LEXEME

FORMATION:
THE FAMILIAR
MORPHOLOGY

By:
Fedrata Erdinansyah
Deby Mariska
INTRODUCTION
Take a look at the words below:
– autoclave (verb)
– head bracelet (noun)
– conversate (verb)
– deBaathification (noun)
– oversuds (verb)
– McDonaldization (noun)
– unwipe (verb)
KINDS OF MORPHEMES
Most native speakers of English will recognize that words like unwipe, head bracelet or
MacDonaldization are made up of several meaningful pieces, and will be able to split them into
those pieces:
 un / wipe
 head / bracelet
 McDonald / ize / ation
These pieces are called morphemes, the minimal meaningful units that are used to form words.

Free Morpheme is morpheme that can stand alone or independently as a word,

Example: Wipe, Head, Bracelet, McDonald

Bound Morpheme is morpheme that can NOT stand alone as a word.

Example: un-, -ize-, -ation
KINDS OF MORPHEMES

The morpheme bond is divided into two varieties:

1) Affixes, included Prefixes (eg: re- , un-) and Suffixes (eg: -ness , -ize).

Base is the semantic core of the word to which the prefixes and
suffixes attach. Example:
wipe is the base of unwipe, and McDonald is the base of
McDonaldization.

Derivation is the process of forming a new word from an existing

word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as -ness or un-.
Example: happiness and unhappy derive from the rood word happy
KINDS OF MORPHEMES

2) Bound base is morphemes that cannot stand alone as words, but are
not prefixes or suffixes (eg: endo-, path, -derm).

Sometimes, as is the case with the morphemes path or derm, they

can occur either before or after another bound base:
 path precedes the base –ology (pathology), but follows the base
psych(o) (psychopath).
 derm precedes another base in dermatitis but follows one in
endoderm.
This suggests that path and derm are not prefixes or suffixes: there is
no such thing as an affix which sometimes precedes its base and
sometimes follows it.
KINDS OF
MORPHEMES
 MINOR PROCESESS
Affixation, compounding, and conversion are the most common ways of forming
new words, at least in English. In addition, there are a number of less common
ways in which new lexemes may be formed, Among them are:

1. Coinage
Coinage is of course possible to make up entirely new words from whole
cloth, and a procces.
New products are sometimes given coined names like Kodak, Xerox, or
Kleenex, and these in turn sometimes come to be used as common
nouns: kodak was at one time used for cameras in general, and xerox and
kleenex are still used respectively for copiers and facial tissue by some
American English speakers. But it’s relatively rare to coin new words.
MINOR PROCESSES

2. Backfromation
Backformation is the process of creating a new lexeme by removal actual or
supposed affixes. Example:
 Surveillance become Surveil
 Laison become Liaise
 Burglar become Burgle, etc

3. Blending
Blending is a process of word formation in which parts of lexemes that aren't
themselves morphemes are combined to form a new lexeme. Example:
 Skitch (combination of skate and hitch)
meaning: ‘to propel oneself while on a skateboard or in-line skates by
hanging onto a moving vehicle’
 Splog (combination of spam and blog)
meaning: ‘a fake blog’
 Vortal (combination of vertical and portal), etc
MINOR PROCESSES

4. Acronyms and initialisms

Acronyms, the new word is pronounced as a word, rather than as a series of
letters. Example:
 UNESCO (United Nations Educational,Scientific,and Cultural Organization) pronounced
/juːˈnes.kəʊ/
 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) pronounced /ˈneɪ.təʊ/
 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) pronounced /əˈziː.ən/ ,etc

Initialisms, Initialization is similar to acronyms in that they are composed of the

first letters of a phrase, but unlike acronyms, they are pronounced as a series
of letters. Example:
 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) pronounced /ɛf bi aɪ/
 UK (United Kingdom) pronounced /ˌjuːˈkeɪ/
 IMF (International Monetary Fund) pronounced /ˌaɪ.emˈef/ ,etc
MINOR PROCESSES

5. Clipping
Clipping is a means of creating new words by shortening already existing words.
Example:
 Info from Information
 Fridge from Refrigerator
 Lab from Laboratory
 Prof from Professor
 etc.
HOW TO:
MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
We should begin to get a sense of how to figure out how the word formation system of another
language works.
How do linguists go about deciding what words are complex in an unfa-miliar language, what
sorts of processes are involved in creating complex words, and how to analyze individual
words? Consider the words in, from the language Dyirbal, a language of the Pama-Nyungan
family, for-merly spoken in Australia, but now, according to Ethnologue, nearly extinct;
data from Dixon (1972: 222–33):
HOW TO:
MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Just by looking at the Dyirbal words (a) and (b) and their glosses, you really can’t tell anything. But as soon as
you look at example (c) and its gloss, you will notice some overlap with (b).
Both examples share the gloss ‘like a’, and both have some characters at the end that overlap (aŋaru). So you
might make a tentative hypothesis that these words are complex, and that they can be broken down into two
morphemes, yaɽaŋaru and gugulaŋaru, respectively. You might also hypothesize that yaɽ means ‘man’,
gugul means ‘platypus’, and aŋaru means ‘like a’. This is a good first guess, but you should always be prepared
to revise your analysis as you look at more data.
If you then move on and look at examples (d–f), you’ll notice that they all share part of their meanings ‘proper’,
and the end of each word has the sequence (baᶁun). It’s therefore reasonable to make the hypothesis that
baᶁun means ‘proper’, and that what’s left over means ‘water’ in (d), ‘boomerang’ in (e), and ‘man’ in (f).
But now, we need to look back at our analysis of (b), because our first hypothesis was that yaɽ meant
‘man’, and what’s left over in (f) is not yaɽ but yaɽa. We therefore need to go back and revise our analysis of
examples (b) and (c) to be consis-tent with what we’ve learned from examples (d–f ). This means that (b)
should be divided into yaɽaŋaru and (c) should be divided into gugulaŋaru.
so far is summarized in
THANK YOU By:
Fedrata Erdinansyah
Deby Mariska