Word structure morphemes classification of morphemes

Morphology
is a branch of linguistics which studies the form, inner structure,
function, and patterns of occurrence of a morpheme
as
the smallest meaningful unit of language.

The
term morphology
(Gr. morphé

‘form, shape’ and lógos
‘study’)
was borrowed from biology by the German writer J. W. von Goethe in
the 19th century; it was taken up by linguistics to designate the
study of form and structure of living organisms as a cover term for
inflection and word formation.

Theoretical
foundations of morphology were laid in Aristotle’s grammars and
Stoics’ works, who were the first to define four parts of speech
(the noun, the verb, the conjunction, and the link), introduced the
notions of case, gender system of nouns, the system of verbal tenses.

The
fundamental principles of modern European grammars were established
by Aristotle’s disciple Dionysus
from
Fracia
(II
c. BC),
who singled out eight parts of speech (the noun, the verb, the
participle, the link, the pronoun, the preposition, the adverb, and
the conjunction).

In
the 19th c. interest in morphology was stimulated by the development
of approaches to world languages
classification resulting in the study of general
laws of structure and
significant
elements such as prefixes and
inflections.

In
the 20th c. the
field of
morphology has
been narrowed
to the study of the internal structure of words.

The
structure of English words:

A
morpheme
(Gr.
morphé

‘form, shape’)
is one of the fundamental units of a language, a minimum sign that is
an association of a
given meaning
with a
given form
(sound and graphic), e.g. old,
un+happy, grow+th,
blue+colour+ed.

Depending
on the number of morphemes, words are divided into:

monomorphic
are root-words consisting of only one root-morpheme, i.e. simple
words, e.g. to
grow, a book, white, fast
etc.

polymorphic
are words consisting of at least one root-morpheme and a number of
derivational affixes, i.e. derivatives, compounds, e.g.
good-looking,
employee, blue-eyed
etc.

Types
of morphemes:

An
allomorph
(a morphemic
variant)
(Gr. állos ‘different’ and morphé
‘form,
shape’) is a phonetically conditioned positional variant of the
same derivational or functional morpheme identical in meaning and
function and differing in sound only insomuch, as their complementary
distribution
produces various phonetic assimilation effects, e.g. please /pli:z/
pleasure /pleʒ/
pleasant /plez/.

Complementary
distribution
takes place when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same
environment, e.g. in-competent,
il-logical,
ir-responsible,
im-possible;
cat-s,
box-es;
organis-ation,
corrup-tion.

Contastive
distribution
characterises different morphemes occurring in the same linguistic
environment, but signaling different meanings, e.g. –able
in measurable
and –ed
in measured.

A
pseudo-morpheme
(a quasi-morpheme)
is a morpheme which has a differential
meaning and a distributional
meaning but does not possess any lexical
or functional
(part-of-speech) meaning, e.g. re-
and -tain
in retain,
con-
and
–ceive
in conceive
etc.

A
unique
morpheme
is an isolated
pseudo-morpheme
which does not occur in other words but is understood as meaningful
because the constituent morphemes display a more or less clear
denotational meaning, e.g. ham-
in hamlet
(cf. booklet,
ringlet),
cran-
in cranberry
(журавлина),
mul-
in
mulberry (шовковиця),
-et
in pocket
etc.

Structural
classification of morphemes:

free
morphemes
are morphemes which coincide with a word-form of an independently
functioning word; they can be found only
among roots, e.g. hero-
as in heroism,
event—
as in eventful;

bound
morphemes
are morphemes which do not coincide with a separate word-form; they
include all affixes, e.g. de-
as in decode,
-less
as in fearless,
-s
as in girls;
some root-morphemes, e.g. docu-
as in
document,
horr-
as
in horrible,
theor-
as in theory
etc;

semi-bound
(semi-free)
morphemes
are
morphemes which stand midway between a root and an affix; they can
function as an independent full-meaning word and an affix at the same
time, e.g. to speak ill
of sb – to be ill-dressed
/ ill-bred
/ ill-fed;

Semi-prefixes:
half-,
mini-, midi-, maxi-, self-, by-
etc.;

Semi-suffixes:
-man,
-like, -proof, -friendly, -oriented, -ware
etc

Semantic
classification of morphemes:

According
to the role
they play in the structure of words, morphemes fall into:

root
(radical)
morphemes
–
the
lexical nuclei of words which are characterised by individual lexical
meaning shared
by no other morpheme of the language; the root remains after the
removal of all functional and derivational affixes and does not admit
any further analysis, e.g teach—
in to
teach, teacher, teaching;

non-root
morphemes represented
by
inflectional
morphemes (inflections) and affixational morphemes (affixes).

According
to the position
in a word, affixational morphemes fall into:

prefixes
– derivational affixes standing before the stem and modifying its
meaning, e.g. ex-minister,
in-sensitive,
re-read
etc.; about 51 in the system of Modern English;

suffixes
– derivational affixes following the stem and forming a new
derivative within the same part of speech (e.g. king-dom,
book-let,
child-hood
etc.) or in a different word class (e.g. do-er,
wash-able,
sharp-en
etc.);

infixes
–
affixational
morphemes
placed
within a word, e.g –n–
in stand.

According
to their functions
and meaning,
affixes fall into:

derivational,
e.g. suffixes: abstract-noun-makers
(-age,
-dom, -ery, -ing, -ism);
concrete-noun-makers (-eer,
-er, -ess, -let);
adverb-makers (-ly,
-ward(s),
-wise);
verb-makers (-ate,
-en, -ify,
—ize/-ise);
adjective-/noun-makers (-ful,
-ese, -(i)an, -ist),
etc.; they are attached to a derivational
base;
they are the object of study of derivational
morphology
which investigates the way in which new items of vocabulary can be
built up out of combinations of elements;

functional
(inflectional), e.g. -s
(plurality; 3rd person singular); ‘s
(genitive case); —n’t
(contracted negative); -ed
(past tense; past participle); -ing
(present participle); -er,
-est
(comparison); they are attached to a morphological
stem;
they are the object of study of inflectional
morphology which
deals with the way words vary in their form in order to express a
grammatical contrast.

derivational
affixes

encode
lexical meaning;

are
syntactically irrelevant;

can
occur inside derivation;

often
change the part of speech;

are
often semantically opaque;

are
often restricted in their
productivity;

are
not restricted to suffixation.

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Описание презентации по отдельным слайдам:

• 

  1 слайд

  WORD-STRUCTURE
  Morphemic Structure of Words
  Lecture 8

• 

  2 слайд

  1. Word-Structure and Morphemes

  Morphe – ‘form’ + -eme. The Greek suffix – eme has been adopted by linguists to denote the smallest unit (phoneme, sememe, lexeme)

  Word-structure is internal organization of words.
  The morpheme is the smallest indivisible two-facet language unit.

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  3 слайд

  MORPHEMES
  Morphemes cannot be segmented into smaller units without losing their constitutive essence (two-facetedness) – association of a certain meaning with a certain sound-pattern.
  Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words but not independently.

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  4 слайд

  SEGMENTATION OF WORDS
  INTO MORPHEMES
  Boiler = boil- + er;
  Driller = drill- + er ;
  recurrence of the morpheme -er in these and other similar words and of the morphemes boil- and drill- in
  to boil, a boil, boiling and
  to drill, a drill, drilling, a drill-press, etc.

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  5 слайд

  SEGMENTATION OF WORDS
  INTO MORPHEMES
  flower-pot = flower- + -pot;
  shoe-lace = shoe- + -lace;
  Like a word a morpheme is a two-facet language unit, an association of a certain meaning with a certain sound-pattern.
  Unlike a word a morpheme is not an autonomous unit and can occur in speech only as a constituent part of the word.
  Lace [l], [ei] ,[s] — without meaning.

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  6 слайд

  Word-cluster
  please pleasing pleasure pleasant
  [pli:z] [pli:z] [pleʒ] [plez]

  All the representations of the given morpheme that manifest alteration are called allomorphs of that morpheme or morpheme variants.
  Thus, [pli:z], [plez] and [рlеʒ] are allomorphs of оnе and the same morpheme.

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  7 слайд

  The root-morphemes
  in the word-clusters
  Duke [dju:k], ducal [‘dju:kl],
  duchess [‘d˄tʃiƨ], duchy [‘d˄tʃi]
  or
  Poor [puə] , poverty [‘povəti] —
  are the allomorphs of one morpheme

• 

  8 слайд

  2.1. Semantic Classification of Morphemes
  Root-morphemes (radicals) — the lexical nucleus of words, which has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language:
  Helpless, handy, rewrite, hopeful, disorder
  Help- hand- -write hope- -order
  The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster:
  work- in to work, worker, working or
  theor- in theory, theorist, theoretical, etc.

• 

  9 слайд

  Non-root morphemes
  Non-root morphemes include inflectional morphemes (inflections) and affixational morphemes (affixes). Inflections carry only grammatical meaning.
  Lexicology is concerned only with affixational morphemes.
  A prefix: understand – mis-understand, correct – in-correct).
  A suffix: (-en, -y, -less in heart-en heart-y, heart-less).

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  10 слайд

  2.2. Structural Classification of Morphemes
  A free morpheme — one that coincides with the stem or a word-form. Many root-morphemes are free morphemes, for example, use − of the noun useless is a free morpheme because it coincides with one of the forms of the noun use.
  A bound morpheme — a morpheme that must be attached to another element. It occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Affixes are bound morphemes for they always make part of a word, for example:-ness, -ship in the words kind-ness, friend-ship; un-, dis- in the words un-tidy, dis-like.

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  11 слайд

  All unique roots and pseudo-roots are-bound morphemes.
  Such are the root-morphemes theor- in theory, theoretical, etc.,
  barbar-in barbarism, barbarian, etc.,
  -ceive in conceive, perceive, etc.

• 

  12 слайд

  Semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes -morphemes that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme: the morpheme well and half can occur as free morphemes: sing well, half a month.
  They can also occur as bound morphemes in words like well-known, half-eaten, half-done.

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  13 слайд

  The relationship between the two classifications of morphemes

• 

  14 слайд

  Word-structure
  on the morphemic level:
  1st Group — Combining forms are morphemes borrowed namely from Greek or Latin in which they exist as free forms. They are considered to be bound roots: tele-phone consists of two bound roots.
  Phonoscope = ‘sound’ + ‘seeing’;
  Microscope = ‘smallness’ + ‘seeing’;
  Telegraph = ‘far’ + ‘writing’;

• 

  15 слайд

  The 2nd Group embraces morphemes occupying a kind of intermediate position, morphemes that are changing their class membership.
  Root morpheme man – in postman, fisherman, gentleman, etc. in comparison with man-made, man-servant.
  -man = -er; in cabman, chairman, tradesman
  Not a male adult But agent!
  * She is an Englishman
  *All women are tradesmen.

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  16 слайд

  3. TYPES OF MEANING IN MORPHEMES
  In morphemes can be singled out different types of meaning depending on the semantic class they belong to.
  Root-morphemes have lexical, differential and distributional types of meaning.
  Affixational morphemes have lexical, part of-speech, differential and distributional types of meaning.
  Both root-morphemes and affixational morphemes are devoid of grammatical meaning.

• 

  17 слайд

  3.1. LEXICAL MEANING
  Root-morphemes have an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morphemes in the language: light, deaf, deep, etc.
  Affixational morphemes have a more generalizing character of lexical meaning: the suffix –en carries the meaning “the change of a quality”, e.g. to lighten – to become lighter, to deafen – to make somebody deaf.

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  18 слайд

  Morphemes may be also analyzed into denotational and connotational components:

  The connotational component of meaning may be found in affixational morphemes: -ette (kitchenette); -ie (dearie, girlie); -ling (duckling) bear a heavy emotive charge.

• 

  19 слайд

  The affixational morphemes with the same denotational meaning sometimes differ only in connotation: the morphemes –ly, –like, -ish in the words womanly, womanlike, womanish have the same denotational meaning of similarity but differ in the connotational component (женственный – женский – бабий).

• 

  20 слайд

  Stylistic reference may be found in morphemes of different types: the affixational morphemes –
  -ine (chlorine), -oid (rhomboid)
  are bookish.

• 

  21 слайд

  3.2. DIFFERENTIAL MEANING
  Differential meaning is the semantic component that serves to distinguish one word from all others containing identical morphemes. In words consisting of two or more morphemes, one of the constituent morphemes always has differential meaning: in the word forehead the morpheme – head serves to distinguish the word from other words containing the morpheme fore-: forefoot, forepart, foreground.

• 

  22 слайд

  3.2. DISTRIBUTIONAL MEANING
  Distributional meaning is the meaning of the order and arrangement of morphemes making up the word.
  It is found in all words containing more than one morpheme: the word teacher is composed of two morphemes teach- and –er both of which possess the denotational meaning ‘to help students to learn something’ and ‘the doer of the action’.
  A different arrangement of the same morphemes *erteach would make the word meaningless.

• 

  23 слайд

  3.4. PART-OF-SPEECH MEANING
  Part-of-speech meaning is the indicative of the part of speech to which a derivational word belongs: the affixational morpheme – ness (darkness) is used to form nouns, while the affixational morpheme –less (careless) forms adjectives.
  Sometimes the part-of-speech meaning of morphemes predominates: the morpheme –ice in the word justice serves principally to transfer the part-of-speech meaning of the morpheme just- into another class and namely that of the noun.

• 

  24 слайд

  4. MORPHEMIC TYPES OF WORDS
  According to the number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphic (root-words) and polymorphic words.
  Monomorphic or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme: small, dog, make, put, doll, pen, ect.

• 

  25 слайд

  Polymorphic words according to the number of root-morphemes are classified into:
  Monoradical words (having one-root morpheme) fall into three subtypes:
  radical-suffixal words, i.e. words consisting of one root-morpheme and two or more suffixal morphemes, for example, respectable, respectability;
  radical-prefixal words, i.e. words consisting of one root-morpheme and a prefixal morpheme, for example, overcome, unbutton;
  prefixo-radical-suffixal words, i.e. words which consist of one root, prefixal and suffixal morphemes (e.g. unforgettable, misinterpretation).

• 

  26 слайд

  Polyradical words (having words consisting of two or more roots) fall into two subtypes:
  polyradical words which consist of two or more roots with no affixational morpheme, for example, pen-friend, copybook;
  polyradical words which contain at least two roots and one or more affixational morpheme, for instance, safety-pin, light-mindedness, pen-holder.

• 

  27 слайд

  5. TYPES OF WORD-SEGMENTABILITY
  Word-segmentability is the division of words into morphemes.
  Three types of morphemic segmentability of words are distinguished:
  complete,
  conditional,
  defective.

• 

  28 слайд

  5.1. COMPLETE SEGMENTABILITY
  Complete segmentability
  is characteristic of words, the morphemic structure of which is transparent enough, as their individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word and can be easily isolated.

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  29 слайд

  The morphemes making up words of complete segmentability are called morpheme proper or full morphemes

  The transparent morphemic structure of the segmentable words careless, stressful is conditioned by the fact that their constituent morpheme recur with the same meaning in other words: thoughtful, powerful.

• 

  30 слайд

  5.2. CONDITIONAL SEGMENTSBILITY
  Conditional segmentability characterizes words whose segmentation into the constituent morphemes is doubtful for semantic reasons.
  In the words retain, detain or deceive the sound-cluster – [ri-], [di-] seem to be singled out easily due to their recurrence in a number of words (cf. rewrite, reorganize, decode, deorganize).

• 

  31 слайд

  Neither [ri-], [di-] nor [-tain], [si:v] possess any lexical or part-of-speech meaning of their own.

  They have differential and distributional meanings: the [ri-] distinguishes retain from detain and the [-tein] distinguishes retain from receive, whereas their order and arrangement point to the status of the re-, de- as different from that of the –tain and –ceive within the structure of the words.

• 

  32 слайд

  The morphemes making up words of conditional segmentability do not rise to the status of full morphemes for semantic reason and that is why are called pseudo-morphemes or
  quasi-morphemes.

• 

  33 слайд

  5.3. DEFECTIVE SEGMENTABILITY
  Defective segmentability is the property of words whose component morphemes seldom or never recur in other words.
  One of the component morphemes of these words is a unique morpheme, which is isolated and understood as meaningful because the constituent morphemes display a more or less clear denotational meaning.
  In streamlet, ringlet, leaflet the morpheme –let has diminutive meaning.

• 

  34 слайд

  In the word hamlet деревушка the morpheme -let has the meaning of diminutiveness. This morpheme occurs in the words ringlet, leaflet, streamlet.
  The sound-cluster [hæm-] does not recur in any other English word.
  The morpheme ham- carries a differential and distributional meaning as it distinguishes hamlet from streamlet, ringlet.

• 

  35 слайд

  comparison with words
  Locket медальон, lionet, cellaret погребец, etc. leads one to the isolation of the morpheme -et having a diminutive meaning, the more so that the morphemes lock-, lion-, cellar-, etc. recur in other words: (cf. lock, locky; lion, lioness; cellar, cellarage).

• 

  36 слайд

  The isolation of the morpheme -et leaves in the word pocket the sound-cluster [роk] that does not occur in any other word of Modern English.
  The morpheme [роk] clearly carries a differential and distributional meaning as it distinguishes pocket from the words mentioned above and thus must be qualified as a unique morpheme.

• 

  37 слайд

  The morphemic analysis of words like
  cranberry, gooseberry, strawberry shows that they also possess defective morphemic segmentability: the morphemes cran-, goose-, straw- are unique morphemes.

• 

  38 слайд

  on the level of morphemic analysis
  the linguist has to operate with two types of elementary units, namely full morphemes and pseudo-(quasi-)morphemes.
  A considerable percentage of words of conditional and defective segmentability signals a relatively complex character of the morphological system of the language, reveals the existence of various heterogeneous layers in its vocabulary.

• 

  39 слайд

  7. PROCEDURE OF MORPHEMIC ANALYSIS
  The procedure of segmenting words into the constituent morphemes is known as the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents (any of two meaningful parts forming a larger linguistic unit. L. Bloomfield).
  It is based on a binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into.

• 

  40 слайд

  At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate constituents (ICs). Each IC at the next stage of analysis is broken into smaller meaningful elements.
  The analysis is completed when constituents are incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes.
  These morphemes are referred to as the Ultimate Constituents (UCs).

• 

  41 слайд

  The noun friendliness is first segmented into the ICs:
  friendly- (recurring in the adjectives friendly and friendly-looking).
  –ness (found in a countless number of nouns): happiness, darkness.
  The IC –ness is at the same time an UC of the noun, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning.
  The IC friendly- is next broken into the ICs
  friend- (recurring in friendship, unfriendly) and
  –ly (recurring in wifely, brotherly).
  The ICs friend- and –ly are both UCs of the word under analysis.

• 

  42 слайд

  The procedure of segmenting a word into its Ultimate Constituent morphemes

• 

  43 слайд

  8. PRINCIPLES OF WORD-SEGMENTATION
  According to the affix principle the segmentation of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of an affixational morpheme within a set of words, for example, the identification of the morphemes –less leads to the segmentation of words like thoughtless, careless, merciless into the suffixational morpheme –less and the root-morphemes thought-, care-, merci- within a word-cluster.

• 

  44 слайд

  According to the root principle the identification of the root-morpheme agree- in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree makes it possible to split these words into the root agree- and the affixational morphemes -able, -ment, dis-.

• 

  45 слайд

  Summary and Conclusions:
  There are two levels of approach to the study of word-structure: the level of morphemic analysis and the level of derivational or word-formation analysis.
  The basic unit of the morphemic level is the morpheme defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language unit.

• 

  46 слайд

  Summary and Conclusions:
  Three types of morphemic segmentability of words are distinguished in linguistic literature: complete, conditional and defective. Words of conditional and defective segmentability are made up of full morphemes and pseudo (quasi) morphemes. The latter do not rise to the status of full morphemes either for semantic reasons or because of their unique distribution.

• 

  47 слайд

  Summary and Conclusions:
  Semantically morphemes fall into root-morphemes and affixational morphemes (prefixes and suffixes); structurally into free, bound and semi-free (semi-bound) morphemes.
  The structural types of words at the morphemic level are described in terms of the number and type of their ICs as monomorphic and polymorphic words.

• 

  48 слайд

  References
  Зыкова И.В. Практический курс английской лексикологии. М.: Академия, 2006. – С. 52-56.
  Гинзбург Р.З. Лексикология английского языка. М.: Высшая школа, 1979. – С. 89-106.
  Антрушина Г.Б., Афанасьева О.В., Морозова Н.Н. Лексикология английского языка. М.: Дрофа, 2006. – С. – 78-128.

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• Курс профессиональной переподготовки «Разработка эффективной стратегии развития современного вуза»

• Курс профессиональной переподготовки «Организация технической поддержки клиентов при установке и эксплуатации информационно-коммуникационных систем»

• Курс повышения квалификации «Международные валютно-кредитные отношения»

• Курс профессиональной переподготовки «Информационная поддержка бизнес-процессов в организации»

Morphology

The term morphology is generally attributed to the German poet, novelist, playwright, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who coined it early in the nineteenth century in a biological context. Its etymology is Greek: morph- means ‘shape, form’, and morphology is the study of form or forms. In biology morphology refers to the study of the form and structure of organisms, and in geology it refers to the study of the configuration and evolution of land forms. In linguistics morphology refers to the mental system involved in word formation or to the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed.

In linguistics, morphology is the study of word structure. While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other words by rules. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog, dogs and dog-catcher are closely related. English speakers recognize these relations by virtue of the unconscious linguistic knowledge they have of the rules of word-formation processes in English. Therefore, these speakers intuit that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; similarly, dog is to dogcatcher as dish is to dishwasher. The rules comprehended by the speaker in each case reflect specific patterns (or regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies such patterns of word-formation across and within languages, and attempts to explicate formal rules reflective of the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.

In many languages, what appear to be single forms actually turn out to contain large number of ‘word-like’ elements. For examples, in Swahili (spoken through-out East Africa), form nitakupenda conveys what, in English, would have to be represented as something like I will love you. Now, is the Swahili form a single word? If it is a ‘word’, then it seems to consist of a number of elements which, in English, turn up as separate ‘words’. A rough correspondence can be presented in the following way:

ni      -ta     -ku       -penda

I        will    you      love

         It would seem that this Swahili ‘word’ is rather different from what we think of as an English ‘word’. Yet, there clearly is some similarity between the languages, in that similar element of the whole message can be found in both. Perhaps a better way of looking at linguistic forms in different languages would be to use this notion of ‘elements’ in the message, rather than depend on identifying only ‘words’.

         The type of exercise we have just performed is an example of investigating basic forms in language, generally known as morphology. This term, which literally means ‘the study of forms’, was originally used in biology, but, since, the middle of the nineteenth century, has also been used to describe the type of investigation that analyzes all those basic ‘elements’ used in a language. What we have been describing as ‘elements’ in the form of a linguistic message are technically known as ‘morphemes’.

     Morphemes

         A morpheme is the minimal linguistic unit which has a meaning or grammatical function. Although many people think of word as the basic meaningful elements of a language, many words can be broken down in to still smaller units, called morphemes. In English, for example, the word ripens consists of three morphemes: ripe plus en plus s. -En is a morpheme which changes adjectives into verb: ripe is an adjective, but ripen is a verb. Ripens is still a verb: the morpheme –s indicate that the subject of the verb is third person singular and that the action is neither past nor future.

         A major way in which morphologists investigate words, their internal structure, and how they are formed is through the identification and study of morphemes, often defined as the smallest linguistic pieces with a grammatical function. This definition is not meant to include all morphemes, but it is the usual one and a good starting point. A morpheme may consist of a word, such as hand, or a meaningful piece of a word, such as the –ed of looked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. Another way in which morphemes have been defined is as a pairing between sound and meaning. We have purposely chosen not to use this definition. Some morphemes have no concrete form or no continuous form, as we will see, and some do not have meanings in the conventional sense of the term.

         You may also run across the term morph. The term ‘morph’ is sometimes used to refer specifically to the phonological realization of a morpheme. For example, the English past tense morpheme that we spell -ed has various morphs. It is realized as [t] after the voiceless [p] of jump (cf. jumped), as [d] after the voiced [l] of repel (cf. repelled), and as [d] after the voiceless [t] of root or the voiced [d] of wed (cf. rooted and wedded). We can also call these morphs allomorphs or variants. The appearance of one morph over another in this case is determined by voicing and the place of articulation of the final consonant of the verb stem.

         A single word may be composed of one or more morphemes:

one morphemes                                           — boy

                                                                   — desire

two morphemes                                           — boy + ish

                                                                   — desire + able

three morphemes                                         — boy + ish + ness

                                                                   — desire + able + ity

four morpheme                                            — gentle + man + li + ness

                                                                   — un + desire + able + ity

more than four                                             — un + gentle + man + li + ness

                                                                   — anti + dis + establish + ment + ari + an + ism

         Those morphemes which can stand alone as words are said to be free morphemes, e.g. ripe and artichoke. Those which are always attached to some other morpheme are said to be bound, e.g. —en, -s, un-, pre-.

         Notice that the term morpheme has been defined as “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function” to show that different morphemes serve different purposes. Some morphemes derive (create) new words by either changing the meaning (happy vs. unhappy, both adjectives) or the part of speech (syntactic category, e.g. ripe, an adjective, vs. ripen, a verb) or both. These are called derivational morphemes. Other morphemes changes neither part of speech nor meaning, but only refine and give extra grammatical information about the already existing meaning of a word. Thus, cat and cats are both nouns and have the same meaning (refer to the same thing), but cats, with the plural morpheme -s, contains the additional information that there are more than one of these things (Notice that the same information could be conveyed by including a number before the word – the plural -s marker then would not be needed at all). These morphemes which serve a purely grammatical function, never creating a different word, but only a different form of the same word, are called inflectional morphemes.

         Both derivational and inflectional morphemes are bound forms and are called affixes. When they are attached to other morphemes they change the meaning or the grammatical function of the word in some way, as just seen; when added to the beginning of a word or morphemes they are called prefixes, and when added to the end of a word or morpheme they are called suffixes. For examples, unpremeditatedly has two prefixes (one added to the front of the other) and two suffixes (one added to the end of the other), all attached to the word meditate.

         Below are listed four characteristic which separate inflectional and derivational affixes:

1.      Inflectional Morphemes:

a.       Do not change meaning or part of speech, e.g., big and bigger are both adjective.

b.      Typically indicate syntactic or semantic relations between different words in a sentence, e.g.

c.       The present tense morpheme –s in waits shows agreement with the subject of the verb (both are third person singular).

d.      Typically occur with all members of some large class of morphemes, e.g. the plural morphemes occur with most nouns.

e.       Typically occur at the margin of words, e.g., the plural morphemes –s always come last in a word, as in baby-sitters or rationalizations.

2.      Derivational Morphemes:

a.       Change meaning or part of speech, e.g. –ment forms nouns, such as judgment, from verbs, such as judge.

b.      Typically indicate semantic relations within the word, e.g. the morpheme –ful in painful has no particular connection with any other morpheme beyond the word painful.

c.       Typically occur with only some members of a class of morphemes, e.g., the suffix –hood occurs with just a few nouns such as brother, neighbor, and knight, but not with most others, e.g., friend, daughter, candle, etc.

d.       Typically occur before inflectional suffixes, e.g., in chillier, the derivational suffix –y comes before the inflectional –er.

                   Now consider the word reconsideration. We can break it into three morphemes: re-, consider, and -ation. Consider is called the stem. A stem is a base morpheme to which another morphological piece is attached. The stem can be simple, made up of only one part, or complex, itself made up of more than one piece. Here it is best to consider consider a simple stem. Although it consists historically of more than one part, most present-day speakers would treat it as an unanalyzable form. We could also call consider the root. A root is like a stem in constituting the core of the word to which other pieces attach, but the term refers only to morphologically simple units. For example, disagree is the stem of disagreement, because it is the base to which -ment attaches, but agree is the root. Taking disagree now, agree is both the stem to which dis- attaches and the root of the entire word. Returning now to reconsideration, re- and -ation are both affixes, which means that they are attached to the stem. Affixes like re- that go before the stem are prefixes, and those like -ation that go after are suffixes.

         Some readers may wonder why we have not broken -ation down further into two pieces, -ate and -ion, which function independently elsewhere. In this particular word they do not do so (cf. *reconsiderate), and hence we treat -ation as a single morpheme.

         It is important to take very seriously the idea that the grammatical function of a morpheme, which may include its meaning, must be constant. Consider the English words lovely and quickly. They both end with the suffix -ly. But is it the same in both words? o – when we add —ly to the adjective quick, we create an adverb that describes how fast someone does something. But when we add -ly to the noun love, we create an adjective. What on the surface appears to be a single morpheme turns out to be two. One attaches to adjectives and creates adverbs; the other attaches to nouns and creates adjectives.

         There are two other sorts of affixes that you will encounter, infixes and circumfixes. Both are classic challenges to the notion of morpheme. Infixes are segmental strings that do not attach to the front or back of a word, but rather somewhere in the middle. The Tagalog infix -um- is illustrated below (McCarthy and Prince 1993: 101–5; French 1988). It creates an agent from a verb stem and appears before the first vowel of the word:

(1)     root               —um—

         /sulat/             /s-um-ulat/                    ‘one who wrote’

         /gradwet/        /gr-um-adwet/              ‘one who graduated’

(2)     root               believe                          verb

         stem              believe + able               verb + suffix

         word              un + believe + able       prefix + verb + suffix

(3)     root               Chomsky                      (proper) noun

         stem              Chomsky + ite              noun + suffix

         word              Chomsky + ite + s        noun + suffix + suffix

The existence of infixes challenges the traditional notion of a morpheme as an indivisible unit. We want to call the stem sulat ‘write’ a morpheme, and yet the infix -um- breaks it up. Yet this seems to be a property of –umrather than one of sulat. Our definition of morphemes as the smallest linguistic pieces with a grammatical function survives this challenge.

         Circumfixes are affixes that come in two parts. One attaches to the front of the word, and the other to the back. Circumfixes are controversial because it is possible to analyze them as consisting of a prefix and a suffix that apply to a stem simultaneously. One example is Indonesian ke . . . -an. It applies to the stem besar ‘big’ to form a noun ke-besar-an meaning ‘bigness, greatness’ (MacDonald 1976: 63; Beard 1998: 62). Like infixes, the existence of circumfixes challenges the traditional notion of morpheme (but not the definition used here) because they involve discontinuity.

The inflectional Suffixes of English

Base	Suffix	Function
Wait Wait Wait Eat Chair Chair Fast Fast	-s -ed -ing -en -s -‘s -er -est	3rd p sg present Past tense Progressive Past participle Plural marker Possessive Comparative adjective or adverb Superlative adjective or adverb

     The Classification of Morphemes

     Free Morphemes.

                   Free morphemes are morphemes that can stand by themselves as single word. Examples: child, teach, kind, open, tour, etc. Free morphemes fall into two categories:

     —   Lexical Morphemes

          Morphemes that set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that we think of as the words that carries the `content` of the message as we convey. Some example: tiger, yellow, sad, open, look, follow, etc.

     —   Functional Morphemes

          Functional morphemes are morphemes that consist largely of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, preposition, articles and pronouns. Example: and, but, above, when, because, in, the, that, it, etc.

     Bound Morphemes

         Morphemes which are can not normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form, example: re-, -ist, -ed, -s. They were identified as affixes. So we can say that affixes (prefixes and suffixes) in English are bound morphemes.

For example:

Undressed	Carelessness
u-	Dress	-ed	care	-less	-ness
prefix	Stem	Suffix	stem	Suffix	suffix
(bound)	(free)	(bound)	(free)	(bound)	(bound)

Bound morphemes fall into two categories:

—      Derivational Morphemes

          Morphemes that are used to make new words or to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem, for example the additional of the derivational morpheme -ness change the adjective good to the noun goodness. The noun care can become the adjective careful or careless by the addition of the derivational morpheme –ful or –less. A list of derivational morphemes will include suffixes such as the ­–ish in foolish, and the -ment in payment. The list will also include prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un-, and many more.

—      Inflectional Morphemes

          These are not used to produce new words in the language, but rather to indicate aspects of grammatical function of a word. In flectional, morphemes are used to show if a word is plural or singular, if it is past tense or not and if it is comparative or possessive form. English has only eight inflectional morphemes (or ‘inflections’), illustrated in the following sentences.

Jim’s two sisters are really different.

One likes to have fun and is always laughing.

The other liked to read as child and has always taken things seriously.

One is the loudest person in the house in the other is quitter than a mouse.

From these examples, we can see that two of the inflection. –‘s (possessive) and –s plural, are attached to nouns. They are four inflections attached to verbs, -s (3^rd person singular), —ing (present participle), -ed (past tense), and –en (past participle). There are two inflections attached to adjective –est (superlative) and –er (comparative).

Noun      +          -s. –s

Verb       +          -s, -ing, -ed, -en

Adj         +          -est, er.

     Allomorph

         In the preceding chapters, it was assumed that every morpheme has only one form. In reality, languages are more complex; morphemes frequently have more than one form. For example, the English perfect tense. Suffix for some verbs is the same as the past tense form (divided, mended while for other verbs, the perfect tense form is the suffix –en (written, given), and the stem /rait/ write is changed to /rit/ and combined with the perfect tense suffix, to form written.

         In order to account for the various forms or given morpheme, linguistics have posited a type of pseudomorpheme called morph. Morph are isolated by the procedures. In fact, had we been speaking precisely, each of the units discovered by those initial procedures would have been called a morph, rather than a morpheme. Morphs may be said to represent morpheme, a morpheme may be represented by one or more morphs. The various morphs which represent one morpheme are called allomorphs.

         Two or more morphs are allomorphs of a single morpheme if they have the same meaning and are in complementary distribution i.e., never in contrast in the same context. This is only a working definition, too simplistic to cover all the questions that arise in morpheme identification. But it is a beginning, and some of the problems involved will be discussed below.

         By comparing the above forms, ree go out, bani wake up, etc. can be identified, leaving the first CV. (consonant-vowels sequence) of each form as some kind of prefix. The completive aspect morpheme, indicated by bl-, has only one form in data. The habitual aspect, however is indicated by two different forms: ru- and ri-. To conclude that these two morphs are allomorphs of a single morpheme, it must be determined that they carry the same meaning and that they are in complementary distribution. A quick inspection reveals that ru- and ri- do not occur with the same stems.

     Morphological Analysis

         Words are analyzed morphologically with the same terminology used to describe different sentence types:

—      a simple word has one free root, e.g., hand.

—      a complex word has a free root and one or more bound morphs, or two or more bound morphs, e.g., unhand, handy, handful.

—      a compound word has two free roots, e.g., handbook, handrail, handgun

—      a compound-complex word has two free roots and associated bound morphs, e.g., handwriting, handicraft.

Morphological Analysis versus Morphemic Analysis

         The importance of the distinction between morph and morpheme is that there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between morph and morpheme, and morphemes can combine or be realized in a number of different ways. We can thus analyze words in two different ways: in morphological analysis, words are analyzed into morphs following formal divisions, while in morphemic analysis, words are analyzed into morphemes, recognizing the abstract units of meaning present.

         If we start first with nouns, we would arrive at the two analyses of each of the following two words:

                   Morphological Analysis                     Morphemic Analysis

Writers        3 morphs writ/er/s                                3 morphemes {WRITE} + {-ER} + {pl}

Authors       2 morphs author/s                                2 morphemes {AUTHOR} + {pl}

Mice           1 morph mice                                       2 morphemes {MOUSE} + {pl}

Fish 1 morph fish                                         2 morphemes {FISH} + {pl}

Children      2 morphs child/ren                               2 morphemes {CHILD} + {pl}

Man’s         2 morphs man/s                                   2 morphemes {MAN} + {poss}

Men’s         2 morphs men/s                                    3 morphemes {MAN} + {pl} + {poss}.

  You should note that the morphemes, since they are abstractions, can be represented any way one wants, but it is customary to use lexemes for roots and descriptive designations for inflectional morphemes, such as {pi} rather than {-S} for the plural marker and {poss}  rather than {-S} for the possessive marker, since these can often be realized by a number of different forms. The descriptive designations that we will use should be self-evident in the following discussion (also see the list of abbreviations in Appendix I).

  A noun such as sheep raises a difficulty for morphemic analysis, since it is either singular or plural. Should we postulate two morphemic analyses?

{SHEEP} + {p1}

{SHEEP} + {sg}

  This seems a good idea. If we postulate a morpheme for singular, even though it’s never realized, we can account for number systematically. Thus, we will analyze singular nouns as containing an abstract {sg} morpheme, so that man’s above would have the analysis {MAN} + {sg} + {poss}, writer the analysis {WRITE} + {-ER} + {sg}, and author the analysis {AUTHOR} + {sg}.

Let us look at how morphological and morphemic analysis works in adjective:

                        Morphological Analysis         Morphemic Analysis

     Smaller        2morphs small/er                     2morphemes {SMALL} + {compr}

     Smallest       2morphs small/est                    2morphemes {SMALL} + {supl}

     Better          1morph better                          2morphemes {GOOD} + {compr}

     Best             1morph best                             2morphemes {GOOD} + {supl}

(Here, compr = comparative degree and supl = (superlative degreee). Again we need to postulate a morpheme positive degree {pos}, even though it is never realized, to account systematically for the inflected forms of adjectives:

good            1morp good                             2morphemes {GOOD} + {pos}

For verbs, the two analyses work as follows:

                   Morphological Analysis Morphemic Analysis

Worked       2morphs work/ed                     2morphemes {WORK} + {past}

                   2morphemes                             {WORK} + {pstprt}

Wrote          1morph wrote                          2morphemes {WRITE} + {past}

Written        1morph written                        2morphemes {WRITE} + {pstprt}

Working      2morphs work/ing                    2morphemes {WORK} + {pstprt}

                                                                   3morphemes {WORK} + {gerund} + {sg}

Put               1morph put                              2morphemes {PUT} + {past}

                                                                        2morphemes {PUT} + {pstprt}

  We have to analyze  -ing verbal forms not only as present participles, but also as “gerunds”, or verbal nouns, as in Swimming is good exercise. Since gerunds are functioning as nouns, they may sometimes be pluralized, e.g.:

     Sitting          3 morphs sitt/ing/s                     3 morphemes {SIT} + {gerund} + {pl}

          We need to postulate a morpheme {pres}, which is never realized, to account coherently for the distinction past versus present.

Work          1 morph work                          2 morphemes {WORK} + {pres}

The morphemic analysis of pronouns is somewhat more complicated:

                   Morphological Analysis         Morphemic Analysis

We              1 morph we                              3 morphemes {1st p} + {pl} + {nomn}

Him             1 morph him                             3 morphemes {3rd p} + {sg} + {m} + {obj}

Its                2 morphs it/s                             3 morphemes {3rd p} + {sg} + {n} + {poss}

Morphemes combine and are realized by one of four morphological realization rules:

1.      Agglutinative rule – two morphemes are realized by morphs which remain distinct and are simply “glued” together, e.g. {WRITER} + {pl} > weiters.

2.      Fusional rule – two morphemes are realized by morphs which do not remain distinct but are fused together, e.g., {TOOTH} + {pl} > teeth.

3.      Null realization rule – a morpheme is never realized as a morph in any word of the relevant class, e.g., {sg} on nouns, which never has concrete realization in English.

4.      Zero-rule – a morpheme is realized as a zero morph in particular members of a word class, e.g., {SHEEP} + {pl} > sheep. Note that in most other members of the class noun, {pl} has concrete realization as –s.

References

Brinton, Laurel J (2000). The Structure Of Modern English: A Linguistic Introduction. Philadelphia: Benjamins Publishing Company.

Fromklin, V. et.al (2001). An introduction to the teory of word structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University.

Goldberg, Adele (1995). Constructions. A construction-based approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Team work (2008). Selected Readings For Morphology. Malang: The Stated Islamic University of Malang.

Tata. A.M. Green Module Phonology, Morphology, Syntax & Semantics. Self-Circle.

Verhaar. Dr. John W.M. general Linguistic. Jogjakarta. Gajah Mada University Pers.

WORD STRUCTURE IN MODERN ENGLISH

  I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of morphemes. Allomorphs.

II.   Structural types of words.

III.   Principles of morphemic analysis.

  IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of stems. Derivational types of words.

I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of Morphemes.  Allomorphs.

There are two levels of approach to the study of word- structure: the level of morphemic analysis and the level of derivational or word-formation analysis.

Word is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of linguistic analysis.

It has been universally acknowledged that a great many words have a composite nature and are made up of morphemes, the basic units on the morphemic level, which are defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language units.

The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphe “form ”+ -eme. The Greek suffix –eme has been adopted by linguistic to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these cases a recurring discrete unit of speech. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of single morpheme. Even a cursory examination of the morphemic structure of English words reveals that they are composed of morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and affixational morphemes. Words that consist of a root and an affix are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word building known as affixation (or derivation).

The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of the word; it has a very general and abstract lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words constituting one word-cluster, e.g. (to) teach, teacher, teaching. Besides the lexical meaning root-morphemes possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots.

Affixational morphemes include inflectional affixes or inflections and derivational affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms. Derivational affixes are relevant for building various types of words. They are lexically always dependent on the root which they modify. They possess the same types of meaning as found in roots, but unlike root-morphemes most of them have the part-of-speech meaning which makes them structurally the important part of the word as they condition the lexico-grammatical class the word belongs to. Due to this component of their meaning the derivational affixes are classified into affixes building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.

Roots and derivational affixes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, fill-, are understood as the lexical centers of the words, and –less, -y,      -ness, -er, re- are felt as morphemes dependent on these roots.

 Distinction is also made of free and bound morphemes.

Free morphemes coincide with word-forms of independently functioning words. It is obvious that free morphemes can be found only among roots, so the morpheme boy- in the word boy is a free morpheme; in the word undesirable there is only one free morpheme desire-; the word pen-holder has two free morphemes  pen- and hold-. It follows that bound morphemes are those that do not coincide with separate word- forms, consequently all derivational morphemes, such as –ness, -able, -er are bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes theor- in the words theory, theoretical, or horr- in the words horror, horrible, horrify; Angl- in  Anglo-Saxon; Afr- in Afro-Asian are all bound roots as there are no identical word-forms.

It should also be noted that morphemes may have different phonemic shapes. In the word-cluster please , pleasing , pleasure , pleasant the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other. All the representations of the given morpheme, that manifest alternation are called allomorphs/or morphemic variants/ of that morpheme.

The combining form allo- from Greek allos “other” is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members together consistute a structural unit of the language (allophones, allomorphs). Thus, for example, -ion/ -tion/ -sion/ -ation are the positional variants of the same suffix, they do not differ in meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound form depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. They are considered as variants of one and the same morpheme and called its allomorphs.

Allomorph is defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment and so characterized by complementary description.

Complementary distribution is said to take place, when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment.

Different morphemes are characterized by contrastive distribution, i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different meanings. The suffixes –able and –ed, for instance, are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because adjectives in –able mean “ capable of beings”.

Allomorphs will also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on the initials of the stem with which they will assimilate.

Two or more sound forms of a stem existing under conditions of complementary distribution may also be regarded as allomorphs, as, for instance, in long a: length n.

II. Structural types of words.

The morphological analysis of word- structure on the morphemic level aims at splitting the word into its constituent morphemes – the basic units at this level of analysis – and at determining their number and types. The four types (root words, derived words, compound, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive ways of word building.

According to the number of morphemes words can be classified into monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphic or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All polymorphic word fall into two subgroups:  derived words and compound words – according to the number of root-morphemes they have. Derived words are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes, e.g. acceptable, outdo, disagreeable, etc. Compound words are those which contain at least two root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant. There can be both root- and derivational morphemes in compounds as in pen-holder, light-mindedness, or only root-morphemes as in lamp-shade, eye-ball, etc.

These structural types are not of equal importance. The clue to the correct understanding of their comparative value lies in a careful consideration of: 1)the importance of each type in the existing wordstock, and 2) their frequency value in actual speech. Frequency is by far the most important factor. According to the available word counts made in different parts of speech, we find that derived words numerically constitute the largest class of words in the existing wordstock; derived nouns comprise approximately 67% of the total number, adjectives about 86%, whereas compound nouns make about 15% and adjectives about 4%. Root words come to 18% in nouns, i.e. a trifle more than the number of compound words; adjectives root words come to approximately 12%.

But we cannot fail to perceive that root-words occupy a predominant place. In English, according to the recent frequency counts, about 60% of the total number of nouns and 62% of the total number of adjectives in current use are root-words. Of the total number of adjectives and nouns, derived words comprise about 38% and 37% respectively while compound words comprise an insignificant 2% in nouns and 0.2% in adjectives. Thus it is the root-words that constitute the foundation and the backbone of the vocabulary and that are of paramount importance in speech. It should also be mentioned that root words are characterized by a high degree of collocability and a complex variety of meanings in contrast with words of other structural types whose semantic structures are much poorer. Root- words also serve as parent forms for all types of derived and compound words.

III. Principles of morphemic analysis.

In most cases the morphemic structure of words is transparent enough and individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word. The segmentation of words is generally carried out according to the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on the binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents. Each Immediate Constituent at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referred to Ultimate Constituents.

A synchronic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by the procedure known as the analysis into Immediate Constituents. ICs are the two meaningful parts forming a large linguistic unity.

The method is based on the fact that a word characterized by morphological divisibility is involved in certain structural correlations. To sum up: as we break the word we obtain at any level only ICs one of which is the stem of the given word. All the time the analysis is based on the patterns characteristic of the English vocabulary. As a pattern showing the interdependence of all the constituents segregated at various stages, we obtain the following formula:

un+ { [ ( gent- + -le ) + -man ] + -ly}

Breaking a word into its Immediate Constituents we observe in each cut the structural order of the constituents.

A  diagram presenting the four cuts described looks as follows:

1. un- / gentlemanly

2.   un- / gentleman / — ly

3.   un- / gentle / — man / — ly

4.   un- / gentl / — e / — man / — ly

A similar analysis on the word-formation level showing not only the morphemic constituents of the word but also the structural pattern on which it is built.

The analysis of word-structure at the morphemic level must proceed to the stage of Ultimate Constituents. For example, the noun friendliness is first segmented into the ICs: [frendlı-] recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and [-nıs] found in a countless number  of nouns, such as unhappiness, blackness, sameness, etc. the IC [-nıs] is at the same time an UC of the word, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. Any further division of –ness would give individual speech-sounds which denote nothing by themselves. The IC [frendlı-] is next broken into the ICs [-lı] and [frend-] which are both UCs of the word.

Morphemic analysis under the method of Ultimate Constituents may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root-principle and affix principle.

According to the affix principle the splitting of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of the affix within a set of words, e.g. the identification of the suffix –er leads to the segmentation of words singer, teacher, swimmer into the derivational morpheme – er  and the roots teach- , sing-, drive-.

According to the root-principle, the segmentation of the word is based on the identification of the root-morpheme in a word-cluster, for example the identification of the root-morpheme agree-  in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree.

As a rule, the application of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentation of words.

However, the morphemic structure of words in a number of cases defies such analysis, as it is not always so transparent and simple as in the cases mentioned above. Sometimes not only the segmentation of words into morphemes, but the recognition of certain sound-clusters as morphemes become doubtful which naturally affects the classification of words. In words like retain, detain, contain or  receive, deceive, conceive, perceive the sound-clusters [rı-], [dı-] seem to be singled quite easily, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing in common with the phonetically identical prefixes  re-, de- as found in words re-write, re-organize, de-organize, de-code. Moreover, neither the sound-cluster [rı-] or [dı-], nor the [-teın] or [-sı:v] possess any lexical or functional meaning of their own. Yet, these sound-clusters are felt as having a certain meaning because [rı-] distinguishes retain from detain and [-teın] distinguishes retain from receive.

It follows that all these sound-clusters have a differential and a certain distributional meaning as their order arrangement point to the affixal status of re-, de-, con-, per- and makes one understand —tain and –ceive as roots. The differential and distributional meanings seem to give sufficient ground to recognize these sound-clusters as morphemes, but as they lack lexical meaning of their own, they are set apart from all other types of morphemes and are known in linguistic literature as pseudo- morphemes. Pseudo- morphemes of the same kind  are also encountered in words like rusty-fusty.

IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of Stems. Derivational types of word.

The morphemic analysis of words only defines the constituent morphemes, determining their types and their meaning but does not reveal the hierarchy of the morphemes comprising the word. Words are no mere sum totals of morpheme, the latter reveal a definite, sometimes very complex interrelation. Morphemes are arranged according to certain rules, the arrangement differing in various types of words and particular groups within the same types. The pattern of morpheme arrangement underlies the classification of words into different types and enables one to understand how new words appear in the language. These relations within the word and the interrelations between different types and classes of words are known as derivative or word- formation relations.

The analysis of derivative relations aims at establishing a correlation between different types and the structural patterns words are built on. The basic unit at the derivational level is the stem.

The stem is defined as that part of the word which remains unchanged throughout its paradigm, thus the stem which appears in the paradigm (to) ask ( ), asks, asked, asking is ask-; thestem of the word singer ( ), singer’s, singers, singers’ is singer-. It is the stem of the word that takes the inflections which shape the word grammatically as one or another part of speech.

The structure of stems should be described in terms of IC’s analysis, which at this level aims at establishing the patterns of typical derivative relations within the stem and the derivative correlation between stems of different types.

There are three types of stems: simple, derived and compound.

Simple stems are semantically non-motivated and do not constitute a pattern on analogy with which new stems may be modeled. Simple stems are generally monomorphic and phonetically identical with the root morpheme. The derivational structure of stems does not always coincide with the result of morphemic analysis. Comparison proves that not all morphemes relevant at the morphemic level are relevant at the derivational level of analysis. It follows that bound morphemes and all types of pseudo- morphemes are irrelevant to the derivational structure of stems as they do not meet requirements of double opposition and derivative interrelations. So the stem of such words as retain, receive, horrible, pocket, motion, etc. should be regarded as simple, non- motivated stems.

Derived stems are built on stems of various structures though which they are motivated, i.e. derived stems are understood on the basis  of the derivative relations between their IC’s and the correlated stems. The derived stems are mostly polymorphic in which case the segmentation results only in one IC that is itself a stem, the other IC being necessarily a derivational affix.

Derived stems are not necessarily polymorphic.

Compound stems are made up of two IC’s, both of which are themselves stems, for example match-box, driving-suit, pen-holder, etc. It is built by joining of two stems, one of which is simple, the other derived.

In more complex cases the result of the analysis at the two levels sometimes seems even to contracted one another.

The derivational types of words are classified according to the structure of their stems into simple, derived and compound words.

Derived words are those composed of one root- morpheme and one or more derivational morpheme.

Compound words contain at least two root- morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant.

Derivational compound is a word formed by a simultaneous process of composition and derivational.

Compound words proper are formed by joining together stems of word already available in the language.

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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.

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

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.