Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dio

Bachelor Program in English Language Tea

Structures and Functions of Language
Student Name: ____________________________________ ID ________________ NRC _________________
Week: ONE

1. MORPHOLOGY

What is Morphology? The term morphology is generally attributed to the

German poet, novelist, playwright, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe (1749–1832), who coined it early in the nineteenth century in a
biological context. Its etymology is Greek: morph- means ‘shape, form’,
and morphology is the study of form or forms. In biology morphology
refers to the study of the form and structure of organisms, and in geology
it refers to the study of the configuration and evolution of land forms. In
linguistics, morphology refers to the mental system involved in word
formation or to the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their
internal structure, and how they are formed.

Why to study morphology?

Eg. Antidisestablishmentarianism: anti-dis- establish- ment- ari- an- ism

Words and morphemes

In traditional grammar, words are the

basic units of analysis. Grammarians
classify words according to their parts of
speech, identify, and list the forms that
words can show up in. Although the matter
is really very complex, for the sake of
simplicity we will begin with the assumption that we are all generally able
to distinguish words from other linguistic units. It will be sufficient for our
initial purposes if we assume that words are the main units used for
entries in dictionaries. Words are potentially complex units, composed of
even more basic units, called morphemes. So, words are units composed
of one or more morphemes; they are also the units of which phrases are
composed.

A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that has grammatical

function or meaning (NB not the smallest unit of meaning); we will
designate them in braces—{ }.

➢ For example: sawed, sawn, sawing, and saws can all be analyzed
into the morphemes {saw} + {-ed}, {-n}, {-ing}, and {-s},
respectively.

None of these last four can be further divided into meaningful units and
each occurs in many other words, such as:

looked, mown, coughing, bakes. {Saw} can occur on its own as a word;
it does not have to be attached to another morpheme. It is a free
morpheme. However, none of the other morphemes listed just above is
free. Each must be affixed (attached) to some other unit; each can only
occur as a part of a word. Morphemes that must be attached as word
parts are said to be bound.

Kinds of morphemes:

1. Lexical and Grammatical Morphemes

Lexical morphemes are those that having meaning by themselves (more

accurately, they have sense). Grammatical morphemes specify a
relationship between other morphemes. But the distinction is not all that
well defined. Nouns, verbs, adjectives ({boy}, {buy}, {big}) are typical
lexical morphemes. Prepositions, articles, conjunctions ({of}, {the},
{but}) are grammatical morphemes

2. Free and Bound Morphemes

Free morphemes are those that can stand alone as words. They may be
lexical morphemes ({serve}, {press}), or grammatical morphemes
({at}, {and}). Bound morphemes can occur only in combination—they
are parts of a word. They may be lexical morphemes (such as {clude} as
in include, exclude, preclude) or they may be grammatical (such as {PLU}
= plural as in boys, girls, and cats).

EXERCISES
1. Divide the following words into morphemes

a) Untrue ________________________________________
b) Owner ________________________________________
c) Incompletely ________________________________________
d) Government ________________________________________
e) Development ________________________________________
f) Rewrite ________________________________________
g) Fewest ________________________________________

2. List the morphemes in each word below, and state whether each
morpheme is free (F) or bound (B).

a) against free ( It can stand by its own)

b) imperative ________________________________________
c) realize ________________________________________
d) submit ________________________________________
e) assignment_______________________________________
f) Facebook ________________________________________
g) Uncommon ________________________________________
h) Misinterpret ________________________________________
i) Disqualified ________________________________________
j) Encountered ________________________________________
k) Geography ________________________________________
l) Irresistible ________________________________________