Morphology: The

Words of Language
TSLB3013 LINGUISTICS
W8-1 AUGUST 2016

Morphology: The Words of Language

Definitions of Morphology & Morpheme
Types of Morphemes :o free morpheme
o bound morpheme
o derivational & inflectional

What is Morphology?

The study of the internal structure of

words, and the interrelationships among
words.
The word morphology consists of two
morphemes: morph + ology.
The suffix ology means science of or
branch of knowledge
concerning
So the meaning of morphology is the

What is Morphology?

Every word has its internal structure.

For example:
Our intuitions tell us that the word
change cannot be broken down into any
meaningful parts.
In contrast, the words changes,
changed, changer, changing seems to

What is Morpheme?

It is derived from the Greek word

morphe, which means form.
It is a linguistic term for the most
elemental unit of grammatical form or
the basic parts of a complex word in a
language. They cannot be broken down
any further into recognizable or
meaningful parts.

What is Morpheme?

Singular Noun
Plural Nous
Boy
Boys
Date
Dates
Bib
Bibs
Cake
Cakes
Brother
Brothers

What is Morpheme?
Each of the plural nouns listed is made up of
two morphemes:
i) a base morpheme such as boy and date.
ii) a plural morpheme, -s, which is
attached to the base morpheme.
Therefore, morphemes are the minimal units of
word-building in a language: they cannot be
broken down any further into recognizable
parts.

What is Morphology?
A single word may contain one (monomorphemic) or
more morphemes (polymorphemic):

One morpheme:
(boy) , (desire)
Two morphemes:
(boy + ish), (desire + able)
Three morphemes:
(boy + ish + ness), (desire + able + ity)

What is Morphology?
Four morphemes:
(-gentle + man + li + ness)
(-un + desire + able + ity)
More than four:
(-un + gentle + man + li + ness)
(-anti + dis + establish + ment + ari + an +
ism)

What is Morpheme?

The meaning of a morpheme must be

constant.
The agentive morpheme er means one who
does (singer, painter, lover, worker) but the
same sound represents the comparative
morpheme, meaning more (nicer, prettier,
taller).
Thus, two different morphemes may be

What is Morpheme?

The same sound may occur in another word

and not represent a separate morpheme
(ex: finger).
On the contrary the two morphemes er
and ster have the same meaning, but
different forms. (ex: singer and songster
mean one who sings).
All these follow from the concept of the

WORDS

Words fall into two general classes: simple

and complex.
Simple words(ex: boy, desire) are single free
morphemes that cannot be broken down
further into meaningful parts.
Complex words (ex: disagreement,
undesirable) consist of two or more
morphemes in combination.
Complex words consist of a morpheme

WORDS

Root is morpheme around which words can be

built up through the addition of affixes.
Example of English roots are read in reader, do
in redo, ceive in conceive and ling in linguist.
A root may or may not stand alone.
Read and do may stand alone whereas ceive
and ling may not stand alone.
When a root morpheme is combined with an
affix, it forms a stem and a new word.

Types of Morphemes

Morphemes can be categorized

into two classes:
1) A Free Morpheme
2) A Bound Morpheme

A FREE MORPHEME
It is a unit of meaning which can stand alone as an
independent word or alongside another free or bound
morpheme.
For example: the word tree, rake, date
It cannot be split into anything smaller.
Content words (open class) and function words (closed class)
are free morphemes.

A FREE MORPHEME
Content words- independent words. For example:
brother, run, tall, quickly (nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs).
Function words serve to indicate some grammatical
function in a phrase or sentence. For example:
conjunction (and, or), articles and demonstrative (the, a,
this, that, etc) and prepositions (to, from, at, with, etc).

A BOUND MORPHEME
It is a unit of meaning which can only exist
alongside a free morpheme
must be attached to another
morpheme/word.
Affixes are bound.

A BOUND MORPHEME
Affixes are referred to:
i) prefixes are attached to the beginning of another
morpheme (such as prefix re- in words like redo,
rewrite, rethink).
ii) suffixes are attached to the end of another
morpheme (such as suffix ise/ize in words like
modernize, equalize, centralize and suffix ing in
words sleeping, eating and running ).

A BOUND MORPHEME
Many languages have prefixes and suffixes. However they may
differ in how they deploy these morphemes.
A morpheme that is a prefix in one language may be a suffix in
another and vice versa.
For example: in English the plural morphemes s and es are
suffixes (boys). In Insthmus Zapotec, spoken in Mexico, the plural
morpheme ka is a prefix ( zigi = chin
kazigi = chins)

A BOUND MORPHEME
Certain languages (but not English) also have affixes known as
infixes.
For example in Bontoc Igorot, a language of the Philippines,
the infix in is used to indicate the product of a completed
action (Sapir 1921). The word kayu meaning wood. When
the infix in is inserted after the first consonant k to form the
word kinayu (meaning gathered wood).
Some language have circumfixes- morphemes that are
attached to a base morpheme both initally and finally (German)

Free Morpheme and Bound

Morpheme
Affixes (prefixes and suffixes) that are attached to words follow certain
grammatical properties of the given word classes.
For example:
Verbs take the suffix s (ex: -walk-walks) in the present tense. Suffix
er (walk-walker). Verbs can take the suffix ing (drink -drinking).
Verbs have a special form used in the past tense (wait-waited) but
irregular verbs form the past tense in other ways (sing- -sang).

Adjectives can
take the suffixes
er and est
(ex: big - biggerbiggest) but some
adjectives cannot
take -er or est
instead with words
more and most (ex:
beautiful- more
beautiful -

Adverbs share
many of the
properties of
adjectives and are
often formed from
adjectives by the
addition of the
suffix ly.

Free Morpheme and Bound

Morpheme
It must be noted that not all bound morphemes are affixes.
For example: (in English) certain words have contracted forms.
They will go OR in a contracted form, spelled ll is a bound
morpheme in that it cannot occur as an independent word and
must be attached to the preceding word/phrase theyll.

Free Morpheme and Bound

Morpheme
s the contracted form of is - The old cars not
running anymore
ve- the contracted form of have- Theyve gone
jogging.
d- the contracted form of would- Id like to be rich.
m- the contracted form of am- Im not going.

Free Morpheme and Bound

Morpheme
Another type of bound morpheme is illustrated by
the morpheme cran-, which occurs in words such
as cranberry, cranapple, and cranprune. The form
cran-cannot stand alone as a free morpheme must
occur within words such as just cited. For this
reason, cran- is a bound morpheme.

MORPHEMES
FREE MORPHEMES BOUND MORPHEMES

CONTENT WORDS

FUNCTION WORDS

AFFIXES

BOUND

CONTRACTED
(open classes)
BASES

(closed classes)

FORMS
Prefixes

Noun
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs

Conjunctions (and, or)

Articles (the, a)
Demonstratives (this, that)
Prepositions (to, from, at)
Comparatives (more, less)

reun:
:
:

-s
-ize
:
:

Summary of the classification of morphemes

cran:

ll
d
ve

Suffixes

References
MORPHEMES

1. Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. M.

(2013). An introduction to language (10th ed.).
Boston: Cengage Learning.
2. Finegan, E. (2014). Language: Its structure
and use (7th ed.). Australia: Cengage Learning.
3, Roach, P. (2010). English phonetics and
phonology (4th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Name other prefixes in English

PREFIXES

MEANING

KEY WORDS

Non-

not

Nonresident, nonconformist,
nonsense

Name other suffixes in English

SUFFIXES

MEANING

KEY WORDS

-cide

Killer, killing

Patricide, matricide,
regicide

Task 3
Find an article from the newspaper. Identify the 15 words which
have free and bound morphemes.
Separate the bound and free morphemes in the table