MORPHOLOGY

How many morphemes can you find in

the following sentence & what are they?

Honestly: honest (free lexical) +ly (bound

derivational)
, I couldn’t: could (free lexical) + not (free
functional) bound inflectional)
Can+past+not

overcome the problems i had lately. They

were too hard for me
The outline:
▪ Morphology
▪ Morphemes
▪ Free and bound morphemes
▪ Lexical and functional morphemes
▪ Derivational and inflectional morphemes
▪ Morphological description
▪ Problems in morphological description
▪ Morphs and allomorphs
▪ Other languages
▪ Kanuri
▪ Ganda
▪ Ilocano
▪ Tagalog
 Morphology
▪ The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph-
meaning 'shape, form', and -ology which means 'the study
of something'.
▪ The term is used not only in linguistics but also in biology
as the scientific study of forms and structure of animals
and plants.
▪ Morphology in linguistics refers to the study of forms and
structure of words in a language.
▪ Morphology is the study of morphemes and their
arrangements in forming words.
 Morphemes
▪ The words like:
works work+s worker work+er worked working
Have two elements; one element is “work” and a number of other
elements such as “-s, -er, -ed, -ing”
▪ All those elements are described as morphemes.
▪ Morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical
function.
▪ Units of grammatical function include forms used to
indicate past tense or plural, as the example.
▪ So, how about the word “lecturers”? How many
morphemes are there?
 Free and bound morphemes
▪ Free morphemes refers to the morphemes that can stand
by themselves as single words.
▪ Example : open, work, tour
▪ Free morphemes can be identified as the set of separate English
word forms such as basic noun, adjectives, verbs.
▪ Bound morphemes are the forms that cannot normally
stand alone and are typically attached to another form.
▪ Example : re-. –ist, -ed, -un
▪ These forms are described as affixes (prefixes and suffixes).
▪ The basic word forms of morphemes that are used with bound morphemes
attached is called as stems.
▪ Example :

unhappiness darkened
un- happy -ness dark -en -ed
prefix stem suffix stem suffix suffix
(bound) (free) (bound) (free) (bound) (bound)

▪ Note : not all stem are free morphemes

free (e.g. teacher, dresses, unkind)

Stem
bound (e.g. receive, reduce, inept, unkempt)
 Lexical and functional morphemes
▪ Lexical morphemes are morphemes that carry the content
or meaning of the messages that we are conveying.
▪ Lexical morphemes are free morphemes that consist of nouns,
adjectives, and verbs.
▪ Regarded as the open class of word (new examples can be easily
added)
▪ Example : follow, type, look, yellow, act, pick, strange
▪ Functional morphemes are morphemes that do not carry
the content of a message, but rather help the grammar of
the sentence function.
▪ Functional morphemes are free morphemes that consist of
conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns.
▪ Example : and, in, the, them
▪ Regarded as the closed class of word (new examples almost never
added)
 Derivational and inflectional morphemes
▪ Derivational morphemes are the bound morphemes that used
to make new words or to make words of a different
grammatical category from the stem.
▪ These morphemes transform words into different parts of
speech.
▪ Examples :
▪ -ic : Noun 🡪 Adj : alcohol 🡪 alcoholic
▪ -ance : Verb 🡪 Noun : clear 🡪 clearance
▪ -ly : Adj 🡪 Adv : exact 🡪 exactly
▪ -ity : Adj 🡪 Noun : active 🡪 activity
▪ -able : Verb 🡪 Adj : read 🡪 readable
▪ -ify : Adj 🡪 verb : pure 🡪 purify
▪ -ize : Noun 🡪 verb : vocal 🡪 vocalize
▪ In all cases, the derived word means something different than
the root, and the word class may change with each derivation.
▪ Inflectional morphemes are morphemes that indicate
aspects of the grammatical function of a word.
▪ The inflectional morphemes are used to show:
▪ If a word is plural or singular
▪ If a word is past tense or not
▪ If a word a comparative or possessive form
▪ English has eight inflectional morphemes, they are:
▪ Noun + -’s, -s
▪ Verb + -s, -ing, -ed, -en
▪ Adjective + -er, -est
▪ Example :
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.
 Morphological description
▪ Suffix -er in English can be an inflectional morpheme as part
of an adjective (old 🡪 older) and also a derivational
morpheme as part of noun (teach 🡪 teacher).
▪ Whenever derivational and inflectional morphemes attached
to the same word, the derivational always comes first and
followed by inflectional morpheme.
▪ With all the terms of different types of morpheme, we can list
all the elements as in the example bellow:
“The parents’ happiness brightened the girl’s day”

the parent -s’ happy -ness bright -en -ed

functional lexical inflectional lexical derivational lexical derivational inflectional

the girl -’s day

functional lexical inflectional Lexical
▪ A useful way to remember all the different types of
morphemes:

lexical : girl, teach, use (open classes)

free
functional : and, the, in (close classes)

Morphemes

derivational : -ness, -ly, -able

bound
(affixes)
inflectional : -’s, -ed, -ing
 Morphs and allomorphs
▪ Morphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes.
▪ Example : cats consist of two morphs.
cat + -s
realizing a realizing an inflectional
lexical morpheme for plural
morpheme form.
(lexical morph) (grammatical morph)

▪ Allomorphs refer to the group of different morphs or all

versions of one morpheme.
▪ Example : The negative morpheme changes “n” the prefix
{in} to the consonant of the word it prefixes, such as
“illegal”, “impatient”, “irregular”, “inconsiderate”.
1. Identify the types of morphemes of the following words

One more inconsistency Dean

didn't need.
▪ Other examples of allomorphs:
▪ Plural forms in English
▪ Cat + plural 🡪 cats 🡪 -s
▪ Dish + plural 🡪 dishes 🡪 -es
▪ Ox + plural 🡪 oxen 🡪 -en
▪ Sheep + plural 🡪 sheep (zero morph)
▪ Past tense
▪ Walk + past tense 🡪 walked
▪ Go + past tense 🡪 went (irregular form)
 Other languages
▪ Kanuri

▪ Ganda
▪ Ilocano

▪ Tagalog
Exercise (True/False)
1. The word “determination” consists of two
morphemes.

2. “Meaningless” has a bound morpheme.

3. All affixes in English are bound
morphemes.
4. Functional morphemes are treated as
“open” class of words.
5. Suffix –er in “Jean is taller than me” is
categorized as derivational morpheme.
Exercise
6. Lexical and functional morphemes are
free morphemes.

7. “The old man has an umbrella” has three

functional morphemes.
8. The word “deceive” has a bound stem.
9. Suffix -‘s in “This is Abram’s car” is a
progressive inflectional morpheme.
10. A derivational morpheme never changes
the grammatical category of a word.
THANK YOU