Morphology

• Morphology is the branch of

linguistics that studies the structure of
words.
• In English and many other languages,
many words can be broken down into
parts. For example:
• unhappiness un-happi-ness
• horses horse-s
• walking walk-ing
 Morphology
• un - carries a negative meaning
• ness - expresses a state or quality
• s - expresses plurality
• ing - conveys a sense of duration
• A word like “yes”, however, has no
internal grammatical structure. We
can analyze the sounds, but none of
them has any meaning in isolation.
 Morphology
• The smallest unit which has a
meaning or grammatical function
that words can be broken down
into are known as morphemes.
• So to be clear: “un” is a
morpheme.
• “yes” is also a morpheme, but also
happens to be a word.
 Morphology
• There are several important
distinctions that must be made
when it comes to morphemes:
• (1) – Free vs. Bound
morphemes
• Free morphemes are
morphemes which can stand
alone. We have already seen the
 Morphology
• Bound morphemes: never exist as
words themselves, but are always
attached to some other morpheme.
We have already seen the example of
“un”.
• When we identify the number and
types of morphemes that a given word
consists of, we are looking at what is
referred to as the structure of a word.
 Morphology
• Every word has at least one free
morpheme, which is referred to as the
root, stem, or base.
• We can further divide bound
morphemes into three categories:
• prefix un-happy
• suffix happi-ness
• infix abso-blooming-lutely
• The general term for all three is affix.
 Morphology
• (2) – Derivational vs. Inflectional
morphemes
• Derivational morphemes create or derive
new words by changing the meaning or by
changing the word class of the word.
• For example:
• happy → unhappy
• Both words are adjectives, but the meaning
changes.
 Morphology
• quick → quickness
• The affix changes both meaning
and word class - adjective to a
noun.
• In English: Derivational
morphemes can be either prefixes
or suffixes.
 Morphology
• Inflectional morphemes don’t alter
the meaning or word class of a word;
instead they only refine and give extra
grammatical information about the
word’s already existing meaning.
• For example:
• Cat → cats
• walk → walking
 Morphology
• In English: Inflectional morphemes
are all suffixes (by chance, since
in other languages this is not true).
• There are only 8 inflectional
morphemes in English:
 Morphology
• -s 3rd person sg. present
• “He waits”
• -ed past tense
• “He waited”
• -ing progressive
• “He is waiting”
 Morphology
• -en past participle
• “I had eaten”
• -s plural
• “Both chairs are broken”
• -’s possessive
• “The chair’s leg is broken”
 Morphology
• -er comparative
• “He was faster”
• -estsuperlative
• “He was the fastest”
 Morphology
• Inflectional morphemes are required
by syntax. (that is, they indicate
syntactic or semantic relations
between different words in a
sentence).
• For example:
• Nim loves bananas.
• but
• They love bananas.
 Morphology
• Derivational morphemes are different in
that syntax does not require the presence
of derivational morphemes; they do,
however, indicate semantic relations
within a word (that is, they change the
meaning of the word).
• For example:
• kind → unkind
• He is unkind
• They are unkind
 Affixation
• Types of Word-Formation Processes
• One of the most productive ways to form
new words is through affixation, which is
forming new words by the combination of
bound affixes and free morphemes.
• There are three types of affixation:
• prefixation: where an affix is placed before
the base of the word
 Morphology
• suffixation: where an affix is placed
after the base of the word
• infixation: where an affix is placed
within a stem (abso-blooming-lutely)
• While English uses primarily
prefixation and suffixation, many other
languages use infixes.
 Morphology
• In Tagolog, a language of the
Philippines, for example, the infix ‘um’
is used for infinitive forms of verbs
(to _______)
• sulat ‘write’ sumulat ‘to write’
• bili ‘buy’ bumili ‘to buy’
• kuha ‘take’ kumuha ‘to take’
 Compounding
• A second word-formation process is known
as Compounding, which is forming new
words not from bound affixes but from two
or more independent words: the words can
be free morphemes, words derived by
affixation, or even words formed by
compounds themselves.
• e.g. girlfriend air-conditioner
• blackbird looking-glass
• textbook watchmaker
 Compounds
• Compound words have different
stress, as in the following examples:
• 1. The wool sweater gave the man
a red neck.
• 2. The redneck in the bar got drunk
and started yelling
 Morphology
• In compounds, the primary stress is
on the first word only, while individual
words in phrases have independent
primary stress.
• blackbird black bird
• makeup make up
 Reduplication
• A third word-formation process is known as
Reduplication, which is forming new words
either by doubling an entire free morpheme
(total reduplication) or part of a morpheme
(partial reduplication).
• English doesn’t use this, but other
languages make much more extensive use
of reduplication.
 Morphology
• In Indonesian, for example, total
reduplication is used to form plurals:
• rumah ‘house’
• rumahrumah ‘houses’
• ibu ‘mother’
• ibuibu ‘mothers’
• lalat ‘fly’
• lalatlalat ‘flies’
 Blending
• A fourth type of word-formation
process is known as Blending,
where two words merge into each
other, such as:
• brunch from breakfast and lunch
• smog from smoke and fog
 Clipping
• This means literally clipping the word,
which means «cutting» the word to
make it shorter. This normally makes
the word more informal and/or
appealing. Some examples are:
• advertisement = ad
• hamburger = burger
• demonstration = demo
 Acronyms
• Acronyms, which are a form of
abbreviation, are words formed by using
only the first letter(s) of the words. By
creating an acronym, we are reducing the
meaning of a whole phrase o sentence to
a single word. Let’s see some popular
examples:
• laughing out loud = LOL
• United Nations = UN
• IMF (Iternational Monetary Fund)
 Creative re-spelling
• This involves spelling a word differently
in order to make it more practical,
attractive, or to fulfil some particular
aim, usually commercial. For example:
• because –> bcoz
• light –> lite
• forever –> 4eva
• Combat –> Kombat
 Loan words
• In linguistics, a loan happens when we
take a word directly from a foreign
language. Some examples of loan words
in English are:
• solo
• pizza
• tapas
• negro
• carpe diem
 Loan words
• ballet from (French) to (English)
• patio from (Spanish) to (English)
• hamster from (German) to (English)
• cookie from (Dutch) to (English)
• yogurt from (Turkish) to (English)
 Word Coinage
• Coinage is a type of word-formation
process in which a new word is created,
either by inventing a completely new word
or by adapting an existing word in a new
way. This can happen because of advances
in technology, movies, literature, music, and
popular culture. For instance:
• google
• teflon
• aspirin
 Bootylicious (adjective)
• Sexually attractive
Bootylicious. / (ˌbuːtɪˈlɪʃəs) / adjective.
slang sexually attractive, esp with
curvaceous buttocks.
• Cambridge University Press
• Collins University
• Oxford University
• Merriam-Webster
• Urban Dictionary
 Eponyms
• This is a type of coinage where the word is derived
from the names of people or places. Eponyms are
usually written in lowercase letters, but when they
are used as proper nouns, they must be written
in uppercase letters. Like:
• jeans
• Here, 'jeans' comes from the Italian city
of Genoa where this type of cloth was first made
• parkinson
• Here, The condition is named after James
Parkinson who described the shaking palsy.
 Back-formation

• In linguistics, back-formation is the

process of forming a new word
(a neologism is the process of forming
a new word (a neologism) by removing
actual or supposed affixes from
another word. Put simply, a back-
formation is a shortened word (such
as edit) created from a longer word
(editor). Verb: back-form (which is itself
a back-formation). Also called back-