MORPHOLOGY

Morphology
• Types of morphemes
• Morphological description
• Morphs, allomorphs and special cases
• Other languages
 MORPHOLOGY

• In biology, morphology is the study

of the size, shape, and structure of
animals, plants, and microorganisms
and of the relationships of their
constituent parts (Vilee, 2018)
• In linguistics, morphology is the
study of forms: how morphemes are
combined into words.
 Morphemes

Let’s look at the following example:

I am sorry
Je suis désolé
Tôi xin lỗi
Dui bu qi
Words can be pronounced alone,
but morphemes cannot.
 Morphemes

Morphemes: a minimal unit of

meaning or grammatical function
 Morphemes

Let’s count the morphemes in the

following words
1. unidentified
2. alligator
3. civillization
4. generalization
 Morphemes

Let’s count the morphemes in the

following words
1. unidentified = un-+ identify + -ed
2. alligator = alligator
3. civilization = civil + -ize + -tion
4. generalization = general +-ize + -tion
 Types of morphemes

• Free and bound morphemes

• Lexical and Functional morphemes
• Derivational morphemes and
Inflectional morphemes
 Types of morphemes

Morphemes

Bound Free
morphemes morphemes

Derivational Inflectional Lexical Functional

morphemes morphemes morphemes morphemes
Free morphemes and bound
morphemes

• Free morphemes: morphemes that

can stand alone as words
• Bound morphemes: morphemes
that never occur on their own
• Roots & affixes
– Roots: the foundation of word
– Roots: convey the meaning of the
word
• Roots: bound roots and free roots
• Affixes: bound morphemes
Find the roots in the following
words:
1. unbelievable
2. discussion
3. information
4. ambiguous
5. biology
6. strawberry
Exercises:

Analyze the morphemes in the following words

, classify them as free morphemes and bound
morphemes:
- fearlessly
- misleads
- previewer
- shortened
- unlisted
Lexical morphemes and
functional morphemes

• Lexical morphemes: set of free

nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
• Lexical morphemes: “open” class of
words
• Functional morphemes: other types
(articles, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs
, prepositions, pronouns)
• Functional morphemes:“closed” class
of words
Derivational morphemes and
inflectional morphemes

• Derivational morphemes: make new

words or words of different
grammatical category
• Example:
– economy (n)
– economic (a)
– economically (adv)
Derivational morphemes and
inflectional morphemes

• Inflectional morphemes: indicate the

grammatical function of a word
• 8 inflectional morphemes
 possessive -'s

nouns

plural -s

3rd person singular

present tense -s

past tense -ed

Inflectional
verbs
morphemes
present particple -
ing

past participle -en

comparative -er

adjectives

superlative -est
Example
Morphological description

Analyze the morphemes in the

following sentences:
1. The teacher’s wildness shocked th
e girls’ parents
2. The best student in my class went
to America by amazingly winning
a poetry contest.
Other languages

• Textbook page 78-79