‫الجامعة السعودية االلكترونية‬

‫الجامعة السعودية االلكترونية‬

‫‪26/12/2021‬‬
DENG 300 Language Awareness
Chapter 6: Word Formation and Structure (Morphology)
Content

• Morphology.

• Free and Bound Morpheme.

• Lexical and Functional Morphemes.

• Inflectional and Derivational Affixes.

• Morphological Description.

• Morphos and Allomorphs.

• Examples from other Languages.

Morphology

• Morphology is the linguistic subfield that is concerned with word formation and
the internal makeup of words.

• Scholars interested in morphology study words elements to determine their

lexical and functional categories.

• Languages use different morphological systems to construct words.

English morphological system is (mainly) analytic
Kiswahili morphological system is Agglutinating
Morphology

English has a straightforward morphological system, with each word serving a function.

Kiswahili has a complex system with a couple of affixes combined in a single word.

I will love you (English)

S Fut V 2sp.obj

Ni-ta-ku-panda (Kiswahili)
I will love you
‘I will love you’
Morphemes

A morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.”

:The word ”love” is an element that can take several morphemes

love-s present tense

love-(e)d past tense
love-(e)r subject
love-ing noun
Free and Bound Morphemes
• Free Morpheme is a morpheme that can stand on its own as a word.

• Bound Morpheme cannot stand alone and needs to be fused into “another form.”

Affixes including prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes.

Stems including verbs, adjectives, and nouns are free morphemes.

Un- imagine -able

Prefix stem suffix
bound free bound
Lexical and Functional Morphemes

• Free morpheme has two categories known as lexical and functional.

I. Lexical morpheme is a content word such as adjectives and adverbs that carry meaning.
New members can be added to the lexical morpheme group, known as “an open class of
words.”

II. Functional morpheme is a functional word such as articles and pronouns. No new
members can be added, known as “a closed class of word.”

girl, house, cool and, but, when

Lexical morpheme functional morpheme
Derivational and Inflectional Morpheme

• Derivational morpheme is a bound morpheme used to “make new words or

to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem.”

• Inflectional morpheme is another type of bound morpheme used to

“indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word.”

help-ful play-ed
Care-less play-s
(Derivational) (Inflectional)
Derivational and Inflectional Morpheme

• Prefixes and suffixes are derivational morphemes.

re-, pre-, mis- –ful, -ish, -able, -ly,

(prefixes) (suffixes)
replay foolish

• The tense and possessive markers are inflectional morphemes.

-es, -ed, -ing -s
(tense markers) (possessive marker)
talked Ali’s new book
Morphological Description

• Derivational and inflectional morphemes can occur within the same word.

• Derivational morphemes tend to be closer to the stem than inflectional morphemes.

teach-er-s adjust-ment-s
Morphs and Allomorphs

• Morphs are “the actual forms used to realize morphemes.”

• Allomorphs are the various variants of a single morph.

Cats /kæts/
Plays /plez/
Peaches /pitʃəz/

/s/ /z/ /əz/ are allomorphs of the morph –s “plural marker”

Other Languages

Kanuri Language (Nigeria)

Kanuri Example Adopted from Yale (2014)

Other Languages

Ganda (Uganda)

Ganda Example Adopted from Yale (2014)

Other Languages
Ilocano (the Philippines)

Ilocano Example Adopted from Yale (2014)

Other Languages
Tagalog (the Philippines)

Tagalog Example Adopted from Yale (2014)

References

• Yule, G. (2014). The study of language (5th ed.). Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.
Thank You