Introduction to English

morphology
What is morphology
 Morphology is the study of the
structure of words.
 Morphology analyzes the internal
structure of words.
 Words are made up of morphemes.
Why is morphology important?
 The form of a word can give us
important information about its
function.
 If we learn to analyze the structure of
words we may understand the
meaning of new words.
 Morphology is very unpredictable.
Morpheme (I)
 A morpheme is the smallest
meaningful unit.
 The meaning that a morpheme gives
can be:
 Grammatical (for instance: the part of
speech, if the word is plural or singular, the
tense of a verb, etc.)
 Lexical (that is the ‘dictionary’ meaning’)
 Both grammatical and lexical
 An example

COWRITERS

lexical: together make marks one who X’s ---

on paper
grammatical: noun plural
--- verb
Morpheme (II)
 A word that contains more than one
morpheme is a morphologically
complex word
 One morpheme is the basic one,
the core of the form  root or stem
 The add-ons bound morphemes
are affixes
E.g. ‘rearranged’
‘teachers’
Type of morphemes
 Free Vs. Bound Morphemes

Free Bound
Can stand alone as separate Cannot occur on their own
words as separate words
Single morphemes Affixes
e.g. hunt, kill, the, play, -s in dogs
child, book. -ness in happiness
-ed in walked
 Free Morphemes
it’s divided into lexical and functional
morphemes.
Lexical morphemes
As content words: carry the
content of the message
Includes nouns, verbs,
adjective, adverbs:
children, love, beauty, play,
sing
Open class word
Functional morphemes
as function words
Include pronouns, articles,
conjunctions, prepositions:
as, the, on, from, and, in,
etc.
Close class words
Bound Morphemes (I)
Affixation
 Prefix: An affix that is attached to
the front of a base, e.g. re-play.
 Suffix: An affix that is attached to
the end of a base, e.g. kind-ness.
 Infix: An affix that occur within a
base, e.g. (in Indonesian) s-in-
ambung.
 Bound Morphemes (II)
It’s divided into derivational and
inflectional morphemes.
 Derivational  Inflectional
morphemes make morphemes
new words in a indicate aspects of
language- different grammatical
grammatical function of a word.
category from the
e.g. suffix –ed in
stem
walked indicate
e.g. suffix –ness in past tense
happiness
Derivation Vs. Inflection
 It changes the  It does not change
category and/or the either the
type of meaning of grammatical
the word to create a category or the type
new word. of meaning found in
the word.
e.g. suffix –ment in
government e.g. suffix –s in
books
English Inflectional Morphemes
Nouns
–s plural
–’s possessive
Verbs
–s third person singular present
–ed past tense
–en past participle
–ing progressive
Adjectives
–ercomparative
–est superlative
 examples of English Derivational
Morpheme
 -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
 -ship : Noun  Noun ; friend  friendship
 re- : Verb  Verb ; cover  recover
 in- : Adj  Adj ; definite 
indefinite
 Review

Morphemes

Free Bound

Lexical Functional Inflectional Derivational

Analyzing words
 The girl’s wildness shocked the teacher
The  functional
girl  lexical
-s  inflectional
Wild  lexical
-ness  derivational
Shock  lexical
-ed  inflectional
The  functional
Teach  lexical
-er  derivational
Analyze different types of
morphemes
The young boy played with his friends.
The  Functional
Young  Lexical
Boy  Lexical
Play 
Lexical
-ed 
Inflection
With 
Functional
His 
Functional
Friend 
Lexical
-s 
inflectional
Allomorphs
 Sometimes, because of historical or
phonological reasons, the same
morpheme can have different forms
(different realizations)
impossible, incredible, illegal,
irrelevant
 These different realizations are
called allomorphs.
The unpredictability of
morphology (I)
 Morphology, that is words, do not
always combine following a logical
rules

Consider the unpredictability of

morphology in the following slides
The unpredictability of
morphology (II)
 -ese
Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Portuguese, Taiwanese
 -an
African, Australian, American, Cuban, Jamaican, Mexican
 -ian
Argentinian, Brazilian, Canadian, Egyptian
 -ish
Spanish, Irish, British, Flemish, Polish, Scottish
 -i
Iraqi, Israeli, Kuwaiti, Pakistani
 -?
French, German, Greek, Dutch
 The unpredictability of
morphology (III)

ADJECTIVE NOUN
(relate to place X) (a citizen of place X)
• American • American
• Polish • Pole
• Scottish • Scot
• Spanish • Spaniard