Morphology

Morphology is the construction of words. (McCabe, A., 2011). A word

has an internal cohesion and is indivisible by other units; A word can be
modified only externally by adding suffixes and prefixes. (Brinton, L. J.
and Brinton, D., 2010). Morphology considers the principles, processes,
and characteristics of word formation, the rules of how they are formed
in a studying language since it governs their flexion, composition and
derivation of it.

Morpheme

A morpheme is the smallest average unit in a language, it is not

necessarily equivalent to a word, but it can be a smaller unit. (McCabe,
A., 2011) In other words, the minimum parsable unit that has
grammatical meaning.

A morpheme has the following characteristics:

• It is internally indivisible; cannot be subdivided or analyzed into

smaller significant units

• It has internal stability since nothing can get in the way of a

morpheme.

• is externally transportable

• Has positional mobility or free distribution, which occurs in various

contexts.

The morpheme is represented between braces {}. (Brinton and Brinton,

2010)

Types of Morphemes

Free morphem
These morphemes those which can stand alone as words.
Also called an unbound morpheme or a free-standing
morpheme. Examples: dog, now, class, room, paper, carrot,
head. house, carrot, farm, run, duck and quick. none of these
words can be divided into smaller parts that are also
meaningful.(McCabe, 2011)

Affixes
Are bound morphemes which attach themselves to roots or
stems in various different ways. The affixes can be
Inflectional Affixes with these characteristics: only suffixes,
only one per word, attach to all (or most) members of a
word class, have one function: indicate grammatical
meaning. And Derivational Affixes with these
characteristics: either prefixes or suffixes, optionally more
than one per word, attach idiosyncratically to only a limited
number of roots, have two functions: to cover one part of
speech to another and to change the meaning of the root
precede the inflectional suffix.(Brinton & Brinton, 2010)
Prefixes
Is an affix is placed before the stem or root of a word. When
adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into
another word. Can be attached at the beginning of root or
stem morphemes (McCabe, 2011) for example,
in- invisible
pre- prehistory
non- nonfiction
Suffixes:
Is an affix which that attach after the stem or root of a word.
In other words, can be attached at the end of root or stem
morphemes, (McCabe, 2011) for example, s: Third-person
singular present, ed: past tense, s: plural, er: comparative, fy:
usually changes nouns into verbs, less: usually changes
nouns into adjectives, tion: usually changes verbs into noun,
among others.
-ity, -ty inactivity, veracity, parity, serenity
-ment argument, endorsement, punishment