MORPHOLOGY

Morphemes and Inflections

➢ History of Morphology
• it derives from the Greek word "Morph" which means to shape or form and "Ology" the
study of something.
• In 1859, August Schleicher used the term Morphology in Linguistics to represent the
study of the form of words.

➢ Meaning of Morphology
• is the field of linguistics that examines the internal structure of words and processes of
word formation.
• it examines the words or the "lexemes" - The term we use for this more abstract notion
of ‘word’.

Example:
- the lexeme HATS is in its plural form, but it really came from the two parts which is the
lexeme HAT (an object we use to cover or protect our head), and suffix -s (to indicate
that there is more than one object).

Derivational morphology
• studies the principles governing the construction of new words, without reference to
the specific grammatical role a word might play in a sentence.
• creation of new lexeme (it is the term we use for this more abstract notion of ‘word’)

For example:
- the lexeme HATS is in its plural form, but it really came from the two parts which is the
lexeme HAT (an object we use to cover or protect our head), and suffix -s (to indicate
that there is more than one object).

Inflectional morphology
• studies the way in which words vary (or inflect) in order to express grammatical
contrasts in sentences
• singular/plural or past/present tense.

Ex: GIRL and GIRLS, are two forms of the ‘same’ word
the choice between them, singular vs. plural, and thus the business of inflectional
morphology.
Morphemes
● the smallest unit of meaning in a language. It can be a word, like "dog," or a part
of a word, like the "-s" in "dogs".
● commonly classified as either free morphemes, which can occur as separate
words, or bound morphemes, which can't stand alone as words.
● Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme.
● A morpheme cannot be divided without changing its meaning.

Inflections
● a process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of a word
to express grammatical meanings.
● the word "inflection" comes from the Latin inflectere, meaning "to bend."
● in English grammar include the genitive 's; the plural -s; the third-person singular
-s; the past tense -d, -ed, or -t; the negative particle 'nt; -ing forms of verbs; the
comparative -er; and the superlative -est.
● they are most often prefixes or suffixes.
● they are used to express different grammatical categories.

For example:
- the inflection -s at the end of dogs shows that the noun is plural.
The inflection -ed is often used to indicate the past tense, changing walk to walked and
listen to listened. In this way, inflections are used to show grammatical categories such
as tense, person, and number.

● Inflections can also be used to indicate a word's part of speech. The prefix en-,
for example, transforms the noun gulf into the verb engulf. The suffix -er
transforms the verb read into the noun reader.

Free Morphemes
● the morpheme that can stand alone as a single word (as a meaningful unit) are
roots that are identical to words
● set of separate English word forms such as basic nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
● when a free morpheme is used with bound morphemes, the basic word forms are
technically known as stems or roots.

Examples of free morphemes:

Sun (noun), dog (noun), walk (verb), and happy (adjective)
Free morpheme can stand alone cannot be subdivided further. ‘Sun’ or ‘dog’ are ‘free
morphemes' because they cannot be further split up, therefore the stems that cannot
divide further are also called roots.

Free morphemes are divided into two categories: Lexical morphemes and functional
morphemes.

Lexical morphemes
● a set of content words like nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They can be
understood fully.
Ex: run, blue, slow, paper, small, throw, and now.
● Lexical morphemes depict dictionary meaning of a word that is attributed to a
specific referent.

Functional Morphemes
● set of functional words like conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns,
auxiliary verbs, modals, and quantifiers.
Some examples of functional morphemes are and, near, when, on, because, but, it, in,
that, the, and above.
● perform as a relationship between one lexical morpheme and another modifies
the meaning, rather than supplying the root meaning of the word. It encodes
grammatical meaning.
Ex: the players entered the ground. In this sentence, ‘the’ is a functional morpheme,
which is specifying players and ground.

Bound Morphemes
● segments that cannot stand alone and occur with another root/stem
● also called affixes (prefixes, suffixes and infixes) in English.
● two bound morphemes cannot occur together but it is necessary for a bound
morpheme to occur with a root/stem.
Examples of bound morphemes:
Opened: (Open + ed) = root + suffix
Reopen: (Re + open) = Prefix + root
Men: (Man + plural) = root + infix (infix makes a change inside a root word)
● set of affixes that make up the category of bound morphemes can also be
divided into two types. Derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes
Derivational Morphemes
● change the grammatical categories of words.
For example the word ‘bake’ (verb) is a root word (free morpheme) and when we add
bound morpheme ‘er’(a suffix) with stem: it becomes baker (a noun), So the
the grammatical category was changed from verb to noun.
Inflectional Morphemes:
● a suffix that is added to a word to assign a particular grammatical property to that
word.
For example, listen +ing = listening or boy+s = boys.
They do not change the essential meaning or the grammatical category of a word. Also
serve as grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison.

Lexical morphemes
● one that can actually stand on its own without the aid of other morphemes to
imply meaning.
Examples:
cat, door, think, draw, and ice

What are grammatical morphemes?

Grammatical morphemes are those bits of linguistic sound which mark the grammatical
categories of language (Tense, Number, Gender, Aspect), each of which has one or
more functions (Past, Present, Future are functions of
Tense; Singular and Plural are functions of Number)

Examples:
the morpheme cookie + the suffix s = cookies
the preposition and conjunctions (and, or, to)

Differences between lexical and grammatical morphemes

1.Meaning: While lexical morphemes have specific meanings on their own, grammatical
morphemes provide information about the structure and context of the words within a
sentence.
2.Function: Lexical morphemes serve as the core structure of the words we use,
whereas grammatical morphemes are used to modify words and provide additional
grammatical information for the sentence.
3.Types: Lexical morphemes are categorized into nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
adverbs. Grammatical morphemes, on the other hand, are divided into inflectional and
derivational morphemes, as mentioned earlier.
Group 4

Topic
Morphology

Leader: Maritonie Renz N. Asis

Members:
Geenaren L. Cunanan
John Andrei Q. Siniel