MORPHOLOGY &

ITS COMPONENTS
Aaliah Shane Dologmanding
Jayshia Joy Edullan
MORPHOLOGY: THE STRUCTURE OF WORDS
Morphology deals with the syntax of complex words and parts of words,
also called morphemes, as well as with the semantics of their lexical
meanings. Understanding how words are formed and what semantic
properties they convey through their forms to enable human beings
easily recognize individual words and their meanings.

It is a branch of linguistics and one of the main components of grammar

that studies word structures and the smallest segments of language that
carry meaning.
MORPHEMES
The word morphemes from the Greek morphḗ, meaning 'shape, form'.
Morphemes are the smallest lexical items of meaning or grammatical function
that a word can be broken down to. Morphemes are usually, but not always,
words.

EXAMPLES
These words cannot be made shorter than they already are or they would
stop being words or lose their meaning.
1. House 2. Bed 3. Book

However, not all morphemes are words.

For example, 's' is not a word, but it is a morpheme; 's' shows plurality and
means 'more than one' such as the word 'books' is made up of two
morphemes: book + s.
MORPHEMES
FREE MORPHEMES
A free morpheme is a morpheme that occurs alone and carries meaning as a
word. Free morphemes are also called unbound or freestanding morphemes.
You might also call a free morpheme a root word, which is the irreducible core
of a single word.
Example: Bad, Cute, Tall, Clear
CATEGORIES
1. Lexical Morphemes - they can actually stand on their own without the aid
of other morphemes to imply meaning. In order to do so, a lexical
morpheme must be a full word, such as tree, love, and like.
2. Functional Morphemes - these are the words in a sentence that are
more functional, meaning that they coordinate the meaningful words.
Examples are with, there, and, so, but and we.
BOUND MORPHEMES
Bound Morphemes are those that cannot stand alone with meaning. Bound
morphemes must occur with other morphemes to create a complete word, and
many bound morphemes are affixes. And they are divided into subtypes
which are derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes.

AFFIXES
Affixes are small word particles, usually only a few letters, added to a root
word to change its meaning or grammatical properties. There are two principal
types of affixes which are the prefixes, and suffixes.

1. Prefixes - attached at the beginning of a lexical item or base morpheme.

Example: un-, pre-, dis-, im-
2. Suffixes - attached at the end of a lexical item.
Example: -age, -ing, -ful, able, -ness, -ly
 DERIVATIONAL MORPHEMES

This process leads to the creation of new lexemes. The new words either have
different meanings or belong to different classes. In the process of derivation,
new words are created by means of prefixes and suffixes.

EXAMPLES

Bounty (Noun) + ful = Bountiful (Adjective)

Clear (Verb) + -ance = Clearance (Noun)

Friend (Noun) + -ship = Friendship (Noun)

Cover (Verb) + re- = Recover (Verb)

Compute (Verb) + ate + ion + al = Computational (Adjective)

Interest (Noun) + ing + ly = Interestingly (Adverb)
Multi + million (Noun) + aire + s = Multimillionaires (Noun)
 INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

Inflection is a process in which the identity and class of a word doesn’t change,
so the word is still the same lexeme, belonging to the same class. So, a verb is
still a verb when inflected, and an adverb is still an adverb.

INFLECTIONAL
FUNCTION EXAMPLE
MORPHEME

's Noun Possessive The girl's doll.

-s / -es Noun Plural The houses are big.

-s Verb Present Tense He lives by the street.

-d / -ed Verb Past Tense He lived by the street.

 INFLECTIONAL
FUNCTION EXAMPLE
MORPHEME

-ing Verb Present Participle They are playing.

-en / -d / -ed Verb Past Participle I have eaten breakfast.

-er Comparative My sister is taller than me.

-est Superlative I am the youngest in my family.

Note that ...

Some verb inflections and noun plurals take a different morpheme, such as: eat - ate,
teach - taught, mouse - mice and, moose - moose. They are called irregular verbs and
irregular plural nouns. The same with possessive because the possessive plural noun
ending in -s will only have a simple apostrophe and no additional -s. In most cases, we
add more or most to adjectives and adverbs instead of inflectional morphemes in
comparatives and superlatives like more beautiful and most awkwardly
KEY TAKEAWAYS
MORPHOLOGY & ITS
COMPONENTS
is the study of the smallest
segments of language that carry
meaning.
Morphemes are the smallest
units of language that have
meaning and can’t be further
subdivided.
There are two main types of
morphemes: bound and free.
Bound morphemes must be
combined with another
morpheme to create a word.
Free morphemes can stand
alone as a word.
Bound morphemes are divided
into two subtypes: derivational
morphemes and inflectional
morphemes.
Derivational morphemes are
either class-maintaining or class-
changing.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

A derivational morpheme is an
affix that derives a new word or
a new form of an existing word.

Inflectional morphemes are

An inflectional morpheme is a suffixes, which is a type of affix.
letter, or group of letters, that
adds grammatical information to
a word. It has 8 inflectional
morphemes.
REFERENCES

Morphology. (nd). In StudySmarter.

https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/english/morphology/

Derivational Morphemes. (nd). In StudySmarter.

https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/english/morphology/
derivational-morphemes/

Inflectional Morphemes. (nd). In StudySmarter.

https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/english/the-history-
of-english-language/inflectional-morphemes/
Thank
you!!