• Morphology is the study of words.

• What are Morphemes?

• A "morpheme" is a short segment of language that

meets three basic criteria:

1. It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.

2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful

segments without changing its meaning or leaving a
meaningless remainder.

3. It has relatively the same stable meaning in different

verbal environments.
 Free and Bound Morphemes

• There are two types of morphemes- free

morphemes and bound morphemes.
• Free morphemes can occur alone and bound
morphemes must occur with another morpheme.

• An example of a free morpheme is "bad", and an

example of a bound morpheme is "ly."
• Free morpheme: bad
• Bound morpheme: -ly
• Word: badly
• 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
• pretest, discontent, intolerable, receive
• When we talk about words, there are two groups:
lexical (or content) and function (or grammatical)
words.
• Lexical words are called open class words and
include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. New
words can regularly be added to this group.
• Function words, or closed class words, are
conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns;
and new words cannot be (or are very rarely)
added to this class.
• Affixes are often the bound morpheme. This group
includes prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes.

• Prefixes are added to the beginning of another

morpheme, suffixes are added to the end, infixes are
inserted into other morphemes, and circumfixes are
attached to another morpheme at the beginning and
end.

Following are examples of each of these:

• Prefix: re- added to do produces redo
• Suffix: -or added to edit produces editor
• Infix: -um- added to fikas (strong) produces fumikas (to
be strong) in Bontoc
• Circumfix: ge- and -t to lieb (love) produces geliebt
(loved) in German
• There are two categories of affixes:
1. Derivational affixes are added to morphemes to form new words
that may or may not be the same part of speech .

Examples:
• {ize} attaches to a noun and turns it into a verb: rubberize

• {ize} also attaches to an adjective and turns it into a verb: normalize

• {ful} attaches to a noun and turns it into an adjective: playful, helpful

• {ly} attaches to an adjective and turns it into an adverb: grandly, proudly

• A different {ly} attaches to a noun and changes it into an adjective: manly,

friendly

• English also has derivational prefixes, such as:

• {un}, {dis}, {a}, {anti}, all of which indicate some kind of negation:
unhappy, dislike, atypical, anti-aircraft.
• inflectional affixes are added to the end of an existing word for
purely grammatical reasons. In English there are only eight
total inflectional affixes:

• {PLU} = plural Noun -s boys

• {POSS} = possessive Noun -’s boy’s

• {COMP} = comparative Adj -er older

• {SUP} = superlative Adj -est oldest

• {PRES} = present Verb -s walks

• {PAST} past Verb -ed walked

• {PAST PART} = past participle Verb -en driven

• {PRES PART} = present participle Verb ing driving

• All the words in a language can be broadly divided
into two categories, open and closed," writes
Thomas Murray in "The Structure of English,“

• Open Class words comprise a large portion of any

language. Unlike closed-class words, which are
finite, the possibility of creating and adding new
words to an open word-class is practically infinite..

• closed category does not readily accept new

words. "Its members are fixed and do not usually
change." Nouns, verbs, adverbs, and descriptive
adjectives are, as he puts it, "exactly those parts of
speech that remain open to new additions
• The other type of bound morphemes are called
bound roots.
• Telegraphic language has evolved to include many
forms of information exchange inherent to the
Internet and texting.

Six ways to form new words:

1. Compounds are a combination of words,

2. Acronyms are derived from the initials of words,
3. Back-formations are created from removing what
is mistakenly considered to be an affix,
4. Abbreviations or clippings are shortening longer
words,
5. Eponyms are created from proper nouns (names),
6. Blending is combining parts of words into one.