Morpheme
Productivity
one morpheme: taste
two morphemes: taste+ful
three morphemes: dis+taste+ful
four morphemes: dis+taste+ful+ly
MORPHOLOGY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Presented by: Willet T. Sunga-Perez
Exercise
Each of the following sentences contains an error made by a non-native
speaker of English. In each, identify and correct the incorrect word.
• a. I am very relax here.
• b. I am very boring with this game.
• c. I am very satisfactory with my life.
• d. Some flowers are very attracting to some insects.
• e. Many people have very strong believes.
• f. My culture is very difference from yours.
• g. His grades proof that he is a hard worker.
• h. The T-shirt that China drawing.
Morphology
• It is the branch of linguistics that deals with the
structure and forms of words in a language.
Categories of Words
• Content Words
• Function Words
Content Word Function Word
The nouns, verbs, A word that does not have
adjectives, and adverbs clear lexical meaning but
that constitute the major has a grammatical function.
part of the vocabulary. Function words include:
Content words are conjunctions, prepositions,
referred to as OPEN articles, auxiliaries,
CLASS words because complementizers, and
we can add new words pronouns.
to these classes. Function words are
referred to as CLOSED
CLASS words because we
can not add new words to
these classes.
Exercise
Divide each of the following words into their
smallest meaningful parts:
• Landholder
• smoke-jumper
• demagnetizability
Morpheme
•Smallest unit of language that carries information
about meaning or function.
e.g. build; build-er; house; hous-es.
•The smallest meaningful constituent of words
that can be identified.
e.g. break-ing, hope-less, re-write, ear-plug-s,
Morpheme
•A meaningful linguistic unit, minimal, unable to be
further divided or broken into smaller meaningful
parts.
e.g. readable = read+able unplayful = un+play+ful
• The smallest part of a word with independent
meaning.
Types of Morphemes
Types of Morphemes
A) Free morphemes: Morphemes that can
occur as independent words.
e.g. careless, lesser, lesson probable
They are of two types:
1. Lexical Morpheme: Content words or open
class words
2. Function Morpheme: Function words or closed
class words
Exercise
Identify the free morphemes in the following
words:
• kissed
• freedom
• stronger
• follow
• awe
• goodness
• talkative
• teacher
• actor
Types of Morphemes
B) Bound morphemes: Morphemes that
cannot stand alone. They are dependent and
must be attached to other morphemes. They
can be further classified according to:
1) where they attach
2) what function they perform
Types of Morphemes
1) where they attach
Prefixation: occur at the beginning of a word
Un-, pre-, dis-
in+ability dis+ability un+able
Suffixation: occur at the end of a word
-ly, -er, -s, -es
judg+ment brief+ly clock+wise
Infix: occurs in the middle of a word
Circumfix: occurs both initially and finally,
Special – especially
Types of Morphemes
2) what function they perform
Derivational (change the part of speech and
attach to a root)
Inflectional (modify the grammatical form and
attach to a stem)
Root and Stem
•Root: Non-affix lexical content morpheme that
cannot be analyzed into smaller parts
• Common to set of derived or inflected
forms, when all affixes are removed
• Cannot be analyzed into smaller parts.
e.g. system, clean, boy, Chomsky
• Carries the principle portion of meaning.
e.g. Disestablish , Establishment,
Establishments
Root and Stem
• Root, Stem, or base: The free morpheme to
which an affix is attached.
• Stem (Base): A stem or base is the root or roots
of a word, together with any of derivational
affixes, to which inflectional affixes are added.
• tie and untie both are stem
• Inflectional –s may be added to the stem
to form ties and unties
English Word Formation
1.Affixation 7. Blending.
2.Conversion 8. Inventions
3.Compounding 9. Borrowing
4.Reduplication 10. Onomatopoeia/
5.Clipping Echoism
6.Acronyms 11. Backformation
12. Eponymy
English Word Formation
1) Affixation
a: Use of Prefixes
Negative: im+possible impossible
Number: bi+lingual bilingual
Time /order: re+examine re-examine
Location: inter+class interclass
Degree/size: mini+bus minibus
Attitude: anti+social antisocial
Class Changing en+able enable
English Word Formation
b: Use of Suffixes
a) Class maintaining
boy-hood boyhood
b) Class changing
Noun to Adjective: india-ian indian
Adjective to Noun: brave-ry bravery
Noun to Verb: length-en lengthen
Verb to Noun: drive-er driver
Verb to Adverb: sleep-ily sleepily
Adjective to nice-ly nicely
Adverb:
English Word Formation
2) Conversion
a) Change of function (without Affixes)
Noun: Switch on the light.
Verb: Light the lamp.
b) Change of accent
Noun: 'present
Verb: pre'sent
c) Final voiced consonant
Noun Advice / house /s/
Verb Advise / house /z/
English Word Formation
3) Compounding
Open : paper knife
Hyphenated : paper-knife
Solid : paperknife
a) Noun+Noun : gold+fish goldfish
b) Noun+Adjective : duty+free dutyfree
c) Adjective+Noun : red+light redlight
d) Compounds with verbs/adverbials/verbal nouns
sight-seeing, easy-going, brain-washing
English Word Formation
4) Reduplication
Words formed by identical or slightly different elements.
e.g. criss-cross, pooh-pooh, tip-top, see-saw
5) Clipping
Words shortened by subtracting one or more syllables at
the beginning or at the end.
e.g. photograph photo
influenza flu
mathematics maths
English Word Formation
6) Acronyms
Words formed by joining together the initial letter(s) of
each of the successive parts or major parts of
compound terms and are pronounced as words.
e.g.
RADAR - radio detecting and ranging
LASER - light amplification (by) stimulated emission of
radiation
RAM - Random Access Memory
English Word Formation
7) Blending
Two words are clipped and the clippings are joined.
e.g. brunch = breakfast + lunch
nor = not + or
smog = smoke + fog
8) Invention/Coinage
New words have to be given to new inventions. They
8)
are arbitrary but, come to stay as apart of the
language with time course.
e.g. astronaut, x-ray, aspirin, nylon, modem.
English Word Formation
9) Borrowing
Two words are clipped and the clippings are joined.
e.g. Samosa from Urdu
Admiral from Arabic
Dame from French
8)
10) Onomatopoeia/ Echoism
Words formed by mimic, imitative, or suggestive
sounds.
e.g. meow, bow-wow, bang, splash, crash.
English Word Formation
11) Backformation
A process where pseudosuffixes such as –or,
–er, and –ar are dropped to arrive at new words.
e.g. beggar to beg
pedlar to peddle
12) Eponymy / Proper Names
8) Names and brand names that are used to refer
to as generic terms of other things that belong
to the same kind.
e.g. Kleenex, Walkman
