Words vs sentences

Meaningful building-blocks of language

highest

Sentence (consists of one or more clauses)

Clause (consists of one or more phrases)
Phrase (consists of one or more words)
Word (consists of one or more morphemes)

lowest

Morpheme

Simple vs complex words

elephant
crime

elephants

whisper
vegetable
life

Whats the difference?

whispers
vegetables

morpheme

crimes

lives

morphemes

Simple vs complex words

cont.
elephant
crime

vegetable

whispers
vegetables

life

morpheme

MONOMORPHEMIC

crimes

whisper

Simple words
(one morpheme
ONLY!)

elephants

Complex
words
morpheme +
morpheme(s)
POLYMORPHEMIC

lives

morphemes

What about the list below?

plain
part

carel
ess
secur
e

care

willing

fortunat
e

predict
able

Simple or complex?

Based on previous examples:

How to define a morpheme?
Take into account two main characteristics :
a) a morpheme must be identifiable from one word to
another
b) contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole
word
and also, some other ones:
c) it cannot be divided into further units
d) it can vary in length (from one single letter to a whole
word)
e) morphemes are recyclable units. One of the most
important properties of the morpheme is that it can be
used again and again to form many words.

Thus, a morpheme can be defined as the

smallest meaningful morphological unit of a
language that cannot be further divided or

Some examples:

c
a
r
e

helpfulne
ss

carel
ess

helpf
ul

carelessn
ess

h
e
l
p

tr
u
st

trustwort
hy

untrustworthy

How many morphemes in the words above?

Morphe
mes

Bound

Free

How to distinguish the different morphemes in a

word?
helpfulness

carelessness
untrustworthy

In how many morphemes can we break down the

words above?
Remember the distinction between words,
morphemes and lexical items?

The most basic distinction is bound vs free

morpheme
Bound morpheme is a morpheme that does not
have a meaning on its own.
Free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand on
its own and has a full/ complete meaning.
In writing we can divide morphemes by hyphens
as below:
Help-ful-ness

care-less-ness
un-trust-worthy

The easiest way for non-native speakers of English

si to check the dictionary and see which

Some more examples

Help
Helper
Helpful

What about the ones below???

a. read-able

b. leg-ible

hear-ing

audi-ence

en-large

magn-ify

Helpfulness

perform-ance

rend-ition

Helplessnes

white-ness

clar-ity

dark-en

obfusc-ate

seek-er

applic-ant

Helpless

ajority of the cases, in English words there is one free morpheme BUT no
noted from column b! That is why morphemes in b are sometimes categ
Combining forms

cra
n
stra
w

ber
ry

bla
ck

blu
e
The morphemes above: bound or
free?

Types of morphemes

morphemes are equally central to the formation of a word.

of two types: roots and affixes.
the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it. It is th
t must always be present.
ord has at least one root and they are at the centre of word derivational processe
rry the basic meaning from which the rest of the sense of the word can be derive
mes such as chair, green, ballet, father, cardigan, America, Mississippi are
nd they all happen to be free forms, i.e. independent words.
ther hand, there are roots like seg in segment, gen in genetics, brev in brevity, o
berry which cannot stand alone as words. They are called bound root morphem
d bases, as distinct from free root morphemes or free bases.
bound roots found in English today are of classical origin, some of them are of
ic origin.
Consider: permit, commit, submit OR receive, perceive, conceive.

Morphe
mes
Bound
(Affixes)

Free
(Roots)

must be noted that although roots are usually free it is not always the ca

Consider the ones below:

teacher, clipper, toaster, faster,
stronger, kinder - er
kindly, decently, firmly, strongly,
vehemently, slowly ly
honorable, predictable, washable,
readable, doable able
horrible, responsible, visible, discernible
ible
wonderful, spiteful, dreadful, hateful,
mouthful ful
hopeless, thoughtless, fearless,

Consider OTHER ones below:

defrost, dethrone, dehydration- de
disagree, disadvantage, dishonest - dis
transfer, translate, transcontinental trans
predict, prepare, preheat - pre
postwar, postscript, postdate
malcontent, maladjusted, malnutrition
substitute, subtraction, subway
Affixes at the begining of a morpheme
are called
PREFFIXES

Morphemes and their allomorphs

Different pronunciations of one morpheme is called allomorphy
and the variants of that
morpheme are called allomorphs.
Allomorph are subject to:

a) Phonological
conditioning,

b) Morphological (also known as

grammatical) conditioning, and
c) lexical conditioning

c) Lexical
conditioning

Phonological conditioning

The choice of allomorph for a particular morpheme is determined by the local

phonological context i.e. the choice of allomorph is predictable on the basis of
he pronunciation
For example:

English plural
Stacks, cats, hats - s
Birds, dogs, frogs z
Bushes, boxes, nurses iz

indefinite article
an - before vowels
a - before consonants

Allomorphs of the regular past tense morpheme

id/ after d,t : hated
t/ after all other voiceless sounds : picked
d/ after all other voiced sounds : wedged
im/ before bilabial sounds : impossible
il/ before consonant /l/ : illegal
in/ elsewhere : independent

Morphological conditioning

e choice of allomorph is determined by particular morphemes, not just by their

onunciation or phonological context i.e. it may be dependent on the presence of
particular grammatical element.

ESENT
alk
ss
asp
eep
weep
ake
ke

PAST
walked
kissed
grasped
wept
swept
shook
took

ALLOMORPH
[-t]
[-t]
[-t]
[-t]
[-t]
[- k]
[- k]

Lexical conditioning
The choice of allomorph is unpredictable, thus memorized on a word-by-word
basis.
E.g. the plurals ox-oxen, Sheep- sheep, child - children are lexically
conditioned because they cannot
be predicted from general knowledge about English morphology or
phonology.

Exercises (homework)
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 5