Master of Linguistics

Semester 1
Morphology

Chapter 3 Types of Morphemes

Reference : Francis Katamba - Morphology (1993)

 3.1 ROOTS, AFFIXES, STEMS AND BASES
3.1.1 Roots
• A root is the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else
attached to it.

 Free Morphemes
Many words contain a root standing on its own. Roots which are capable of standing
independently are called free morphemes, for example:

 The free morphemes in [3.1] are examples of lexical morphemes.

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• Other type of free morphemes are function words.

 They convey grammatical information or logical relations in a

sentence.
Examples:

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 Bound Morphemes
Bound morphemes have no linguistic meaning unless they
are connected to a root or base word, or in some cases,
another bound morpheme. Prefixes and suffixes are two
types of bound morphemes. Depending on how they
modify a root word, bound morphemes can be grouped
into two categories: inflectional morphemes and
derivational morphemes (Go back to the book for more
details pp. 47-52). 4
 Inflectional Morphemes
This type of morpheme alters the grammatical function of a word, whether it
is the verb tense, number, mood etc. The eight inflectional morphemes are
organized by which part of speech they modify:
Modify a Noun: -s (or -es), -'s (or s')
Modify an Adjective: -er, -est
Modify a Verb: -ed, -ing, -en
These morphemes are suffixes that change a word’s condition, but not its
part of speech. When they modify a base word, the rest of the sentence may
need to change for proper subject-verb agreement.

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• Some examples of these changes are:
 girl to girls
 large to larger
 smart to smartest
 walk to walking
 eat to eaten
• Derivational Morphemes
Derivational morphemes often change the part of speech of a word. Thus,
the verb read becomes the noun reader when we add the derivational
morpheme -er. It is simply that read is a verb, but reader is a noun.
However, some derivational morphemes do not change the grammatical
category of a word. Happy → unhappy; send → resend 6
 The derivational suffixes -hood and -dom, as in neighborhood and
kingdom, are also the typical examples of  derivational morphemes that
do not change the grammatical category of a word to which they
are attached.

3.1.2 Affixes
 An affix is a morpheme which only occurs when attached to some other
morpheme or morphemes. (Obviously, by definition affixes are
bound morphemes.)
 No word may contain only an affix standing on its own, like *-s or *-ed or
*-a/ or even a number of affixes strung together like *-al-s.
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• Prefixes
A prefix is an affix attached before a root or stem or base like re-, un-
and in-:
 re+make un+kind in+decent
 Re+read un+tidy in+accurate
• Suffixes
A suffix is an affix attached after a root (or stem or base) like-ly, -er, -ist,
-s, -ing and -ed.
 Kind+ly wait+er book+s walk+ed
 Quick+ly play+er mat+s jump+ed

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• Infixes
• An infix is an affix inserted into the root itself.
• The only infix that occurs in English morphology is /-n-/ which is inserted
before the last consonant of the root in a few words of Latin origin, on what
appears to be an arbitrary basis.
• The root -cub- meaning 'lie in, on or upon' occurs without [m] before the [b]
in some words containing that root (incubate, concubine).
• But [m] is infixed before that same root in some other words
(incumbent /ɪnˈkəmbənt/ /ɪnˈkʌmbənt/, succumb /səˈkəm/ /səˈkʌm/).
• In today’s English, infixation occurs only in informal settings where words
that carry expletive connotations are inserted in the middle of other words
(e.g.: ?New-bloody-York). 9
3.1.3 Roots, Stems and Bases
• Stems
The stem is that part of a word that is in existence before any inflectional
affixes (i.e. those affixes whose presence is required by the syntax such as
markers of singular and plural number in nouns, tense in verbs etc.) have
been added.
Examples:

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• Base
A base is any unit whatsoever to which affixes of any kind can be added.
Examples:
- Work, worker;
- Instruct, instruction, instructor, and reinstruct

 All roots are bases but not all bases are roots!

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3.3 MULTIPLE AFFIXATION
• By attaching several affixes to the root and/or base, i.e. we can have
multiple affixation.
• This process can take place in a number of rounds, with the output
created by one round of affixation serving as the input to a later round.
 Words may have multiple affixes either with different suffixes appearing in

a sequence as in: Root -dict (V): base -dict (V) → base Contra-dict (verb) →

base contradict-ory → (Adj) → contradictori- ness (Noun).

• Or,

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with the same prefix recurring as in:
a. The latest re-re-re-make of Beau Geste.
b. The great-great-great-great grandson of the last Tsar of
Russia.
• When several prefixes or suffixes occur in a word, their place in
the sequence is normally rigidly fixed.
• The morphemes in de-nation-al-ise must appear in that order.
Rearranging the affixes produces ill-formed strings like *ise-
nation-de-al- or *al-ise-nation-de. (unlike
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3.4 COMPOUNDING

A compound word contains at least two bases which are both words, or at
any rate, root morphemes.

 Analyse the following compounds into their constituent elements: teapot,

week-end, hairdresser, kind-hearted.

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3.5 CONVERSION
A process in which words are formed without modifying the form of the
input words that serve as the bases.

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3.6 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

Morphological typology is a way of classifying/grouping the languages of

the world according to their common morphological structures. The field
organizes languages on the basis of how those languages form words by
combining morphemes.
• The study of the significant shared structural properties which languages
have in common is the domain of language universals.
• Many of the universals are abstract principles of Universal Grammar.
• Differences between the structural patterns found in different languages
appear to occur within a fairly restricted range.

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 On the basis of typical patterns of word-formation
linguists recognise five broad morphological types:

(i) analytic (also called isolating) languages;

(ii) agglutinating (also called agglutinative) languages;
(iii) inflecting (also called synthetic or fusional) languages;
(iv) incorporating (also called polysynthetic) languages)
(v) infixing languages.

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 Analytic (Isolating) Languages

 Languages where each morpheme tends to occur as a word in

isolation (Chinese).
 Analytic language: any language that uses specific grammatical words,
or particles, rather than inflection to express syntactic relations within
sentences. 
Examples from Chines:

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 Agglutinating Languages

This kind of languages tends to be a more or less one-to-one matching of

morphemes with morphs: (Turkish)

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 INFLECTING LANGUAGES

 Fusional/synthetic languages:
- Languages (like Latin and Greek) where words usually consist of several
morphemes.
- There is seldom a one-to-one matching of morphemes with morphs.
- Instead, a single morph is likely to represent several morphemes
simultaneously.

By the table(s)
Of the table(s)
From the table(s)

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 INCORPORATING AND INFIXING LANGUAGES
◎ Incorporating (polysynthetic) languages:
Languages (like Eskimo) with long words that tend to have very extensive
agglutination and inflection.
○ Illuminiippuq (from Greenlandic Eskimo )
○ illu- mi- niip- puq
○ house his be-in 3rd person-singular-indicative
○ 'he is in his (own) house'
◎ Incorporating languages complicate the distinction between syntax and
morphology.

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 Infixing languages

Much of semitic inflection involves infixing vowels in a root that consists

entirely of consonants.
In Egyptian Arabic the three-consonant root ktb (write) provides the
skeleton which is fleshed out with a variety of vowels :
katab 'he wrote'
kitab 'book'
katib 'writer'
Correct:↓
Katab 'he wrote'
Kitaab 'book'
Kaatib 'writer'

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◎ English is predominantly isolating: Most of its words contain one
morpheme.
○ I like pizza.
◎ It is partly agglutinating: Many English words contain more that one morph
where each one represents a distinct mopheme.
○ Speak-s.
◎ It is occasionally synthetic: some of its morphs represent more than one
morpheme.
○ me (1st person, singular, accusative pronoun)
◎ English can also be an infixing language: as in incumbent, succumb, and
decumbent, where -m- is infixed in the root –cub
◎ All that the classification attempts to do is reflect the dominant tendencies
found in a particular language.

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Good Luck!

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