Morphology

Morphology

1. Definition

   • The study of the internal structure of words

2. Fundamental concept

   • Morpheme
     • It is the smallest meaningful unit in language
       • It cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful bits just individual sounds or sound sequences.
     • Types
       • Free Morphemes
         • They can stand alone as individual words
         • Types
           • Lexical Morphemes
             • They are free morphemes that carry the content and the meaning of the messages people say
             • This category is considered an open class of words.
             • They include: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and aderbs
           • Functional Morphemes
             • They are free morphemes that serve a more grammatical role, connecting word together within and across sentences
             • They include categories such as prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns
             • This category is also referred to as a closed class of words
         • Examples: cat, and vital
       • Bound Morphemes
         • They cannot stand alone as individual words
         • Bound Morphemes are affixes: prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes
         • Types
           • Derivational Morphemes
             • They are the ones that add a root to form a new word that differs in its part-of-speech classification.
             • They include these affixes: pre-, un-, agentive -er, and -ful
           • Inflectional Morphemes
             • They are Bound Morphemes that serve a grammatical role in language
             • They do not create new words in a language or change the lexical category of word in a language
             • They include plural -s, possessive -'s, 3rd person singular -s, -ed (past tense), -ing (present participle), -en (past participle), -er (comparative), -est (superlative)
   • Allomorpheme
     • It is mental, abstract representation of an element of meaning in language
     • For example
       • The plural morpheme in English {Pl.} is realized through many allomorphs
         • the allomorphs for the morpheme {Pl.} are [-s], [-z], and [əz]
           • These are regular allomorphs
         • The other allomorphs for the morpheme {Pl.} are [-ən], [-rən], and Ø
           • These are irregular allomorphs