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.
Morphology is the study of words and their parts. Morphemes, like prefixes, suffixes and base words, are defined as the smallest meaningful units of meaning. Morphemes are important for phonics in both reading and spelling, as well as in vocabulary and comprehension.
Why use morphology
Teaching morphemes unlocks the structures and meanings within words. It is very useful to have a strong awareness of prefixes, suffixes and base words. These are often spelt the same across different words, even when the sound changes, and often have a consistent purpose and/or meaning.
Types of morphemes
Free vs. bound
Morphemes can be either single words (free morphemes) or parts of words (bound morphemes).
A free morpheme can stand alone as its own word
- gentle
- father
- licence
- picture
- gem
A bound morpheme only occurs as part of a word
- -s as in cat+s
- -ed as in crumb+ed
- un- as in un+happy
- mis- as in mis-fortune
- -er as in teach+er
In the example above: un+system+atic+al+ly, there is a root word (system) and bound morphemes that attach to the root (un-, -atic, -al, -ly)
system = root un-, -atic, -al, -ly = bound morphemes
If two free morphemes are joined together they create a compound word. These words are a great way to introduce morphology (the study of word parts) into the classroom.
For more details, see:
Compound words
Inflectional vs. derivational
Morphemes can also be divided into inflectional or derivational morphemes.
Inflectional morphemes change what a word does in terms of grammar, but does not create a new word.
For example, the word <skip> has many forms: skip (base form), skipping (present progressive), skipped (past tense).
The inflectional morphemes -ing and -ed are added to the base word skip, to indicate the tense of the word.
If a word has an inflectional morpheme, it is still the same word, with a few suffixes added. So if you looked up <skip> in the dictionary, then only the base word <skip> would get its own entry into the dictionary. Skipping and skipped are listed under skip, as they are inflections of the base word. Skipping and skipped do not get their own dictionary entry.
Skip
verb, skipped, skipping.
- to move in a light, springy manner by bounding forward with alternate hops on each foot. to pass from one point, thing, subject, etc.,
- to another, disregarding or omitting what intervenes: He skipped through the book quickly.
- to go away hastily and secretly; flee without notice.
From
Dictionary.com — skip
Another example is <run>: run (base form), running (present progressive), ran (past tense). In this example the past tense marker changes the vowel of the word: run (rhymes with fun), to ran (rhymes with can). However, the inflectional morphemes -ing and past tense morpheme are added to the base word <run>, and are listed in the same dictionary entry.
Run
verb, ran, run, running.
- to go quickly by moving the legs more rapidly than at a walk and in such a manner that for an instant in each step all or both feet are off the ground.
- to move with haste; act quickly: Run upstairs and get the iodine.
- to depart quickly; take to flight; flee or escape: to run from danger.
From
Dictionary.com — run
Derivational morphemes are different to inflectional morphemes, as they do derive/create a new word, which gets its own entry in the dictionary. Derivational morphemes help us to create new words out of base words.
For example, we can create new words from <act> by adding derivational prefixes (e.g. re- en-) and suffixes (e.g. -or).
Thus out of <act> we can get re+act = react en+act = enact act+or = actor.
Whenever a derivational morpheme is added, a new word (and dictionary entry) is derived/created.
For the <act> example, the following dictionary entries can be found:
Act
noun
- anything done, being done, or to be done; deed; performance: a heroic act.
- the process of doing: caught in the act.
- a formal decision, law, or the like, by a legislature, ruler, court, or other authority; decree or edict; statute; judgement, resolve, or award: an act of Parliament.
From
Dictionary.com — act
React
verb
- to act in response to an agent or influence: How did the audience react to the speech?
- to act reciprocally upon each other, as two things.
- to act in a reverse direction or manner, especially so as to return to a prior condition.
From
Dictionary.com — react
Enact
verb
- to make into an act or statute: Parliament has enacted a new tax law.
- to represent on or as on the stage; act the part of: to enact Hamlet.
From
Dictionary.com — enact
Actor
noun
- a person who acts in stage plays, motion pictures, television broadcasts, etc.
- a person who does something; participant.
From
Dictionary.com — actor
Teachers should highlight and encourage students to analyse both Inflectional and Derivational morphemes when focussing on phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension.
For more information, see:
Prefixes, suffixes, and roots/bases
Many morphemes are very helpful for analysing unfamiliar words. Morphemes can be divided into prefixes, suffixes, and roots/bases.
- Prefixes are morphemes that attach to the front of a root/base word.
- Suffixes are morphemes that attach to the end of a root/base word, or to other suffixes (see example below)
- Roots/Base words are morphemes that form the base of a word, and usually carry its meaning.
- Generally, base words are free morphemes, that can stand by themselves (e.g. cycle as in bicycle/cyclist, and form as in transform/formation).
- Whereas root words are bound morphemes that cannot stand by themselves (e.g. -ject as in subject/reject, and -volve as in evolve/revolve).
Most morphemes can be divided into:
- Anglo-Saxon Morphemes (like re-, un-, and -ness);
- Latin Morphemes (like non-, ex-, -ion, and -ify); and
- Greek Morphemes (like micro, photo, graph).
It is useful to highlight how words can be broken down into morphemes (and which each of these mean) and how they can be built up again).
For example, the word <unreliability> may be unfamiliar to students when they first encounter it.
If <unreliability> is broken into its morphemes, students can deduce or infer the meaning.
So it is helpful for both reading and spelling to provide opportunities to analyse words, and become familiar with common morphemes, including their meaning and function.
Compound words
Compound words (or compounds) are created by joining free morphemes together. Remember that a free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand along as its own word (unlike bound morphemes — e.g. -ly, -ed, re-, pre-). Compounds are a fun and accessible way to introduce the idea that words can have multiple parts (morphemes). Teachers can highlight that these compound words are made up of two separate words joined together to make a new word. For example dog + house = doghouse
Examples
- lifetime
- basketball
- cannot
- fireworks
- inside
- upside
- footpath
- sunflower
- moonlight
- schoolhouse
- railroad
- skateboard
- meantime
- bypass
- sometimes
- airport
- butterflies
- grasshopper
- fireflies
- footprint
- something
- homemade
- backbone
- passport
- upstream
- spearmint
- earthquake
- backward
- football
- scapegoat
- eyeball
- afternoon
- sandstone
- meanwhile
- limestone
- keyboard
- seashore
- touchdown
- alongside
- subway
- toothpaste
- silversmith
- nearby
- raincheck
- blacksmith
- headquarters
- lukewarm
- underground
- horseback
- toothpick
- honeymoon
- bootstrap
- township
- dishwasher
- household
- weekend
- popcorn
- riverbank
- pickup
- bookcase
- babysitter
- saucepan
- bluefish
- hamburger
- honeydew
- thunderstorm
- spokesperson
- widespread
- hometown
- commonplace
- supermarket
Example activities of highlighting morphemes for phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension
There are numerous ways to highlight morphemes for the purpose of phonics, vocabulary and comprehension activities and lessons.
Highlighting the morphology of words is useful for explaining phonics patterns (graphemes) and spelling rules, as well as discovering the meanings of unfamiliar words, and demonstrating how words are linked together. Highlighting and analysing morphemes is also useful, therefore, for providing comprehension strategies.
Examples of how to embed morphological awareness into literacy activities can include:
- Sorting words by base/root words (word families), or by prefixes or suffixes
- Word Detective — Students break longer words down into their prefixes, suffixes, and base words
- e.g. Find the morphemes in multi-morphemic words like: dissatisfied unstoppable ridiculously hydrophobic metamorphosis oxygenate fortifications
- Word Builder — students are given base words and prefixes/suffixes and see how many words they can build, and what meaning they might have:
- Prefixes: un- de- pre- re- co- con-
Base Words: play help flex bend blue sad sat
Suffixes: -ful -ly -less -able/-ible -ing -ion -y -ish -ness -ment - Etymology investigation — students are given multi-morphemic words from texts they have been reading and are asked to research the origins (etymology) of the word. Teachers could use words like progressive, circumspect, revocation, and students could find out the morphemes within each word, their etymology, meanings, and use.
According
to the number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphic
and polymorphic.
Monomorphic
or
root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g., small,
dog, make, give, etc.
All polymorphic
words according to the number of root-morphemes are classified into
two subgroups: monoradical or root words and polyradical words, i.e.,
words which consist of two or more roots.
Monoradical
words fall into two subtypes: 1) radical-suffixal
words, i.e., words that consist of one root-morpheme and one or more
suffixal morphemes, e.g., acceptable,
acceptability, blackish; 2)
radical-prefixal
words, i.e., words that consist of one root-morpheme and a prefixal
morpheme, e.g. outdo,
rearrange, unbutton; and
3) prefixo-radical-suffixal,
i.e., words which consist of one root, a prefixal and suffixal
morphemes, e.g., disagreeable,
misinterpretation.
Polyradical
words
fall into two subtypes: 1) polyradical words which consist of two or
more roots with no affixational morphemes, e.g., book-stand,
eye-ball,
lamp-shade; and
2) words which contain at least two roots and one or more
affixational morphemes, e.g., safety-pin,
wedding-pie, class-
consciousness,
light-mindedness, pen-holder.
-
Derivational and morphemic levels of analysis
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.
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-.
-
Morphemic
word classification
-
Word
formation in Modern English
Word
formation is a branch of science of the language which studies the
patterns on which a language forms new lexical items (new unities,
new words). Word formation is a process of forming words by
combining root
& affixal morphemes.
Different
types of word formation:
—
COMPOUNDING is joining together 2 or more stems.
Types: 1) without
a connecting element (headache, heartbreak); 2) with a vowel or
consonant as a linking element (speedometer, craftsman); 3) with a
preposition or conjunction as a linking element down-and-out
(опустошенный)
son-in-law.
— PREFIXATION Prefixes are such particles that can be
prefixed to full words. But are themselves not with independent
existence.
— SUFFIXATION A suffix is a derivative final element
which is or was productive in forming new words. It has semantic
value, but doesn’t occur as an independent speech use.
—
CONVERSION (zero derivation) A certain stem is used for the formation
of a categorically different word without a derivative element being
added.(Bag – to bag)
— BACK DERIVATION is deraving a new word,
which is morphologically simpler from a more complex word. ( A
babysitter – to babysit Television – to
televise)
— PHONETIC SYMBOLISM is using characteristic speech
sounds for name giving. Very often we imitate by the speech sounds
what we hear: (tinkle, splash, t).
— CLIPPING Consists in the
reduction of a word to one of its parts. (
Mathematics – maths)
— BLENDING is blending part of two words to
form one word ( Smoke + fog = smog)
-
Morphological
structure of a word. Productive and non-productive ways of word
formation.
Morphology
is the study of the structure and form of words in language or a
language, including inflection, derivation, and the formation of
compounds. At the basic level, words are made of «morphemes.»
These are the smallest units of meaning: roots and affixes (prefixes
and suffixes). Native speakers recognize the morphemes as
grammatically significant or meaningful. For example, «schoolyard»
is made of «school» + «yard», «makes»
is made of «make» + a grammatical suffix «-s»,
and «unhappiness» is made of «happy» with a
prefix «un-» and a suffix «-ness».
Inflection
occurs when a word has different forms but essentially the same
meaning, and there is only a grammatical difference between them: for
example, «make» and «makes». The «-s»
is an inflectional morpheme.
In
contrast, derivation makes a word with a clearly different meaning:
such as «unhappy» or «happiness», both from
«happy». The «un-» and «-ness» are
derivational morphemes. Normally a dictionary would list derived
words, but there is no need to list «makes» in a dictionary
as well as «make.»
Word-formation
is the process of creating new words from the material available in
the word-stock according to certain structural and semantic patterns
specific for the given language. There are different ways of
word-formation in Modern English. Some of them are highly-productive.
They are: affixation, conversion, substantivation, compounding,
shortening, formation of phrasal verbs. Others are semi-productive
(back-formation, blending, reduplication, lexicalization of the
plural of nouns, sound imitation) and non-productive ways of
word-building (sound interchange, change of stress).
Non-productive
ways of word-building Sound interchange (gradation) is the process in
which word belonging to different parts of speech may be
differentiated due to the sound interchange in the root, eg food (n)
:: feed (v), gold (n) :: gild (v), sing (v) :: song (n) .Change of
stress is mostly observed in verb-noun pairs, eg transport> to
transport and much more seldom in verb-adjective pairs, to prostrate>
prostrate. The difference in stress often appeared after the verb was
formed and was not therefore connected with the formation of the new
word.
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Free Morphemes and Bound Morphemes
Morphemes that can stand alone to function as words are called free morphemes. They comprise simple words (i.e. words made up of one free morpheme) and compound words (i.e. words made up of two free morphemes).
Examples:
Simple words: the, run, on, well
Compound words: keyboard, greenhouse, bloodshed, smartphone
Morphemes that can only be attached to another part of a word (cannot stand alone) are called bound morphemes.
Examples:
pre-, dis-, in-, un-, -ful, -able, -ment, -ly, -ise
test,
dis
content,
in
tolerable,
re
ceive
Complex words are words that are made up of both free morpheme(s) and bound morpheme(s), or two or more bound morphemes.
Roll your mouse over the words below to see how many morphemes are there and whether they are free morphemes or bound morphemes.
| againstagainst | imperativeimperative | realize realize | submitsubmit |
| assignmentassign+ment | FacebookFace+book | uncommonun+common | misinterpretmis+interpret |
| disqualifieddis+qualify+ed | encountereden+counter+ed | geographygeo+graph+y | irresistibleir+resist+ible |
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