MORPHOLOGY

Group 5

Tran Duy Khiem

Cung Hoang Thanh

Tran Quynh Anh

Hoang Nguyen Thuy Duong

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Morphology:
What

is morphology?
What is difference among dog, dogs and dog catcher?
They are closely related.
Morphology is a field of linguistics that studies the
internal structure of words.

1.2 Morpheme:
A morpheme is the minimal unit of meaning or
grammatical function.
Prefix: impossible, irresponsible, illegal,
Suffix: national, devastation, teacher,
Flexion: talks, talker, talked,

1.3 DISTINGUISHING MORPHEME

FROM WORD
Words are made up of morphemes. In other

words, morphemes are the elements of words.

A word may consist of one morpheme or many.

Ex:
Boy, sister, money: 1 morpheme.
Boyish, brotherhood, ability: 2 morphemes.
Nationality, Fashionably: 3 morphemes.
Undesirability: 4 morphemes.

2. CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEME:

2. CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEME:

2.1 By form:
Free

morpheme: A free morpheme is a morpheme which

can stand by themselves with meaning. Ex: Boy, girl, doctor, faith,
house, fold, face, hygiene

+ Lexical morphemes: main words: ordinary nouns,

verbs, adverbs, adjectives, which carry the content of messages
we convey. Ex: gift, fun, joy, love, hit, kill, laugh, here, there, fast, sad,.
+ Functional morphemes: functional words:
conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns. Ex: and, but, yet,
whether, on, at, in, a, an, the, he, she, that, this.
Bound

morpheme: A bound morpheme is a morpheme

which cannot normally stand alone but have to be attached to
other morphemes to form a word. Ex: regain, antivirus, dictionary,
played, audi-ence, careless-ly.

2.2 BY MEANING:

Bases/Roots:
A base morpheme is the part of a word that has the
principal meaning. It has its own meaning (lexical
meaning)
Ex: worker, singer, intervene.
Base can be subdivided into:
+Free base: the base is a free morpheme. Ex:
lovely,
powerful, meaning, teaching
+Bound base: the base is a bound morpheme. Ex: sui-cide,
alacrity, ambiguous

NOTE:
Bases and Stems: A base is a morpheme with principal

meaning while a stem is the existing word before we add an

affix.
Ex: Worker: work is the base and also the stem.
Workers: work is the base, but worker is the stem.
Normal: norm is the base and also stem.
Normalize: norm is the base; normal is the stem.

Affixes: An affix is a bound morpheme that occurs before

or within or after a base
Affixes can be subdivided into:

By position:
Prefixes are bound morphemes added before the

base.
Ex: antisocial, archbishop, interfere, extraordinary
Infixes are bound morphemes that have been
inserted within a word. In English, there are rare
and are most commonly replacements, not additions.
They occur in irregular noun plurals or past tense or
past participle.
Ex: teeth, sang, drank, geese
Suffixes are bound morphemes that occur after a
base.
Ex: singer, facing, normal-ize,

By function:
Derivational: affixes added to a base or a stem to
form a new word.
Ex: govern (v) government (n)
false (adj) falsify (v)
meaning (n) meaningless (adj)
respect (v) disrespect (v)
Inflectional: affixes added to a stem to show
grammatical forms of words (grammatical
function)
Ex: boys, loved, Johns, bigger, biggest

 NOTE:

There are only 8 inflectional morphemes:

Noun: + Plural {-s} Ex: joys, books.

+ Possessive {-s} Ex: Toms house
Verb: + Simple present tense, 3rd person {-s} Ex: he works
+ Simple past {-ed} Ex: I played
+ Present participle {-ing} Ex: singing
+ Past participle {-ed} Ex: talked
Adjective/adverb:
+ Comparative {-er} Ex: taller, cooler, slower
+ Superlative {-est} Ex: biggest, funniest,.

3. MORPHOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION

His

fore-

-tell-

(Free Base)

(Deriv-Prefix)

my
(Free Base)

future
(Free Base)

make
(Free Base)

-s
(Infl Suffix)

nerv (nerve)
(Free Base)

(Free base)

me
(Free Base)

-ous.
(Deriv-Suffix)

-ing
(Infl-Suffix)