UNIT 2

Lesson 2

MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is the study of the forms of words, and the ways in which words are related to
other words of the same language.

The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of “morph”, which means “shape”, “form”
and “-ology”, “the study of something”.

In order to know a language, it is essential to know its vocabulary, the words which convey
meaning.

What is a word?

We may define a word as the smallest independent unit in a language. So, it does not
depend on other words; it can be separated from other words and it can change its position.

Example:

“In recent years I have been called twice to testify in the trials regarding those crimes”.

“Twice” is a word: it can occur in other positions or stand on its own.

Q: How often has he been called to testify in recent years?

A: Twice.

The structure of words

There are simple words and complex words.

Some of the most frequent words in English are simple as they consist of one morpheme;
they cannot be divided into smaller parts which carry meaning or function: Examples: and,
the, if, so, on, etc. Other examples: year, been, trial.
Morpheme

It is the minimal unit of linguistic form and meaning.

When a morpheme can occur on its own as a word, it does not have to be attached to
another morpheme, it is said to be a free morpheme. For example, “saw”.

When a morpheme can only occur as a part of a word, it is said to be a bound morpheme.
For example, “unconscious” (the prefix “un-“) is a bound morpheme.

In most cases, function words consist of a single morpheme. Most words, however, are
complex. They consist of two or more morphemes. They have a recognizable internal
structure.

For example, the adjective unhappy consists of un- plus happy because happy occurs as a
word by itself and un- is found with the same negative meaning in other words (untidy,
unkind, etc).

Similarly, the adverb unhappily consists of un- plus happy plus -ly.

The morphemes used before the root are called prefixes. Those coming after it are suffixes.
Prefixes and suffixes, are altogether defined as affixes.

The root is what remains when all affixes are removed.

So, in the above example, -un is a prefixe; happy, the root and –ly a suffix.

Lexeme

A lexeme is the smallest meaningful unit of lexicon (vocabulary) in a language. A lexeme

has form, meaning and a syntactic category. Lexeme is basically an abstract notion used in
linguistic morphology, the concrete realization of which is a word. It is the set of inflected
forms taken by a single word.

One lexeme can take up more than one inflection to form a set of many words known as
inflected variants. For example, the lexeme PLAY can take up many forms like play,
playing, plays, and played. All of these word forms have the same basic meaning (which is
denoted by an action) and, hence, will be categorized under the same lexeme.

All the inflectional manifestations of the lexeme will still belong to the same syntactic
category (in our example case, it is the “verb”). Note, however, that the word player won’t
belong to the same lexeme PLAY. This is because the word player is a derived (and not
inflected) form of play that has a different syntactic category (in this case, it is a noun).
Word – Morpheme – Lexeme

Lexeme is not equivalent to a word or morpheme in a language. Sometimes, one lexeme

can be formed of more than one word and morpheme also. For example, the lexemes like
take off and put up with consist of two and three words respectively. The meaning of these
lexemes can be determined by taking the constituents together, and not from the individual
words taken separately.

How to form complex words

Complex words result from three main processes:

a) Inflection
b) Derivation
c) Compounding

a) Inflection

It is the change in the form of a word, by using a suffix, to express a grammatical

function or attribute such as tense, mood, person, number, case and gender

Inflection does not change the category of a word.

Examples: years, friendlier, marginalized, speaking.

There are eight inflectional morphemes or “inflections”. See the following examples:

Jim’s two sisters are really different.

One likes to have fun and is always laughing

The other liked to read as a child and has always taken things seriously

One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quieter than a mouse.

Categories marked by inflection

 Noun: base (daughter); plural (daughters); genitive (daughter’s daughters’)

 Verbs: base (call, write); 3rd person singular present indicative (calls, writes);
past tense (called; wrote); past participle (called, written); ing-participle:
(calling; writing).
  Adjective: base (great); comparative (greater); superlative (greatest).
 Adverb: base (soon); comparative (sooner); superlative (soonest)

b) Derivation

Derivation is used to form new lexemes by adding:

 Prefixes: unfold; ex-president; reread

 Suffixes: dictatorship; journalist; consciousness

Some words can have both suffixes and prefixes and may also take inflections.
Examples: disappearances - unrepentant

Words can be built up using a number of prefixes and suffixes, and may become very
complex: pre-industr-ial; industr-ial-ize; industr-ial-iz-ation.

Prefixation retains the word class of the base. Examples: choice/pro-choice (nouns);
select/deselect (verbs).

Suffixation tends to change the word class of the base. Examples: highlight (verb)
/highlighter (noun)

c) Compounding

It is the process by which compound words are created.

A compound word consists of two or more bases. Examples: postcard, picture

postcard.

Compounds are distinguished from phrases conceptually, be being written solid or

hyphenated, or by their stress pattern.

However, sometimes, there may be a certain ambiguity. See, for example, in “sleeping
partner” (if considered a phrase, “partner who is sleeping”) and, if taken as a
compound, it would mean “partner who does not take an active role”. On the other
hand, some others are clearly compounds: sleeping pill (also written sleeping-pill).

The unity of compounds is shown by their tendency to be pronounced with unity stress
(stress on the 1st element) and written as one word or with a hyphen. Compare: bluebird
vs blue bird.
 Independently existing bases can form new lexemes. For example:

 Noun +Noun: chairman; textbook

 Adjective + Noun: Englishman; nobleman
 Verb + Noun: playboy; washing-machine
 Noun + Adjective: user-friendly; care-free

Bibliography

 Greenbaum, S. (1996). The Oxford English Grammar- CHAPTER 9