UNIT 3

MORPHEMIC AND LEXICAL SENSE

1 WHAT ARE MORPHEMES?

Morphemes are the minimal units of grammatical analysis, although they have internal
structure, are abstract models, and are therefore constructions. But grammar as such
does not study the phonological rules for the realization of morphemes: this is the object
of morphology.

A morpheme is a meaningful construction placed at the bottom of the grammatical

hierarchy, usually, but not necessarily, realized by one or more phonemes (or
graphemes). The morpheme is an abstract concept, like all constructions, not necessarily
equatable with its most frequent realization, which is a segment of a word-form.

Contribute the basic meaning in the

Lexical morphemes
lexeme
Classes of
Change the class or the identity of the
morpheme Derivational morphemes
lexeme without changing its class
s
Denote grammatical relations to other
Inflectional morphemes
words and grammatical categories

Morphs are the segments obtained in segmentable word-forms (in the phonological or
graphological form of words). Also, the segment in a non-segmentable word-form. In
some cases, a morpheme can be realized by a limited group of morphs that are in a
complementary distribution. This means that one morph will regularly exclude all the
other morphs of the group as a realization of the same morpheme, depending on the
phonological environment. This happens with some inflectional morphemes (e.g.
plural). These competing morphs are known as allomorphs. They constitute patterns of
regular variation.

1
2 MORPHEMIC MEANING

The meaning of morphemes is highly abstract. Some of these meanings are strictly
grammatical meanings. These are those carried by inflectional morphemes (genitive,
plural, past tense, present participle, past participle). Some others are abstract meanings
carried by derivational morphemes.

Prefix derivational morphemes can indicate:

 Negative: un-
 Time and order: fore-
 Pejorative: mis -
 Numbers: uni-
 Degree or size: super
 Purely class change: be-, en-, a
 Location: sub-

Prefixal morphemes can be negative derivational morphemes, reversative or privative

morphemes. They can also have other general meanings: pejorative, degree or size,
attitude, locative, time and order, number, purely class-changing…

Suffixal derivational morphemes typically change the class of the lexeme or create a
new lexeme of the same class as the base, a particular meaning and some change verbs
into nouns (-er, -ant, -ee, -ation). In addition, each of them has its own specific meaning.
Some example of meanings: agential, patient, act or state of X, collective entity, activity
or state of X, result…