What is a morpheme?

'A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language.'

'A morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria:

• It is a word or part of a word that has meaning.

• It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of its meaning or without
meaningless remainders.
• It recurs in different verbal environments with a relatively stable meaning.'

How to distinguish morphemes vs. phonemes

A morpheme differs from a phoneme in that the former has meaning whereas the latter does not. Although
phonemes have no meaning, they have distinctive features that help to distinguish meaning

How to distinguish morphemes vs. Syllables?

A morpheme happens to be identical to a syllable; and so are many English morphemes. However, any
matches between morphemes and syllables are fortuitous. Many poly-syllabic words are mono-
morphemic.

How to distinguish morphemes vs. words?

Words are made up of morphemes. In other words, morphemes are the constituents of words.

What is a free morpheme?

• A free morpheme is 'one that can be uttered alone with meaning'.

• A free morpheme 'can be used on its own'.

• Free morphemes 'may stand alone as words in their own right, as well as enter into the structure of other
words'.

What is a bound morpheme?

• A bound morpheme 'cannot be uttered alone with meaning. It is always annexed to one or more
morphemes to form a word'.

• A bound morpheme 'is never used alone but must be used with another morpheme'.
• Bound morphemes 'may occur only if they combine with another morpheme'.

What is a base ( or a root)?

A base is 'that morpheme in a word that has the principal meaning'. It is the central morpheme, the basic
part of a word.
What is a free base?
A free base is a base 'which may be a word on its own right once the other morphemes have been stripped
away

What is a bound base?

A bound base is a base that can never occur on its own but can only be joined to other bound morphemes.

What is an affix?
AN affix is a morpheme (usually a bound morpheme) 'that occurs before or behind a base'.

How to classify prefixes and suffixes?

• PREFIXES 'occur before a base'
• SUFFIXES 'occur after a base'

How to distinguish inflectional affixes and derivational affixes?

• INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES, 'which are always suffixes in English, perform a grammatical
function; they are representatives of grammatical categories'.
• DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES, 'which may be prefixes or suffixes in English, have a lexical
function; they create new words out of existing words or morphemes by their addition'.

What is an allomorph?
An allomorph is 'any of the different forms of a morpheme'.

How to identify allomorphs of the same word?

1. They are in complementary distribution
2. They all have the same meaning

How many types of allomorphs are there?

5 types: additive allomorphs, replacive allomorphs, subtractive allomorphs, suppletive allomorphs, the
zero allomorphs.

What is derivation?
Derivation is the formation of new words by adding affixes to other words or morphemes.

What is inflection?
Inflection is the process of adding an affix to a word or changing it in some other way according to the
rules of the grammar of a language.

What are ICs?

ICs are any of the two meaningful parts forming a larger linguistic unit.
What is a word?
A word is the smallest linguistic unit which can occur on its own in speech or writing.

How many ways are there to classify words in English? What are they?
- The classification of words according to their structure ( simple words, complex words, compound
words)
-The classification of words according to their word-formation process ( 9 processes: coinage, borrowing,
blending, clipping, acronymy, conversion, affixation, back-formation, compounding)

What are simple words?

Simple words consist of a single free base.

What are complex words?

Complex words contain at least one bound morpheme as an IC.
-Complex words-FB ( free base) have one free morpheme as an IC.

-Complex words-BB ( bound base) have a bound morpheme for each IC.

What are compound words?

Compound words have at least two free bases( free morphemes) with or without bound morphemes.

How many types of compounds do we have in the English language?

2 types: derivational compounds, and repetitive compounds.
How many features do compounds have? What are they? 3 features:
-The phonological feature: the elements of a compound word are stressed.

-The syntactic feature: the arrangement of the elements in a compound may differ from that of a
grammatical structure in order. Compound words are considered as solid blocks.

-The semantic feature: compound words have specialized meanings.

3 vowel description: vertical distance between the upper surface of the tongue and the hard
palate; which part part of the tongue is raised the highest; lip-rounding degree