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.
Morphemes: meaning
The word morphemes from the Greek morphḗ, meaning ‘shape, form‘. Morphemes are the smallest lexical items of meaning or grammatical function that a word can be broken down to. Morphemes are usually, but not always, words.
Look at the following examples of morphemes:
These words cannot be made shorter than they already are or they would stop being words or lose their meaning.
For example, ‘house’ cannot be split into ho- and -us’ as they are both meaningless.
However, not all morphemes are words.
For example, ‘s’ is not a word, but it is a morpheme; ‘s’ shows plurality and means ‘more than one’.
The word ‘books’ is made up of two morphemes: book + s.
Morphemes play a fundamental role in the structure and meaning of language, and understanding them can help us to better understand the words we use and the rules that govern their use.
How to identify a morpheme
You can identify morphemes by seeing if the word or letters in question meet the following criteria:
-
Morphemes must have meaning. E.g. the word ‘cat’ represents and small furry animal. The suffix ‘-s’ you might find at the end of the word ‘cat’ represents plurality.
- Morphemes cannot be divided into smaller parts without losing or changing their meaning. E.g. dividing the word ‘cat’ into ‘ca’ leaves us with a meaningless set of letters. The word ‘at’ is a morpheme in its own right.
Types of morphemes
There are two types of morphemes: free morphemes and bound morphemes.
Free morphemes
Free morphemes can stand alone and don’t need to be attached to any other morphemes to get their meaning. Most words are free morphemes, such as the above-mentioned words house, book, bed, light, world, people, and so on.
Bound morphemes
Bound morphemes, however, cannot stand alone. The most common example of bound morphemes are suffixes, such as —s, —er, —ing, and -est.
Let’s look at some examples of free and bound morphemes:
-
Tall
-
Tree
-
-er
-
-s
‘Tall’ and ‘Tree’ are free morphemes.
We understand what ‘tall’ and ‘tree’ mean; they don’t require extra add-ons. We can use them to create a simple sentence like ‘That tree is tall.’
On the other hand, ‘-er’ and ‘-s’ are bound morphemes. You won’t see them on their own because they are suffixes that add meaning to the words they are attached to.
Fig. 1 — These are the differences between free vs bound morphemes
So if we add ‘-er’ to ‘tall’ we get the comparative form ‘taller’, while ‘tree’ plus ‘-s’ becomes plural: ‘trees’.
Morphemes: structure
Morphemes are made up of two separate classes.
-
Bases (or roots)
-
Affixes
A morpheme’s base is the main root that gives the word its meaning.
On the other hand, an affix is a morpheme we can add that changes or modifies the meaning of the base.
‘Kind’ is the free base morpheme in the word ‘kindly’. (kind + -ly)
‘-less’ is a bound morpheme in the word ‘careless’. (Care + —less)
Morphemes: affixes
Affixes are bound morphemes that occur before or after a base word. They are made up of suffixes and prefixes.
Suffixes are attached to the end of the base or root word. Some of the most common suffixes include —er, -or, -ly, -ism, and -less.
Taller
Thinner
Comfortably
Absurdism
Ageism
Aimless
Fearless
Prefixes come before the base word. Typical prefixes include ante-, pre-, un-, and dis-.
Antedate
Prehistoric
Unkind
Disappear
Derivational affixes
Derivational affixes are used to change the meaning of a word by building on its base. For instance, by adding the prefix ‘un-‘ to the word ‘kind‘, we got a new word with a whole new meaning. In fact, ‘unkind‘ has the exact opposite meaning of ‘kind’!
Another example is adding the suffix ‘-or’ to the word ‘act’ to create ‘actor’. The word ‘act’ is a verb, whereas ‘actor’ is a noun.
Inflectional affixes
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.
books — books
short — shorter
quick — quickest
walk — walked
climb — climbing
There are many derivational affixes in English, but only eight inflectional affixes and these are all suffixes.
|
Word class |
Modification reason |
Suffixes |
| To modify nouns | Plural & possessive forms | -s (or -es), -‘s (or s’) |
| To modify adjectives |
Comparative & superlative forms |
-er, -est |
| To modify verbs |
3rd person singular, past tense, present & past participles |
-s, -ed, -ing, -en |
All prefixes in English are derivational. However, suffixes may be either derivational or inflectional.
Morphemes: categories
The free morphemes we looked at earlier (such as tree, book, and tall) fall into two categories:
- Lexical morphemes
- Functional morphemes
Reminder: Most words are free morphemes because they have meaning on their own, such as house, book, bed, light, world, people etc.
Lexical morphemes
Lexical morphemes are words that give us the main meaning of a sentence, text or conversation. These words can be nouns, adjectives and verbs. Examples of lexical morphemes include:
- house
- book
- tree
- panther
- loud
- quiet
- big
- orange
- blue
- open
- run
- talk
Because we can add new lexical morphemes to a language (new words get added to the dictionary each year!), they are considered an ‘open’ class of words.
Functional morphemes
Functional (or grammatical) morphemes are mostly words that have a functional purpose, such as linking or referencing lexical words. Functional morphemes include prepositions, conjunctions, articles and pronouns. Examples of functional morphemes include:
- and
- but
- when
- because
- on
- near
- above
- in
- the
- that
- it
- them.
We can rarely add new functional morphemes to the language, so we call this a ‘closed’ class of words.
Allomorphs
Allomorphs are a variant of morphemes. An allomorph is a unit of meaning that can change its sound and spelling but doesn’t change its meaning and function.
In English, the indefinite article morpheme has two allomorphs. Its two forms are ‘a’ and ‘an’. If the indefinite article precedes a word beginning with a constant sound it is ‘a’, and if it precedes a word beginning with a vowel sound, it is ‘an’.
Past Tense allomorphs
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.
Consider regular verbs ending in t or d, like ‘rent’ or ‘add’.
Now look at their past forms: ‘rented‘ and ‘added‘. Try pronouncing them. Notice how the —ed at the end changes to an /id/ sound (e.g. rent /ɪd/, add /ɪd/).
Now consider the past simple forms of want, rest, print, and plant. When we pronounce them, we get: wanted (want /ɪd/), rested (rest /ɪd/), printed (print /ɪd/), planted (plant /ɪd/).
Now look at other regular verbs ending in the following ‘voiceless’ phonemes: /p/, /k/, /s/, /h/, /ch/, /sh/, /f/, /x/. Try pronouncing the past form and notice how the allomorph ‘-ed’ at the end changes to a /t/ sound. For example, dropped, pressed, laughed, and washed.
Plural allomorphs
Typically we add ‘s’ or ‘es’ to most nouns in English when we want to create the plural form. The plural forms ‘s’ or ‘es’ remain the same and have the same function, but their sound changes depending on the form of the noun. The plural morpheme has three allomorphs: [s], [z], and [ɨz].
When a noun ends in a voiceless consonant (i.e. ch, f, k, p, s, sh, t, th), the plural allomorph is /s/.
Book becomes books (pronounced book/s/)
When a noun ends in a voiced phoneme (i.e. b, l, r, j, d, v, m, n, g, w, z, a, e, i, o, u) the plural form remains ‘s’ or ‘es’ but the allomorph sound changes to /z/.
Key becomes keys (pronounced key/z/)
Bee becomes bees (pronounced bee/z/)
When a noun ends in a sibilant (i.e. s, ss, z), the sound of the allomorph sound becomes /iz/.
Bus becomes buses (bus/iz/)
house becomes houses (hous/iz/)
A sibilant is a phonetic sound that makes a hissing sound, e.g. ‘s’ or ‘z’.
Zero (bound) morphemes
The zero bound morpheme has no phonetic form and is also referred to as an invisible affix, null morpheme, or ghost morpheme.
A zero morpheme is when a word changes its meaning but does not change its form.
In English, certain nouns and verbs do not change their appearance even when they change number or tense.
Sheep, deer, and fish, keep the same form whether they are used as singular or plural.
Some verbs like hit, cut, and cost remains the same in their present and past forms.
Morphemes — Key takeaways
- Morphemes are the smallest lexical unit of meaning. Most words are free morphemes, and most affixes are bound morphemes.
- There are two types of morphemes: free morphemes and bound morphemes.
- Free morphemes can stand alone, whereas bound morphemes must be attached to another morpheme to get their meaning.
- Morphemes are made up of two separate classes called bases (or roots) and affixes.
- Free morphemes fall into two categories; lexical and functional. Lexical morphemes are words that give us the main meaning of a sentence, and functional morphemes have a grammatical purpose.
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]
![[icon]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg/20px-Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg.png){kind=small} |
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]
- ^ Haspelmath, Martin (2010). Understanding Morphology. Andrea D. Sims (2nd ed.). London: Hodder Education. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-340-95001-2. OCLC 671004133.
- ^ Kemmer, Suzanne. «Words in English: Structure». Retrieved 10 April 2014.
- ^ «Word Grabber For Morpheme — Vocabulary List | Vocabulary.com». www.vocabulary.com.
- ^ «grammar — Why isn’t {-able} considered a free morpheme?». English Language & Usage Stack Exchange.
- ^ «LINGUIST List Home Page».
- ^ Morphology Classification Of Morphemes Archived 2014-03-20 at the Wayback Machine Referenced 19 March 2014
- ^ «ENG 411B Concepts». Archived from the original on 2013-02-18.
- ^ Matthew, Baerman (2015). The Morpheme. Oxford University Press: Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN 9780199591428. Retrieved 30 September 2019.
- ^ Gerner, Matthias; Ling, Zhang (2020-05-06). «Zero morphemes in paradigms». Studies in Language. International Journal Sponsored by the Foundation «Foundations of Language». 44 (1): 1–26. doi:10.1075/sl.16085.ger. ISSN 0378-4177. S2CID 218935697.
- ^ Dahl, Eystein Dahl; Fábregas, Antonio (2018). «Zero Morphemes». Linguistics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.592. ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
- ^ «Null morpheme — Glottopedia». www.glottopedia.org. Retrieved 2022-06-15.
- ^ «Morphology II». Retrieved 10 April 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f Department of Linguistics (2011). Language files: Materials for an introduction to language and linguistics (11th ed.). Ohio State University Press.
- ^ Richard Garner (July 27, 2014). «College for dyslexic pupils uses flashcard system to teach literacy». The Independent.
- ^ Justine Halifax (January 4, 2015). «Dyslexia dictionary: Lichfield doctor father and son lead way in helping young sufferers». Birmingham Mail.
- ^ Ross Hawkes (May 14, 2019). «Author’s tribute to experts behind Lichfield dyslexia school». Lichfield Live.
- ^ Nakagawa, Tetsuji (2004). «Chinese and Japanese word segmentation using word-level and character-level information». Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics — COLING ’04. Geneva, Switzerland: Association for Computational Linguistics: 466–es. doi:10.3115/1220355.1220422. S2CID 2988891.
- Baerman, Matthew (2015), Matthew Baerman (ed.), The Morpheme, Stephen R. Anderson, Oxford University: Oxford University Press, p. 3
- Plag, Ingo (2015), The structure of words: morphology, Sabine Arndt-Lappe, Maria Braun, and Mareile Schramm, Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter, Inc., pp. 71–112
External links[edit]
Look up morpheme in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
- Glossary of reading terms
- Comprehensive and searchable morpheme reference
- Linguistics 001 — Lecture 7 — Morphology by Prof. Mark Lieberman
- Pronunciation of the word morpheme
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
Соседние файлы в папке Lecture4
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What is Morpheme?
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful and syntactical or grammatical unit of a language that cannot be divided without changing its actual meaning. For instance, the word ‘love’ is a morpheme; but if you eliminate any character such as ‘e’ then it will be meaningless or lose the actual meaning of love.
Now we can say a morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit of a language by which meaningful words are formed. However, this is how we may define ‘what a morpheme’ in linguistics.
Types of Morphemes
The morphemes are of two types. They are:
- Free Morphemes
- Bound Morphemes
1. Free Morphemes
A morpheme that has a particular meaning and can be formed independently is called a free morpheme. For example, free, get, human, song, love, happy, sad, may, much, but, or, some, above, when, etc.
All of the words have individual meanings and are free morphemes. Free morphemes can be categorized into two sub-types. They are:
- Lexical morphemes
- Grammatical and functional morphemes
Lexical Morphemes
The lexical morphemes are those morphemes that are large in number and independently meaningful. The lexical morphemes include nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
These free morphemes are called lexical morphemes—for example, dog, good, honest, boy, girl, woman, excellent, etc.
Grammatical or Functional Morphemes
The grammatical or functional morphemes are those morphemes that consist of functional words in a language, such as prepositions, conjunctions determiners, and pronouns. For example, and, but, or, above, on, into, after, that, the, etc.
2. Bound Morphemes
A morpheme that doesn’t have any independent meaning and can be formed with the help of free morphemes is called a bound morpheme.
For example; less, ness, pre, un, en, ceive, ment. Bound morphemes can be categorized into two sub-classes. They are:
- Bound roots
- Affixes
Bound Roots
Bound roots are those Bound morphemes that have lexical meaning when they are included in other bound morphemes to form the content words. For example, -ceive, -tain, perceive, deceive, retain, contain, etc.
Affixes
Affixes are those bound morphemes that naturally attach different types of words and are used to change the meaning or function of those words.
For example, -ment in payment, enjoyment, entertainment en- in enlighten, enhance, enlarge, ‘s in Joseph’s, Lora’s -ing reading, sleeping, singing, etc.
Affixes can be categorized into five sub-classes according to their position in the word and function in a phrase or sentence. They are:
- Prefixes
- Infixes
- Suffixes
- Derivational
- Inflectional
Prefixes
Prefixes are bound morphemes included at the beginning of different types of words—for example in-, un-, sub- incomplete, injustice, unable, uneducated, subway, etc.
Infixes
Infixes are those bound morphemes included within the words. There are no infixes that exist in the English language.
Suffixes
Suffixes are those bound morphemes included at the end of different types of words. For example; -able, -less, -ness, -en, available, careless, happiness, shortening, etc.
Derivational Affixes
Derivational morphemes make new words by changing their meaning or different grammatical categories. In other words, derivational morphemes form new words with a meaning and category distinct through the addition of affixes.
Thus, the derivational morphemes ‘-ness’ changes the adjective of ‘kindness’, the noun ‘care’ becomes the adjective careless.
This is how derivational morphemes make new words by changing their meaning or grammatical category. Derivational morphemes can be categorized into two sub-classes. They are:
- Class-maintaining derivational morphemes
- Class-changing derivational morphemes
1. Class-Maintaining Derivational Morphemes
Class-maintaining derivational morphemes are usually produced in a derived form of the same class as the root, and they don’t change the course of the parts of speech. For example; -ship -hood, relationship, leadership, livelihood, manhood, etc.
2. Class-Changing Derivational Morphemes
In contrast to Class-maintaining derivational morphemes, Class-changing derivational morphemes usually produce a derived form of the other class from the root—for example, -er, -ish, -al, teacher, boyish, national, etc.
Inflectional Affixes
Inflectional morphemes are not used to produce new words; instead indicate the aspects of the grammar function of the word.
For instance, inflectional morphemes indicate whether a word is singular or plural, past tense or not, and comparative or possessive forms. English has eight Inflectional morphemes, all of which are suffixes.
English Inflectional morphemes affix:
Nouns:
- Plural (-s): The courses.
- Possessive: Jack‘s courses.
Verbs:
3rd person singular number non-past (-s):
- Jack teaches English well.
- He reaches the place on time.
Possessive (-ing):
- He is writing.
- She is singing.
Past participle (-en/ed):
- He has written the book.
- He worked
Adjectives:
- Comparative: (-er): John is happier than before.
- Superlative: (-est): He is the tallest person in the class.
After learning all the definitions, types, and examples, you have clearly seen morphemes and, more specifically, a morpheme in linguistics. After all, this is how we can define morphemes.
Morpheme Quiz
Have a look at these useful links:
- What is Psycholinguistics?
- Difference between Phonetics and Phonology
- Characteristics of language
- Definition of language by scholars
- Definition of Syntax in linguistics
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Azizul Hakim is the founder & CEO of englishfinders.com. He is a passionate writer, English instructor, and content creator. He has completed his graduation and post-graduation in English language and literature.
Definition and Examples of Morphemes in English
Updated on February 03, 2020
In English grammar and morphology, a morpheme is a meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word such as dog, or a word element, such as the -s at the end of dogs, that can’t be divided into smaller meaningful parts.
Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language. They are commonly classified as either free morphemes, which can occur as separate words or bound morphemes, which can’t stand alone as words.
Many words in English are made up of a single free morpheme. For example, each word in the following sentence is a distinct morpheme: «I need to go now, but you can stay.» Put another way, none of the nine words in that sentence can be divided into smaller parts that are also meaningful.
Etymology
From the French, by analogy with phoneme, from the Greek, «shape, form.»
Examples and Observations
- A prefix may be a morpheme:
«What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?»
—George Carlin - Individual words may be morphemes:
«They want to put you in a box, but nobody’s in a box. You’re not in a box.»
—John Turturro - Contracted word forms may be morphemes:
«They want to put you in a box, but nobody‘s in a box. You‘re not in a box.»
—John Turturro - Morphs and Allomorphs
«A word can be analyzed as consisting of one morpheme (sad) or two or more morphemes (unluckily; compare luck, lucky, unlucky), each morpheme usually expressing a distinct meaning. When a morpheme is represented by a segment, that segment is a morph. If a morpheme can be represented by more than one morph, the morphs are allomorphs of the same morpheme: the prefixes in- (insane), il- (illegible), im- (impossible), ir- (irregular) are allomorphs of the same negative morpheme.»
—Sidney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press, 1996 - Morphemes as Meaningful Sequences of Sounds
«A word cannot be divided into morphemes just by sounding out its syllables. Some morphemes, like apple, have more than one syllable; others, like -s, are less than a syllable. A morpheme is a form (a sequence of sounds) with a recognizable meaning. Knowing a word’s early history, or etymology, may be useful in dividing it into morphemes, but the decisive factor is the form-meaning link.
«A morpheme may, however, have more than one pronunciation or spelling. For example, the regular noun plural ending has two spellings (-s and -es) and three pronunciations (an s-sound as in backs, a z-sound as in bags, and a vowel plus z-sound as in batches). Similarly, when the morpheme -ate is followed by -ion (as in activate-ion), the t of -ate combines with the i of -ion as the sound ‘sh’ (so we might spell the word ‘activashun’). Such allomorphic variation is typical of the morphemes of English, even though the spelling does not represent it.»
—John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language, 6th ed. Wadsworth, 2010 - Grammatical Tags
«In addition to serving as resources in the creation of vocabulary, morphemes supply grammatical tags to words, helping us to identify on the basis of form the parts of speech of words in sentences we hear or read. For example, in the sentence Morphemes supply grammatical tags to words, the plural morpheme ending {-s} helps identify morphemes, tags, and words as nouns; the {-ical} ending underscores the adjectival relationship between grammatical and the following noun, tags, which it modifies.»
—Thomas P. Klammer et al. Analyzing English Grammar. Pearson, 2007 - Language Acquisition
«English-speaking children usually begin to produce two-morpheme words in their third year, and during that year the growth in their use of affixes is rapid and extremely impressive. This is the time, as Roger Brown showed, when children begin to use suffixes for possessive words (‘Adam’s ball’), for the plural (‘dogs’), for present progressive verbs (‘I walking’), for third-person singular present tense verbs (‘he walks’), and for past tense verbs, although not always with complete corectness (‘I brunged it here’) (Brown 1973). Notice that these new morphemes are all of them inflections. Children tend to learn derivational morphemes a little later and to continue to learn about them right through childhood . . ..»
—Peter Bryant and Terezinha Nunes, «Morphemes and Literacy: A Starting Point.» Improving Literacy by Teaching Morphemes, ed. by T. Nunes and P. Bryant. Routledge, 2006
Pronunciation: MOR-feem