set of other words
2 kind of them: “alphabetisisms”->CD, DNA-pronunciation consist of the set of letters; -second are
pronounced as a single word-> NATO, NASA, UNESCO, PIN
some acronyms lose their capitals to become everyday terms -> laser
BACKFORMATION:
a word of one type(usu a noun) is reduced to form another word of a different type(usu a verb); -worker-
>work, donation->donate…hypocorisms-a longer word is reduced to a single syllable, then –y or –ie is added
to the end: movie, telly->television
Diachronic perspective on language-not together; in different points of time; showing changes, how the
language evolve in time.
BLENDING:
taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word; clipped and then
compounded word eg. smog (smoke +fog), motel, bit, brunch, telecast, Chunnel.
BORROWING:
very common word –formation process; it’s social phenomenon means, the taking over of words from other
languages; -it takes place when a speaker of one culture come to contact with another one; -the borrowing
will be taken from the most influential culture
Loan-translation (calque) – it’s a direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language.
CLIPPING:
clip=to cut; -making words shorter, reducing them; a word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter
form; -esp in casual speech; -gas, bus, bra
COINAGE:
The invention of totally new terms
Proper names or trade names for one company’s product become general terms for any version of that
product.(eg. kleenex, Guy Fox->guy(any human being); -meaning of the words is broaden and broaden.
CONVERSION:
a change in the function of a word(eg. when the noun comes to be used as a verb without any
reduction)other names are: “category change” I “functional shift”; very productive in English, do not exist in
Polish eg. cut,paper, butter, bottle, vecation, spy.
some converted forms shift in meaning when they change the category.
PSEUDO ACRONYM
Reduce sentence into some letters e.g. I C Q : I Seek You, C U : See you, SQR : secure, etc.
ONOMOTOPEOIA
Words created from sound