Morphology

What is morphology?
Morph = form or shape
ology = study of
The word “morphology” derives
from Greek.

One dog I run She is happy

Two dogs He runs She is happier
She is happiest

Morphology is the set of ______ describing how ______change

based on their use in a sentence or a phrase. It deals with the
________ and ______of the words in a language.
What is morphology?
Morph = form or shape
ology = study of
The word “morphology”
derives from Greek.

One dog I run She is happy

Two dogs He runs She is happier
She is happiest
rules
Morphology
words is the set of ______ describing how ______change
based on their use in a sentence or a phrase. Itform
structure deals with the
________ and ______of the words in a language.
 It helps you understand a
second language better or
more comprehensively.

Why is
It gives you a clear idea of the
morphology underlying mechanism of
word formation and how the

useful to a language works, assisting you

as you seek to master and
become fluent in a second
translation language.

professional? “Most translators have an intuitive

understanding of the morphemes of different
languages, but a good translator is one who
remains aware of how subtle differences in a
word formation can result in different
translations”.
Ramzjou, L. (2004) to Be a Good Translator, Translation Journal, Volume 8, No. 2
 WORDS

• Basic units of language

analysis.
• Can be classified according
to their parts of speech
• Words are composed of one
or more basic units called
morphemes

5
All words can be divided into two types:

CONTENT WORDS FUNCTION WORDS

HAVE A CLEAR DO NOT HAVE A CLEAR

LEXICAL MEANING LEXICAL MEANING.

NOUNS CONJUNCTIONS
VERBS DETERMINERS
ADJECTIVES PREPOSITIONS
ADVERBS PRONOUNS
What are morphemes?
A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that has
gramatical function or meaning

schooling soccer Separate the

school ing soccer words into
morphemes
meaningful turn
mean ing ful turn
feedback researchers
feed back re search er s
Types of morphemes

Free Bound

Can be used by themselves Cannot be used by themselves

Affixes
Content Functional
words words

Derivational Inflectional
Types of bound morphemes

Which type of bound

Which type of bound
morphemes modify the
morphemes are used to
word to indicate gramatical
create separate words?
properties?

DERIVATIONAL INFLECTIONAL
Types of bound morphemes
A new word is derived from
the base word.

DERIVATIONAL
Created new words may
belong to a different part of
speech.

meaningful kingdom
leader redo
highly reddish
Types of bound morphemes

Don’t change the meaning of the

word.

INFLECTIONAL Can change aspects such as

plurality or tense.

researchers fallen English has eight inflectional

morphemes.

falling sweetest
Inflectional morphemes
 Read the statements
and decide whether
they are true or false.
1. Morphemes are minimal linguistic signs in the
sense that they can't be divided into further
signs. TRUE
2. A word can't be a morpheme. FALSE
3. Bound morphemes are called affixes. TRUE
4. Content words include prepositions. FALSE
5. The number of morphemes and the number of
syllables in a word are the same. FALSE
6. Bound morphemes include two types: roots
and affixes. FALSE