MORPHEME

Leny Saili Rahmah, S.Pd., M.Hum

Morphosyntax
• The smallest abstract meaningful unit of a language that does convey some kind of
information and meaning

• Words may consist of one or several morphemes

• Words may consist of one or several morphemes
 BASIC TYPES OF MORPHEMES:

Free morpheme
Bound morpheme
 FREE MORPHEME
• Free morphemes or also called root (root word) is a morpheme that is able Free morphemes
can stand alone to rise on its own and already has a detailed meaning without another
morpheme.

example : pronoun ; she, they, this, those, that, whose

conjunction ; and, or, if, since, after
interjection ; waow, oops, auch
 BOUND MORPHEME

• Bound morpheme is morphemes that can not stand alone

• There are two kinds of bound morpheme:
inflectional morpheme
Derivational morpheme
a. Inflectional morpheme, this morphemes do not change the meaning,
Affixes are those which carry grammatical information

example : walk + ed = walked, book + s = books

b. Derivational morpheme, this morphemes changes of meaning, Affixes that
create new words.

for example from posstive to negative / opposite of the morpheme that is pasted, forms a new
term.
example : from noun to adjactive, from adjactive to noun, from verb to noun, from verb to
adjactive
in + correct = incorrect
ir + regular = irragular
un + happy + ness = unhappiness
 AFFIX
• An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word
 AFIXES
• Prefix
• Suffix
• Infix
• Circumfix
 PREFIX
• Prefix is add prefixes before the base or stem of a word.

Example Prefix

Monorail, monolingual Mono- means ‘one’

Multipurpose, multicultural Multi- means ‘many’

Post-war, postgraduate Post- means ‘after’

Unusual, undemocratic Un-means ‘not’ or ‘opposite to’

 SUFFIX
• suffix is add suffixes after the base or stem of a word. The main purpose of a suffix is to
show what class of word.

Example suffixes

Employer, actor -er and –or are used to form nouns to describe
people who do things
Widen, simplify -en and –ify are used to form verbs

Reasonable, unprofitable -able is used to form verbs

Unhappily, naturally -ly is a common suffix used to form adverbs

 INFIX
• Infix is bound morphemes that have been inserted within a word

Example Infix

Feet Foot + s

Choose Chose (past form)

nowadays a
 CIRCUMFIX
• Circumfixes attach both before and after the root
Example circumfix

Unhappiness Un- -ness