Morphology

By Shalevska Elena, MA
Word vs. Morpheme
What’s the difference?
Morphemes
Morphemes are the smallest units in the structural analysis of words.

[[[ green ] ish ] ness]

[un [break [able]]]

Divide in meaningful morphemes:
Unbreakable Nationalism

Illegally Creativity

Dissatisfaction Neighbourhood

Mistreated Brightness

Childless Beautiful

Comfortable Argument

Thicken Ownership
Types of Morphemes
 Free
can stand alone as its own word:
Ex: Gentle, boy, father, licence,
picture
Bound
only occurs as part of a word
-s as in cat+s
-ed as in crumb+ed
un- as in un+happy
Root vs. Stem
What is a root?
A root is the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it.
SLEEP is the root of sleeping.
Many words contain a root standing on its own. Roots which are capable of standing
independently. Therefore, they are free morphemes.
The free morphemes in are examples of lexical morphemes. They are nouns, adjectives,
verbs, prepositions or adverbs. Such morphemes carry most of the 'semantic content'.
Function words are always free morphemes.
How about content words?
Iс every root free and is every free morpheme a root?
No.

While only roots can be free morphemes, not all roots are free. There are some bound
roots that mostly came from Latin:
What is a stem?
A stem of the word is the root of a word, together with any derivational affixes, to
which inflectional affixes can be added.

For instance:

WORKERS

WORK - root

WORKER - stem
How about a base?
A base is any unit whatsoever to which affixes of any kind can be added.

A root like boy can be a base since it can have attached to it inflectional affixes like -s
to form the plural boys or derivational affixes like -ish to turn the noun boy into the
adjective boyish.

In other words, all roots are bases.

Affixes
 Prefixes Suffixes
Are added at the beginning of the Are added at the end of the word
word
Infixes
An infix is an affix inserted into the root itself. Infixing is rare in English.

Nowadays, infixation is mostly done through whole-word insertation:

guarantee –> guaran-friggin-tee

Kalamazoo (place name) –> Kalama-goddam-zoo

Divide and analyse: Free or bound; Prefix, Suffix, Infix, Root?
Untouchable Swimming

Illegally Creativity

Boyhood Neighbourhood

Mistreated Carelessness

Irresistibly Care + less + ness

Care> Root (free)
Biggest Careless > Stem
Less > Suffix (bound)
Sleeps Ness > Suffix (bound)
Stem Extenders
Word building elements devoid of content.

In English, empty formatives are interposed between the root, base or stem and an
affix.

Take a look into CHILDREN.

Child-r-en.

The -en suffix can only be added after the stem has been extended.
Inflectional and
Derivational
Morphemes
 Inflectional Derivational
Suffixes. Do not change the Used to derive (form) a new word.
meaning, only the grammar Can be both prefixes and suffixes
aspect.
-s/-ing/-ed/-er/-est...
Class changing vs. Class maintaining words
When a derivational affix is added the word can еither change its class (work - worker
–> verb to noun) or maintain its class (kind - unkind –> adjective to adjective).

Prefixes are usually class maintaining though there are some exceptions:

● Friend - Befriend;
● Sleep - Asleep;
● Slave - Enslave;
● Frost - Defrost;
● Stick - Non-stick (pan)
Multiple affixation
Suffix and Prefix stacking
Same affix re-attaching:
● Great-great-great-great grandson
● Re-re-make
Multiple different affix attachment:
● Contradict-ori-ness
● Nation-al-ity-s
Compounding
What is Compounding?
A process of creating compound words that contain at least two bases which are both
words, or at any rate, root morphemes.

● Teapot
● Boyfriend
● Weekend
● Hairdresser
● Pickpocket
Conversion
What is Conversion (Zero-Derivation)?
Sometimes, words can be modified without any modifications.

For instance, head can be both a noun or verb.

Think of other such examples!

Language Universals
Language similarities across all languages = Language Universals
Some language universals:

● All languages have nouns and verbs,

● If a language is spoken, it has consonants and vowels,
● All living human languages change over time,
● All languages have a basic word order of elements, like subject, verb, and object,
with variations.
Types of languages