Example of morphemes word

Definition of Morpheme

A morpheme is the smallest syntactical and meaningful linguistic unit that contains a word, or an element of the word such as the use of –s whereas this unit is not divisible further into smaller syntactical parts.

For instance, in the sentence, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” (A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens), all the underlined words are morphemes, as they cannot be divided further into smaller units.

Types of Morpheme

There are two types of morphemes which are:

1. Free Morpheme
   The free morpheme is just a simple word that has a single morpheme; thus, it is free and can occur independently. For instance, in “David wishes to go there,” “go” is a free morpheme.
2. Bound Morpheme
   By contrast to a free morpheme, a bound morpheme is used with a free morpheme to construct a complete word, as it cannot stand independently. For example, in “The farmer wants to kill duckling,” the bound morphemes “-er,” “s,” and “ling” cannot stand on their own. They need free morphemes of “farm,” “want” and “duck” to give meanings.

Bound morphemes are of two types which include:

1. Inflectional Morpheme
   This type of morpheme is only a suffix. It transforms the function of words by adding -ly as a suffix to the base of the noun, such as in “friend,” which becomes “friendly.” Now it contains two morphemes “friend” and “-ly.” Here, “-ly” is an inflectional morpheme, as it has changed the noun “friend” into an adjective “friendly.”
2. Derivational Morpheme
   This type of morpheme uses both prefix as well as suffix, and has the ability to change function as well as meaning of words. For instance, adding the suffix “-less” to the noun “meaning” makes the meaning of this word entirely different.

Examples of Morpheme in Literature

Example #1: Hamlet (by William Shakespeare)

“Sit down awhile;
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story
What we have two nights seen.
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.”

All the underlined words in this example are bound morphemes, as they cannot exist independently. For instance, “awhile” is a combination of two morphemes “a” and “while.” Similarly, “again,” “nights,” and “before” are combinations of two morphemes each.

Example #2: Tyger Tyger (by William Blake)

“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

In this example, all of the underlined words are bound morphemes. The second one, “immortal,” and the third one, “fearful,” have changed functions and meanings after the addition of suffixes. “Fearful” is an inflectional morpheme, and it has changed this noun into an adjective.

Example #3: For Whom the Bell Tolls (by Earnest Hemingway)

“The young man, who was studying the country, took his glasses from the pocket of his faded, khaki flannel shirt, wiped the lenses with a handkerchief, screwed the eyepieces around until the boards of the mill showed suddenly clearly and he saw the wooden bench beside the door; the huge pile of sawdust that rose behind the open shed where the circular saw was, and a stretch of the flume that brought the logs down from the mountainside on the other bank of the stream.”

In this passage, all the underlined words “studying,” “handkerchief,” “suddenly,” “clearly,” “wooden,” “beside,” and “mountainside” are bound morphemes.

Example #4: Master of the Game (by Sidney Sheldon)

“Jamie McGregor was one of the dreamers. He was barely eighteen, a handsome lad, tall and fair-haired, with startlingly light gray eyes. There was an attractive ingenuousness about him, an eagerness to please that was endearing. He had a light-hearted disposition and a soul filled with optimism.”

This passage is another good example of bound morphemes. The underlined words “dreamers,” “barely,” “handsome,” “fair-headed,” “eagerness,” “light-hearted,” and “filled” are bound morphemes.

Function of Morpheme

A morpheme is a meaningful unit in English morphology. The basic function of a morpheme is to give meaning to a word. It may or may not stand alone. When it stands alone, it is thought to be a root. However, when it depends upon other morphemes to complete an idea, then it becomes an affix and plays a grammatical function. Besides, inflectional and derivational morphemes can transform meanings and functions of the words respectively adding richness and beauty to a text.

Morphology is the study of words, word formation, and the relationship between words. In Morphology, we look at morphemes — the smallest lexical items of meaning. Studying morphemes helps us to understand the meaning, structure, and etymology (history) of words.

Inflectional affixes only modify the meaning of words instead of changing them. This means they modify the words by making them plural, comparative or superlative, or by changing the verb tense.

In English, regular verbs use the past tense morpheme -ed; this shows us that the verb happened in the past. The pronunciation of this morpheme changes its sound according to the last consonant of the verb but always keeps its past tense function. This is an example of an allomorph.

What is a Morpheme?

Morphemes are what make up words. It is not always true that morphemes are words. Some single morphemes can be words, while other words have two or more morphemes within them. It is also incorrect to think of morphemes as syllables. Many words have two or more syllables but only one morpheme. “Banana”, “apple”, “papaya” and “nanny” are just a few examples. On the other hand, many words have two morphemes and only one syllable; examples include “cats”, “runs,” and “barked”.

The word “pins” contains two morphemes: “pin” and the plural suffix “-s.”

In so-called isolating languages, like Vietnamese, each word contains a single morpheme; in languages such as English, words often contain multiple morphemes.

Types of Morphemes:

Free morpheme:

A morpheme that can stand alone as a word without another morpheme. It does not need anything attached to it to make a word. “Cat” is a free morpheme.

Bound morpheme:

A sound or a combination of sounds that cannot stand alone as a word. The “s” in “cats” is a bound morpheme, and it does not have any meaning without the free morpheme “cat”.

Inflectional morpheme:

This morpheme is always a suffix. The “s” in “cats” is an inflectional morpheme. An inflectional morpheme creates a change in the function of the word. Example: the “d” in “invited” indicates past tense. English has only seven inflectional morphemes: “-s” (plural) and “-s” (possessive) are noun inflections; “-s” ( 3rd-person singular), “-ed” ( past tense), “-en” (past participle), and “-ing” ( present participle) are verb inflections; “-er” (comparative) and “-est” (superlative) are adjective and adverb inflections.

Derivational morpheme:

This type of morpheme changes the meaning of the word or the part of speech or both. Derivational morphemes often create new words. Example: the prefix and derivational morpheme “un” added to “invited” changes the meaning of the word.

Allomorphs:

Different phonetic forms or variations of a morpheme. Example: The final morphemes in the following words are pronounced differently, but they all indicate plurality: dogs, cats, and horses.

Base:

A morpheme that gives a word its meaning. The base morpheme “cat” gives the word “cats” its meaning.

Affix:

A morpheme that comes at the beginning (prefix) or the ending (suffix) of a base morpheme. Note: An affix usually is a morpheme that cannot stand alone. Examples: “-ful,” “-ly”, “-ity,” “-ness.” A few exceptions, namely “-able,” “-like” and “-less” can also stand alone as words.

Prefix:

An affix that comes before a base morpheme. “The ‘in’ in the word ‘inspect’ is a prefix.”

Examples of prefixes:

• Ab-: away from  (absent, abnormal)
• Ad-: to, toward  (advance, addition)
• After-: later, behind (aftermath, afterward)
• Anti-: against, opposed (antibiotic, antigravity)
• Auto-: self (automobile, autobiography)
• Bi-: two  (bicycle, biceps)
• Com, con, co-: with, together (commune, concrete)
• Contra- :  against (contradict, contrary)
• De-: downward, undo (deflate, defect)
• Dis-:  not (dislike, distrust)
• Extra-:  outside (extravagant, extraterrestrial)
• Im-:  not (impose, imply)
• In-:  into, not include, incurable)
• Inter-:  among (interact, international)
• Macro- :  large (macroeconomics, macrobiotics)
• Magni- :  great (magnify, magnificent)
• Mega-: huge (megaphone, megabucks)
• Micro-: small (microscope, microbe)
• Mis-: wrongly (mistake, mislead)
• Non-:  not (nonsense, nonviolent)
• Over-:  above, beyond (overflow, overdue)
• Post-:  after (postdate, postmark)
• Pre-:  before, prior to (preheat, prehistoric)
• Pro-:  in favor of (protect, probiotic, pro-survival)
• Re-:  again (repeat, revise)
• Sub-:  under, beneath (submarine, subject)
• Super-:  above, beyond superior (supernatural)
• Tele-:  far (telescope, telephone)

Suffix:

An affix that comes after a base morpheme. “The ‘s’ in ‘cats’ is a ”

Examples of suffixes: -ant: one who (assistant)

• -ar:  one who (liar)
• -arium: place for (aquarium) -ble: inclined to (gullible) -ent: one who (resident)
• -er: one who (teacher)
• -er: more (brighter)
• -ery, ry: (products pottery, bakery) -ess: one who [female] (actress)
• -est: most (hottest)
• -ful: full of (mouthful)
• -ing: [present tense] (smiling)
• -less: without (motherless) -ling: small (fledgling)
• -ly: every (weekly) -ly: (adverb) happily
• -ness: state of being (happiness) -ology: study of (biology)
• -ous: full of (wondrous)
• -s, es: more than one (boxes) -y: state of (sunny)

Homonyms:

Morphemes that are spelled the same but have different Examples: “bear” (an animal) and “bear” (to carry); “plain” (simple) and “plain” ( a level area of land).

Heteronym:

One of two or more words (not necessarily single morphemes) that have identical spellings but different meanings and pronunciations, such as “row” (a series of objects arranged in a line), pronounced (rō), and “row” (a fight), pronounced (rou).

Homophones:

Morphemes that sound alike but have different meanings and spellings. Examples: “bear” / “bare”, “plain” / “plane”, “cite” / “sight” / “site”.

Note: You will find more about Homonyms, Homophones, and Heteronyms in

Examples of morphemes in Words:

One morpheme:

• one syllable: boy
• two syllables: desire, lady, water
• three syllables: crocodile
• four syllables: salamander

Two morphemes:

• boy + ish
• desire + able

Three morphemes:

• boy + ish + ness
• desire + able + ity

Four morphemes:

• gentle + man + li + ness
• un + desire + able + ity

More than four morphemes:

• un + gentle + man + li + ness
• anti + dis + establish + ment + ari + an + ism

Morphology is the study of words and their parts. Morphemes, like prefixes, suffixes and base words, are defined as the smallest meaningful units of meaning. Morphemes are important for phonics in both reading and spelling, as well as in vocabulary and comprehension.

Why use morphology

Teaching morphemes unlocks the structures and meanings within words. It is very useful to have a strong awareness of prefixes, suffixes and base words. These are often spelt the same across different words, even when the sound changes, and often have a consistent purpose and/or meaning.

Types of morphemes

Free vs. bound

Morphemes can be either single words (free morphemes) or parts of words (bound morphemes).

A free morpheme can stand alone as its own word

• gentle
• father
• licence
• picture
• gem

A bound morpheme only occurs as part of a word

• -s as in cat+s
• -ed as in crumb+ed
• un- as in un+happy
• mis- as in mis-fortune
• -er as in teach+er

In the example above: un+system+atic+al+ly, there is a root word (system) and bound morphemes that attach to the root (un-, -atic, -al, -ly)

system = root un-, -atic, -al, -ly = bound morphemes

If two free morphemes are joined together they create a compound word. These words are a great way to introduce morphology (the study of word parts) into the classroom.

For more details, see:
Compound words

Inflectional vs. d​​erivational

Morphemes can also be divided into inflectional or derivational morphemes.

Inflectional morphemes change what a word does in terms of grammar, but does not create a new word.

For example, the word <skip> has many forms: skip (base form), skipping (present progressive), skipped (past tense).

The inflectional morphemes -ing and -ed are added to the base word skip, to indicate the tense of the word.

If a word has an inflectional morpheme, it is still the same word, with a few suffixes added. So if you looked up <skip> in the dictionary, then only the base word <skip> would get its own entry into the dictionary. Skipping and skipped are listed under skip, as they are inflections of the base word. Skipping and skipped do not get their own dictionary entry.

Skip

Another example is <run>: run (base form), running (present progressive), ran (past tense). In this example the past tense marker changes the vowel of the word: run (rhymes with fun), to ran (rhymes with can). However, the inflectional morphemes -ing and past tense morpheme are added to the base word <run>, and are listed in the same dictionary entry.

Run

Derivational morphemes are different to inflectional morphemes, as they do derive/create a new word, which gets its own entry in the dictionary. Derivational morphemes help us to create new words out of base words.

For example, we can create new words from <act> by adding derivational prefixes (e.g. re- en-) and suffixes (e.g. -or).

Thus out of <act> we can get re+act = react en+act = enact act+or = actor.

Whenever a derivational morpheme is added, a new word (and dictionary entry) is derived/created.

For the <act> example, the following dictionary entries can be found:

Act

React

Enact

Actor

Teachers should highlight and encourage students to analyse both Inflectional and Derivational morphemes when focussing on phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension.

For more information, see: 

Prefixes, suffixes, and roots/bases

Many morphemes are very helpful for analysing unfamiliar words. Morphemes can be divided into prefixes, suffixes, and roots/bases.

• Prefixes are morphemes that attach to the front of a root/base word.
• Suffixes are morphemes that attach to the end of a root/base word, or to other suffixes (see example below)
• Roots/Base words are morphemes that form the base of a word, and usually carry its meaning.
  • Generally, base words are free morphemes, that can stand by themselves (e.g. cycle as in bicycle/cyclist, and form as in transform/formation).
  • Whereas root words are bound morphemes that cannot stand by themselves (e.g. -ject as in subject/reject, and -volve as in evolve/revolve).

Most morphemes can be divided into:

• Anglo-Saxon Morphemes (like re-, un-, and -ness);
• Latin Morphemes (like non-, ex-, -ion, and -ify); and
• Greek Morphemes (like micro, photo, graph).

It is useful to highlight how words can be broken down into morphemes (and which each of these mean) and how they can be built up again).

For example, the word <unreliability> may be unfamiliar to students when they first encounter it.

If <unreliability> is broken into its morphemes, students can deduce or infer the meaning.

So it is helpful for both reading and spelling to provide opportunities to analyse words, and become familiar with common morphemes, including their meaning and function.

Compound words

Compound words (or compounds) are created by joining free morphemes together. Remember that a free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand along as its own word (unlike bound morphemes — e.g. -ly, -ed, re-, pre-). Compounds are a fun and accessible way to introduce the idea that words can have multiple parts (morphemes). Teachers can highlight that these compound words are made up of two separate words joined together to make a new word. For example dog + house = doghouse

Examples

Example activities of highlighting morphemes for phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension

There are numerous ways to highlight morphemes for the purpose of phonics, vocabulary and comprehension activities and lessons.

Highlighting the morphology of words is useful for explaining phonics patterns (graphemes) and spelling rules, as well as discovering the meanings of unfamiliar words, and demonstrating how words are linked together. Highlighting and analysing morphemes is also useful, therefore, for providing comprehension strategies.

Examples of how to embed morphological awareness into literacy activities can include:

• Sorting words by base/root words (word families), or by prefixes or suffixes
• Word Detective — Students break longer words down into their prefixes, suffixes, and base words
• e.g. Find the morphemes in multi-morphemic words like: dissatisfied unstoppable ridiculously hydrophobic metamorphosis oxygenate fortifications
• Word Builder — students are given base words and prefixes/suffixes and see how many words they can build, and what meaning they might have:
• Prefixes: un- de- pre- re- co- con-
  Base Words: play help flex bend blue sad sat
  Suffixes: -ful -ly -less -able/-ible -ing -ion -y -ish -ness -ment
• Etymology investigation — students are given multi-morphemic words from texts they have been reading and are asked to research the origins (etymology) of the word. Teachers could use words like progressive, circumspect, revocation, and students could find out the morphemes within each word, their etymology, meanings, and use.

​

Definition

A «morpheme» is a short segment of language that meets three basic criteria:

1. It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.

2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments without changing its meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder.

3. It has relatively the same stable meaning in different verbal environments.

Free and Bound Morphemes

There are two types of morphemes-free morphemes and bound morphemes. «Free morphemes» can stand alone with a specific meaning, for example, eat, date, weak. «Bound morphemes» cannot stand alone with meaning. Morphemes are comprised of two separate classes called (a) bases (or roots) and (b) affixes.

A «base,» or «root» is a morpheme in a word that gives the word its principle meaning. An example of a «free base» morpheme is woman in the word womanly. An example of a «bound base» morpheme is -sent in the word dissent.

Affixes

An «affix» is a bound morpheme that occurs before or after a base. An affix that comes before a base is called a «prefix.» Some examples of prefixes are ante-, pre-, un-, and dis-, as in the following words:

antedate
prehistoric
unhealthy
disregard

An affix that comes after a base is called a «suffix.» Some examples of suffixes are -ly, -er, -ism, and -ness, as in the following words:

happily
gardener
capitalism
kindness

Derivational Affixes

An affix can be either derivational or inflectional. «Derivational affixes» serve to alter the meaning of a word by building on a base. In the examples of words with prefixes and suffixes above, the addition of the prefix un- to healthy alters the meaning of healthy. The resulting word means «not healthy.» The addition of the suffix -er to garden changes the meaning of garden, which is a place where plants, flowers, etc., grow, to a word that refers to ‘a person who tends a garden.’ It should be noted that all prefixes in English are derivational. However, suffixes may be either derivational or inflectional.

Inflectional Affixes

There are a large number of derivational affixes in English. In contrast, there are only eight «inflectional affixes» in English, and these are all suffixes. English has the following inflectional suffixes, which serve a variety of grammatical functions when added to specific types of words. These grammatical functions are shown to the right of each suffix.

-s     noun plural
-‘s     noun possessive
-s     verb present tense third person singular
-ing     verb present participle/gerund
-ed     verb simple past tense
-en     verb past perfect participle
-er     adjective comparative
-est     adjective superlative

Morphemes, types of morphemes in English.

As the biggest units of morphology, words are made
up of smaller units – morphemes.
A morpheme is the smallest, indivisible meaningful language unit
within the structure of a word.

Like a word, a morpheme is a two-faced language unit. It means that a
morpheme has a certain meaning & a certain sound-pattern.

But
unlike a word, a morpheme is not autonomous, it can occur in speech
only as a constituent part of a word.

According to their meaning & the role they play in constructing
words, morphemes are:

• Root morphemes (roots);

• Affixational morphemes (affixes).

The root morpheme is a lexical nuclears, the
semantic centre of the word, it has a concrete lexical meaning &
is a common part of a word-building cluster.

The
word-building cluster is a group of words with one & the same
root morpheme, linked through synchronic derivational relations.

e.g. dog – doggy – doggish – doggedness – to
dog

The root morpheme possesses all types of meaning: lexical,
differential (bookshelf — bookcase) & distributional meaning
(order of arrangement meaning – e.g. boyishness), except the part
of speech meaning.

According to the opposition, affixes
are:

• Prefixes, which proceed the root;

• Suffixes, which follow the root;

• Infixes, placed within the root.

Infixes are very rare in the English language:
e.g. to stand.

According to their function & meaning, affixes are subdivided
into:

• Grammatical affixes (suffixes);

• Derivational affixes (suffixes & preffixes).

Grammatical affixes or functional affixes, inflectional morphemes,
inflections or endings serve to form new grammar forms of the same
word & are studied in Grammar.

Derivational
affixes serve to build new words & are studied in Lexicology. The
lexical meaning of affixational morphemes is of more generalising
character than that of root morphemes.

E.g.
–er → agent;
-less – without

All
in all, we have about 200 derivative affixes.

Structurally morphemes fall into free
& bound morphemes. Free are root
morphemes, which coincide with separate words. Bound are all
derivational affixes & inflections & root morphemes which do
not coincide with separate words. E.g.
horr- (horrible); angl- (Anglo-saxon).

There is a group of so-called semi-free
or semi-bound morphemes
(semi-affixes) which may function both as root morphemes (-man in
manmade, manservant) & as derivational elements (-man in
gentleman, cabman, etc).

e.g.
– like (lady-like…); -proof (waterproof, kissproof).

Affixes should not be confused with the so-called
combining forms
– bound root morphemes of Greek & Latin origin, which occur in
compounds & derivatives mostly international terms, formed in
modern times (telephone, telegraph, etc.) but some of them begin a
new life as semi-affixes (-cide “kill” (L.) in suicide today is
used in autocide or biocide).

A morpheme may have several positional, phonetic & graphical
variants or representations called allomorphs (please, pleasant,
pleasure [pli:z – plezent – ple e]. These 3 variants are
allomorphs of one & the same morpheme.The allomorphs of the
negative prefixes “in” are “il+l” (illegal), “im + biabils”
(impossible), “ir+r” (irregular).

The main structural
types of English words.

According
to their morphological (derivational) structure, there are 4 main
types of words in English:

• Root words or simple or
  primary, consisting of 1 morpheme only ( the root)

e.g.
go, come, nose, table, good

• Derivatives or derived words
  consisting of 2 or more morphemes – usually the roots & some
  affixes are attached to it.

e.g.
unbreakable

• Compounds, consisting of 2 or
  more stems

e.g.
feedback, blackmail

• Compound derivatives
  consisting of 2 or more stems with a derivational morpheme, added at
  the end.

e.g.
long-nosed, double-decker

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not to be confused with Morphine.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression.^[1] The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.

In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are considered roots (such as the morpheme cat); other morphemes, called affixes, are found only in combination with other morphemes. For example, the -s in cats indicates the concept of plurality but is always bound to another concept to indicate a specific kind of plurality.^[2]

This distinction is not universal and does not apply to, for example, Latin, in which many roots cannot stand alone. For instance, the Latin root reg- (‘king’) must always be suffixed with a case marker: rex (reg-s), reg-is, reg-i, etc. For a language like Latin, a root can be defined as the main lexical morpheme of a word.

These sample English words have the following morphological analyses:

• «Unbreakable» is composed of three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying «not»), break (the root, a free morpheme), and -able (a bound morpheme signifying «an ability to be done»).^[3][4][5]
• The plural morpheme for regular nouns (-s) has three allomorphs: it is pronounced /s/ (e.g., in cats ), /ɪz, əz/ (e.g., in dishes ), and /z/ (e.g., in dogs ), depending on the pronunciation of the root.

Classification[edit]

Free and bound morphemes[edit]

Every morpheme can be classified as free or bound:^[6]

• Free morphemes can function independently as words (e.g. town, dog) and can appear within lexemes (e.g. town hall, doghouse).
• Bound morphemes appear only as parts of words, always in conjunction with a root and sometimes with other bound morphemes. For example, un- appears only when accompanied by other morphemes to form a word. Most bound morphemes in English are affixes, specifically prefixes and suffixes. Examples of suffixes are -tion, -sion, -tive, -ation, -ible, and -ing. Bound morphemes that are not affixed are called cranberry morphemes.

Classification of bound morphemes[edit]

Bound morphemes can be further classified as derivational or inflectional morphemes. The main difference between them is their function in relation to words.

Derivational bound morphemes[edit]

• Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root, change the semantic meaning or the part of speech of the affected word. For example, in the word happiness, the addition of the bound morpheme -ness to the root happy changes the word from an adjective (happy) to a noun (happiness). In the word unkind, un- functions as a derivational morpheme since it inverts the meaning of the root morpheme (word) kind. Generally, morphemes that affix (i.e., affixes) to a root morpheme (word) are bound morphemes.

Inflectional bound morphemes[edit]

• Inflectional morphemes modify the tense, aspect, mood, person, or number of a verb or the number, gender, or case of a noun, adjective, or pronoun without affecting the word’s meaning or class (part of speech). Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to form dogs and adding -ed to wait to form waited. An inflectional morpheme changes the form of a word. English has eight inflections.^[7][8]

Allomorphs[edit]

Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme that differ in form but are semantically similar. For example, the English plural marker has three allomorphs: /-z/ (bugs), /-s/ (bats), or /-ɪz, -əz/ (buses). An allomorph is a concrete realization of a morpheme, which is an abstract unit. That is parallel to the relation of an allophone and a phoneme.

Zero-bound-morpheme[edit]

Zero-morpheme[edit]

This section needs expansion with: at least a proper definition of the term. You can help by adding to it. (December 2019)

A zero-morpheme is a type of morpheme that carries semantic meaning but is not represented by auditory phoneme. A word with a zero-morpheme is analyzed as having the morpheme for grammatical purposes, but the morpheme is not realized in speech. They are often represented by /∅/ within glosses.^[9]

Generally, such morphemes have no visible changes. For instance, sheep is both the singular and the plural forms; rather than taking the usual plural suffix -s to form hypothetical *sheeps, the plural is analyzed as being composed of sheep + -∅, the null plural suffix. The intended meaning is thus derived from the co-occurrence determiner (in this case, «some-» or «a-«).^[10]

In some cases, a zero-morpheme may also be used to contrast with other inflected forms of a word that contain an audible morpheme. For example, the plural noun cats in English consists of the root cat and the plural suffix -s, and so the singular cat may be analyzed as the root inflected with the null singular suffix —∅.^[11]

Content vs. function[edit]

Content morphemes express a concrete meaning or content, and function morphemes have more of a grammatical role. For example, the morphemes fast and sad can be considered content morphemes. On the other hand, the suffix -ed is a function morpheme since it has the grammatical function of indicating past tense.

Both categories may seem very clear and intuitive, but the idea behind them is occasionally more difficult to grasp since they overlap with each other.^[12] Examples of ambiguous situations are the preposition over and the determiner your, which seem to have concrete meanings but are considered function morphemes since their role is to connect ideas grammatically.^[13] Here is a general rule to determine the category of a morpheme:

• Content morphemes include free morphemes that are nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and verbs and include bound morphemes that are bound roots and derivational affixes.^[13]
• Function morphemes may be free morphemes that are prepositions, pronouns, determiners, and conjunctions. They may be bound morphemes that are inflectional affixes.^[13]

Other features[edit]

Roots are composed of only one morpheme, but stems can be composed of more than one morpheme. Any additional affixes are considered morphemes. For example, in the word quirkiness, the root is quirk, but the stem is quirky, which has two morphemes.

Moreover, some pairs of affixes have identical phonological form but different meanings. For example, the suffix -er can be either derivational (e.g. sell ⇒ seller) or inflectional (e.g. small ⇒ smaller). Such morphemes are called homophonous.^[13]

Some words might seem to be composed of multiple morphemes but are not. Therefore, not only form but also meaning must be considered when identifying morphemes. For example, the word Madagascar is long and might seem to have morphemes like mad, gas, and car, but it does not. Conversely, some short words have multiple morphemes (e.g. dogs = dog + s).^[13]

Morphological icons[edit]

Morphological icons are images, patterns or symbols that relate to a specific morpheme.^[14] For children with dyslexia, it has been shown to be an effective way of building up a word. The word ‘inviting’ as an example is made up of two commonly used morphemes, ‘in-‘ and ‘-ing’. A morphological icon for ‘in-‘ could be an arrow going into a cup, and ‘-ing’ could be an arrow going forward to symbolise that something is in action (as in being, running, fishing).

The concept of combining visual aid icons with morpheme teaching methods was pioneered from the mid 1980s by Neville Brown.^[15] He founded the Maple Hayes school for dyslexia in 1981, where he later improved the method alongside his son, Daryl Brown. The school’s curriculum uses morphological icons as a learning aid.^[16]

Morphological analysis[edit]

In natural language processing for Japanese, Chinese, and other languages, morphological analysis is the process of segmenting a sentence into a row of morphemes. Morphological analysis is closely related to part-of-speech tagging, but word segmentation is required for those languages because word boundaries are not indicated by blank spaces.^[17]

The purpose of morphological analysis is to determine the minimal units of meaning in a language (morphemes) by comparison of similar forms: such as by comparing forms such as «She is walking» and «They are walking» with each other, rather than either with something less similar like «You are reading.» Those forms can be effectively broken down into parts, and the different morphemes can be distinguished.

Both meaning and form are equally important for the identification of morphemes. An agent morpheme is an affix like -er that in English transforms a verb into a noun (e.g. teach → teacher). English also has another morpheme that is identical in pronunciation (and written form) but has an unrelated meaning and function: a comparative morpheme that changes an adjective into another degree of comparison (but remains the same adjective) (e.g. small → smaller). The opposite can also occur: a pair of morphemes with identical meaning but different forms.^[13]

Changing definitions[edit]

In generative grammar, the definition of a morpheme depends heavily on whether syntactic trees have morphemes as leaves or features as leaves.

• Direct surface-to-syntax mapping in lexical functional grammar (LFG) – leaves are words
• Direct syntax-to-semantics mapping
  • Leaves in syntactic trees spell out morphemes: distributed morphology – leaves are morphemes
  • Branches in syntactic trees spell out morphemes: radical minimalism and nanosyntax – leaves are «nano-» (small) morpho-syntactic features

Given the definition of a morpheme as «the smallest meaningful unit,» nanosyntax aims to account for idioms in which an entire syntactic tree often contributes «the smallest meaningful unit.» An example idiom is «Don’t let the cat out of the bag.» There, the idiom is composed of «let the cat out of the bag.» That might be considered a semantic morpheme, which is itself composed of many syntactic morphemes. Other cases of the «smallest meaningful unit» being longer than a word include some collocations such as «in view of» and «business intelligence» in which the words, when together, have a specific meaning.

The definition of morphemes also plays a significant role in the interfaces of generative grammar in the following theoretical constructs:

• Event semantics: the idea that each productive morpheme must have a compositional semantic meaning (a denotation), and if the meaning is there, there must be a morpheme (whether null or overt).
• Spell-out: the interface with which syntactic/semantic structures are «spelled out» by using words or morphemes with phonological content. That can also be thought of as lexical insertion into the syntactic.

See also[edit]

• Alternation (linguistics)
• Bound morpheme
• Floating tone
• Greek morphemes
• Hybrid word
• Morphological parsing
• Morphophonology
• Morphotactics
• Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, featuring a comparable concept in folklore studies
• Phoneme
• Theoretical linguistics
• Word stem

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Glossary of reading terms
• Comprehensive and searchable morpheme reference
• Linguistics 001 — Lecture 7 — Morphology by Prof. Mark Lieberman
• Pronunciation of the word morpheme