TOPIC: MORPHOLOGY

• This is the branch of linguistics which analyses

the structure of a word. For example, the
word ‘ndimakukonda’ in Chichewa consists of
a number of elements which, in English, turn
up as separate ‘words’. A very rough
correspondence can be presented in a
following way: -
• Ndi – ma- ku –
konda
• I tense (present habitual) you
Love
(I love you)

• This exercise of investigating forms in

language is what is called morphology.
 Morpheme

• A morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or

grammatical function. For example, we would
say that the word ‘reopened’ in the sentence
“The police reopened the investigation”
consists of three morphemes. One minimal
unit of meaning is ‘open’, another minimal
unit of meaning is ‘-re’ (meaning ‘again’), and
a minimal unit of grammatical function is ‘-ed’
(indicating past tense).
• The word ‘tourists’ also contains three
morphemes. There is one minimal unit of
meaning, ‘tour’, another minimal unit of
meaning ‘-ist’ (meaning person who does
something), and a minimal unit of
grammatical function ‘-s’ (indicating plural).
Morphology then, involves that analysis of the
structure of a word by looking at the different
morphemes it is made of.
 Types of Morphemes
• Morphemes are divided into two types: Free
and Bound morphemes.
 a) Free Morphemes
• These are morpheme which can stand by
themselves as single words. For example,
open and tour are free morphemes.
• What are the other free morphemes you can
identify?
 b) Bound Morphemes
• these are morphemes which cannot normally
stand alone as single words, but are typically
attached to other forms
• Examples include re-, -ist, -ed, -s.
• The free morphemes can generally be
considered as the set of separate English
word–forms. When free morphemes are used
with bound morphemes, the basic word-form
involved is technically known as the stem.
• i)Undressed
un -dress- -ed
Prefix Stem Suffix
(bound) (free) (bound)
 Categories of free morphemes
• Morphemes can further be divided into lexical
and functional morphemes.
 a) Lexical Morphemes
• These include the set of ordinary nouns,
adjectives and verbs which we think of as the
words which carry the ‘content’ of messages
we convey.
• For example: boy, man, house, yellow, true,
follow, break.
 b) Functional Morphemes
• this set consists largely of the functional
words in a language such as conjunctions,
prepositions, articles and pronouns.

• For example; and, but, when, because, on,

near, above, in, the, that, it etc.
• We easily add new lexical morphemes to a
language, so they are treated as an ‘open’
class of words.

• The functional morphemes are described as a

‘closed’ class of words because we almost
never add new functional morphemes to the
language.