MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WORDS

MORPHEMES (free and bound morphemes)

What is the word?

The important point to remember about definitions is that they should indicate the most
essential characteristic features of the notion expressed by the term under discussion, the
features by which this notion is distinguished from other similar notions. For instance, in
defining the word one must distinguish it from other linguistic units, such as the phoneme,
the morpheme, or the word-group. In contrast with a definition, a description aims at
enumerating all the essential features of a notion.
The word may be described as the basic unit of the language. It is composed of one or
more morphemes (minimal units of syntax in a language, units from which words are
formed), each consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation and
of united meaning and form. Morphemes are also meaningful units but they cannot be used
independently, they are always parts of words can be used as a complete utterance (see
chapter 2 and chapter 3)
When used in sentences together with other words they are syntactically organized.

Their freedom of entering into syntactic constructions is limited by many factors, rules and
constraints.
Being the central element of any language system, the word is a sort of focus for the
problems of phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology and for some other sciences that
have to deal with language and speech, such as philosophy and psychology, and probably
quite a few other branches of knowledge.
The semantic-phonological approach may be illustrated by A.H.Gardiner‘s (1922:355)
definition: ―A word is an articulate sound-symbol in its aspect of denoting something
which is spoken about.
The eminent French linguist A. Meillet (1866-1936) combines the semantic, phonological

and grammatical criteria and advances a formula, which underlies many subsequent
definitions:“A word is defined by the association of a particular meaning with a particular
group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. The word is the
fundamental unit of a language. It is a dialectical unity of form and content “(Meillet
1926:30).
One common definition of a word given by Julia Falk is the following: -“A word is any
unit of language that, in writing appears between spaces or between a space and a hyphen.”
The investigation of actual linguistic performance – speaking and writing – reveals little
about the concept ―word. It is sometimes said that a word is any linguistic unit that is
capable of occurring as a minimum free form. A linguistic unit is said to be a free form, if it
may occur as an entire utterance; that is, if it is capable of independent use. Thus, any

normal English sentence is a free form, e.g. ―Some students demonstrated when the

president arrived on campus.

Units smaller than sentences also are free forms, such as the sentence fragment: ―When

the president arrived on campus.

No matter how great your knowledge of language or your imagination may be, you will

probably find it difficult to produce a free form by dividing a word ―demonstrate into

parts. Thus, ―demonstrate is a minimum free form. It is capable of independent use but can
not be separated into smaller forms that also occur independently. Perhaps, word is not a
single concept at all but rather at least three related concepts: 1.A word as a purely linguistic
unit of competence. 2. A word as a unit of performance is used in speech and 3. A word as a
unit of performance is used in writing.
As we see, the definition of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics because the
simplest word has many different aspects: phonemes, morphemes, various meanings, etc.
Being the central element of any language system, the word is a sort of focus for the
problems of phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology and for some other sciences that
have to deal with language and speech, such as philosophy and probably quite a few other
branches of knowledge. Thomas Hobbes defines the word as ―not mere sounds but names
of matter, H.Sweet – as ―the minimum sentence, L.Bloomfield as ―a minimum free form.
E.Sapir calls the word ―one of the smallest, completely satisfying bits of isolated meanings
into which the sentence resolves itself. E. Sapir points out very important characteristic

features of words, its indivisibility, e.g. a lion and alive. A lion – is a word-group because

we can separate its elements and insert other words between them: a living lion, a dead

lion. Alive – is a word; it is indivisible. The morpheme a – is not free, it is not a word.
 John Lyons points out that word should be discussed in terms of two criteria ―positional
mobility and ―uninterruptability. To illustrate the first he segments into morphemes the

following sentence: E.g. the – boy – s – walk – ed - slow – ly – up – the – hill.

The sentence may be regarded as a sequence of the morphemes, which occur in a

particular order relative to one another:

Slow – ly – the – boy – s – walk – ed – up – the – hill
Up – the – hill – slow – ly – walk – ed – the – boy – s
There is no possibility of the sequence – s – the – boy, ly – slow, ed – walk. One of the
characteristics of the word is that it tends to be internally stable, but positionally mobile.
S. Ullman defines the word as connected discourse that falls into a certain number of
meaningful segments, which are ultimately composed of meaningful units.
At last, we may define the word summarizing all the given definitions:
To sum up: The word is one of the fundamental units of language. It is a dialectical unity
of form and content. Notions fixed in the meanings of words are formed as generalized and
approximately correct reflections of reality; therefore, in signifying those words reflect
reality in their content. The acoustic aspect of the words serves to name the objects of
reality not to reflect them. In this sense, the word may be regarded as a sign. The whole
process of its development motivates this sign.
The term ―motivation” is used to denote the relationship existing between the
morphemic or phonemic composition and structural pattern of the word on the one hand,
and its meaning on the other.
There are three main types of motivation: phonetic motivation, morphological

motivation, and semantic motivation. E.g. hiss, bang, buzz, cuckoo, giggle, purr, etc. are
motivated phonetically; re-think, racialist, vitaminize, kindness, etc are motivated
morphologically; compounds – eyewash, heart-breaking, air-taxi, etc. are motivated
semantically as they are used figuratively.
When the connection between the phonetic and morphological structure of the word
and its meaning is conventional and there is no synchronously perceptible reason for the
word having the phonetic shape and morphological composition it has, the word is said to

be non-motivated. E.g. ―earn in old English meant – earnian – to harvest – now it is

non- motivated.
 It is clear that words don‘t constitute the smallest meaningful units in a language.
Instead, words are constructed of smaller units, called morphemes by most linguists (the
term formative is also found in some modern discussions of word formation). Morphemes
are the minimal units of syntax in a language – units from which words are formed.
Morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. However,
unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of
words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Are they
divisible into smaller meaningful units? That is why the morpheme may be defined as the
minimum meaningful language unit.
To sum up, morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit possessing meaning. It is the smallest
meaningful unit, two-faced one, but in contrast to the word it cannot function independently. We
use them only when we speak of word structure and word formation.

Many simple words consist of only a single morpheme : dog, cat, book. Other words are

more complicated: - word ―textbook consist of two morphemes – ―text and ―book. The
identification analyses and description of morphemes, as well as the study of word
formation is called morphology.
The term morpheme is derived from Gr. morphe-form =eme. The morpheme is the

smallest meaningful unit of form. A morpheme is not necessarily a word itself. For example,
words-dogs, baked, badly, kindness- contain two morphemes; one of those morphemes is
also a word, the other is not: s, d, ly, ness are not words.
Structurally morphemes fall into three types; 1) free morphemes: 2) bound morphemes: 3)
semi-hound (semi-free) morphemes. Morphemes that don‘t occur independently as we have
already mentioned, are called bound morphemes, but those which can occur independently
are calledfree morphemes. Bound morphemes occur only as a constituent part of a word.
Affixes are bound morphemes for they always make part of a word. Every free morpheme is
a word, but not every word is necessarily a free morpheme (i.e. some words contain more
than one morpheme).
Semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes are morphemes that can function in a morphemic
sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme. For example, the morphemes well and
half on the one hand occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the word-
 form in the utterances to sleep well, half an hour, on the other hand well and half occur
as bound morphemes in the words well-known,halftone.
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 that 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. Simple abbreviations: exam,

gym, lab, doc, etc. Compound abbreviations: BBC, NATO, TV, etc. Paradigmatic relations
reveal themselves on this level in such semantic groups of words as word families, synonyms
in the polysemy of words.
Types of meanings in morphemes.
In morphemes, different types of meaning can be singled out depending on the semantic
class morphemes belong to. Root morphemes possess lexical, differential and distributional
types of meaning. Affix morphemes have lexical, word classes (part-of speech), differential
and distributional types of meaning. Both root-morphemes and affix morphemes are devoid
of grammatical meaning.
Lexical meaning. The lexical meaning of root-morphemes differs from that of affix
morphemes. Root-morphemes have an individual lexical meaning shared by no other
morphemes in the language. The lexical meaning of affix morphemes is of a more
generalizing character.
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. For example, in the word bookshelf the morpheme -shelf serves to distinguish the

word from other words containing the morpheme bookcase, bookstore.

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. For example, the word singer is composed of two morphemes sing-
and -er both of which possess the denotative meaning — to make musical sounds and
the doer of the action. A different arrangement of the same morphemes would make the
word meaningless.
Word class (Part-of-speech) meaning. In most cases, affix morphemes are indicative of the
part of speech to which a derivational word belongs. For example, the affix morpheme -
ment (movement) is used to form nouns, while the affix morpheme -less (careless) forms
adjectives.
There are a number of differences among bound morphemes concerning their role in
the formation of words in human languages. Morphemes that serve as the basis for words
are called roots, while the attached bound morphemes are called affixes. The latter are

subdivided according to their position into prefixes, suffixes and infixes, and according to
their function and meaning into derivational and functional affixes, the latter are called
endings and outer formatives. Functional or inflectional affixes do not change the part of
speech of the root to which they are attached and derivational affixes often produce some
change, i.e. new words may be created in a language; e.g.
Derivational Inflectional
affixes suffixes
undo John‘s
anticlerical tempts
quickly jumped
national taken
symbolize pieces
rename reading

In English, there is usually only one inflectional affix in each word (the only exception is s
―plural ands―possessive, for we can say the cats’ cheese, when cats’ is both plural and
possessive, but pronunciation of cats‘ contains only one sound. In contrast to the
inflectional affixes, many words contain several derivational affixes; e.g. –
unkindly. Derivational affixes appear next to the root or next to another derivational affix.
Inflectional affixes occur in English at the very end of a word, following any derivational
affixes that
may be present: - considerations, democratized. In English derivational affixes tends to be
much larger than the number of inflectional affixes, but inflectional affixes are more
frequently used than any particular derivational affix.
When a derivational or functional (inflectional) affix is stripped from the word, what
remains is a stem (SB). A stem is 1) the part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its
paradigm (secondary stem), e.g. worker, lucky – the secondary stems are: worker- (cf. workers,

worker’s) and lucky- (cf. luckier, luckiest). 2) The part of the word that remains when the
immediate derivational affix is stripped off, i.e. the part on which the word is built (primary or
derivational stem), e.g. the primary stems of worker, lucky are work and luck. Kinds of stems:

simple, e.g. place, green, derived, e.g. useful, uselessness, bound, e.g. arrogance, arrogant, compound,

e.g. trade-union, etc. The stem is a single morpheme. It contains nothing but the root, so it is a

simple stem. It is also a free stem because it is homonymous to the word heart. The stem
containing one or more affixes is a derived stem. (E.g. hearty –heartier heartiest-hearty-is a
derived stem).Bound stems are especially characteristic of loan words. E.g. French
borrowings: arrogance, clarity, courage, coward, etc. After the suffixes of these words are
taken away, the remaining elements are: arrog, clar-, cdow-, cour, etc. which doesn‘t
coincide with any semantically related independent words.
The paradigm is defined as the system of grammatical forms characteristic of a word (e.g. ed-
verb, s-verb, noun, er, est-adj.adv., etc. near-nearer-nearest; son, son‘s, sons, sons!).
The principal morpheme is the root (or simple stem) the lexical nucleus common to a
semantically elevated group of words (word family), e.g. help, helper, helpless,
helpful, helplessly, helpfully. Roots are main morphemic vehicles of a given idea in a given
language at a given stage of its development. A root may be homonymous with the
word. Not all roots are free forms, but productive roots, i.e. roots capable of producing new
words.
The semantic realization of an English word is very specific. Its dependence on
distribution is further enhanced by the widespread occurrence of homonymy among both
the morphemes and affixes.
Unlike roots, affixes are always bound forms. A suffix is a derivational morpheme

following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or different
word class. Prefix is derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying
meaning. Prefix expresses the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb:

stay-
outstay (smb); an infix is an affix placed within a word, like – n in – stand, sport-s-man.
The type is not productive. An affix should not be confused with a combining form. A
combing form is also a bound but it can be distinguished from an affix historically by the
fact that it is always borrowed from another language, namely from Latin and Greek, in
which it existed as a free form, a separate word, e.g. kako-Gr.-―bad in words

cacophony-ill sound, cacoephy-bad pronunciation, policlinic, polymer, stereophonic,

television… Nouns can be created from verbs in English by the addition of a
derivational suffix to the verb. Such
derivation of nouns from verbs is known as nominalization e.g.
construction.