MORPHOLOGY

Morphology: the branch of linguistics which deals with the structure of words in language.

Morpheme: the smallest unit of meaning or function in the grammar of a language.

MORPHEMES

Every word has a stem/root.

Ex: corrective : “correct” is the root of the word

ALLOMORPH: The variation of a morpheme according to the context in which it occurs.

The morheme of plural: -s

Ex: socks / buses / cookies

The morpheme of the past regular : -ed

Ex: washed / studied / baked

DİKKAT: The difference between allomorph and allophone

Allophones are phonetic variations of a phoneme while allomorphs are phonetic

variations of a morpheme. However, these variations do not form a new word; they only
cause different pronunciations.

The /t/ sound is pronounced differently in the two words: top and stop. These different sounds
are allophones. Sounds /t/, /d/, and /ɪd/ in slipped, slammed, and wanted, respectively, are
examples of allomorphs of the past tense.

Morphemes

FREE MORPHEMES BOUND MORPHEMES

Can stand on their own Cannot stand on their own / gains

/meaningful on their own meaning when attached to a free
morpheme in the form of affixes
ex: come / tree / beautiful
Ex: -ing / re-

Buna ek olarak;
Cranberry Morpheme: a cranberry morpheme is a type of bound morpheme that cannot
be assigned a meaning nor a grammatical function, but nonetheless serves to distinguish one
word from the other. (bound morpheme gibi algılanabilir ama var oldukları kelimeden
ayrıldıklarında geri kalan kısım anlamsız işlevsiz kalır)
Examples
The English word cranberry seems morphologically complex, since it must be distinguished
from words such as raspberry, blackberry, and gooseberry. Still, cran has no meaning and
does not function as an independent word: cranberry is the only word in which cran appears.
Receive / perceive / conceive

Zero Morpheme (Invisible Morpheme)- Null Morpheme: The null morpheme is a

morpheme with no phonetic form. It can be considered an invisible affix.
Ex: sheep –sheep I run every day. / I run yesterday.

Portmanteau Morpheme: involves the linking and blending of two or more words, and the
new word formed in the process shares the same meanings as the original words. It is different
from a compound word, which could have a completely different meaning from the words
that it was coined from.
Blending yoluyla elde edilen morphemeler
Ex: brunch (breakfast + lunch)
Blog (web + log)

DİKKAT: Kelimenin kaç morphemeden oluştuğunu analiz ederken kelimenin kökü de

morpheme dir. Sadece ekleri almayalım.
Ex: impatiently kelimesi 3 morpheme den oluşur.
Patient / impatient / impatiently

FREE MORPHEMES: Tek başına durur ve kelime olarak algılanır. Bir free morpheme
(root) bound morpheme ile birleşince stem olur.
 FREE MORPHEMES

FUNCTIONAL MORPHEMES
LEXICAL MORPHEMES
(GRAMMATICAL
(CONTENT WORDS) /OPEN
WORDS) /CLOSED CLASS
CLASS WORDS
WORDS
Carry the content of the messages
Have grammatical functions
New words can be added to this
New words are almost never
category
added
Noun / verb / adjective / adverb
Prepositions / conjunctions /
articles / pronouns / auxiliaries
/intensifiers

Roots can be free or bound morphemes. They cannot be further analyzed into smaller parts.
They form the base forms of the words.
1. Free roots are free morphemes. They can stand alone to function as words.
Examples:
recollect, bilingual, uneasy, mislead, hardly, attractive
2. Bound roots are bound morphemes. They cannot stand alone to function as words
because they are no longer used in Modern English.
Examples:
receive, reduce

BOUND MORPHEMES

INFLECTIONAL
DERIVATIONAL
MORPHEME
MORPHEME
No change in the meaning and
either change the meaning or
category
syntactic category of the word
Prefixes are not inflectional, but
EX: Correct-ion
inflectional morphemes are
Fame-famous always suffixes

Foolish Ex: going

Prefixes + Suffixes Studied

Ex: re-write Boxes

Teach-er
 AFFIXES

SUFFIX
PREFIX
INFIX CIRCUMFIX Ex: happi-ness
EX: Un-happy
Ex: fanbloodytastic No circumfix in
English

REDUPLICATION: Inflecting a word by duplicating some part of it

Ex: hip hop

Bye bye

Ta ta

SUPPLETIVE FORMS/SUPPLETION: the use of two or more phonetically distinct roots

for different forms of the same word/ changing the morpheme with no affixes

Ex: good-better

Bad-worse

Go-went

Person-people