Morphemes

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful language units that

constitute words or parts of words

Ex: - Happyly -> Happy + ly

- Importion -> Import + ion
Morph

A morph is the phonetic (or orthographic) form of a segment of a

word-form which represents a particular morpheme
Ex: - Dogs -> Dog +s ( plural)
- played -> Play + ed ( preterite)
Allmorphs:
 An allomorph is a phonetically, lexically or grammatically
conditioned member of a set of morphs representing a
particular morpheme.
Ex: Watches, boxes, buses -> Ending “ s” -> /iz/
Tables, pants, pens ,……-> Ending “s” -> /s/
Bags, bones, boys,….-> Ending “s” -> / z/
Roots
- A root is the morpheme that conveys the basic meaning of a word-form
and always presents in a lexeme.
- - A root remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes removed
- - Roots are very numerous and most of them in English are free but some
are bound.
- Ex:
Unfriend -> friend is root
Boy, girl, house, snow,………
II. Classification of Morphemes

• Lexical- Grammatical Morphemes

* Inflectional and Derivational
* Free – Bound Morphemes