MORPHOLOGY morphemes In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical

In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. When it stands by itself, it is considered a root because it has a meaning of its own

FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES

In linguistics, a morpheme  is the smallest grammatical unit in a language The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called

morphology A morpheme is not identical

to a word, and the principal difference

between the two is that a morpheme may

or may not stand alone, whereas a word,

by definition, is freestanding When it

stands by itself, it is considered a

MORPHEMES

E.g the morpheme cat

and when it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an affix because it has a

grammatical function

E.g the –s in cats to specify that it is plural

Every word comprises one or more morphemes The more combinations a morpheme is found in, the more productive it is said to be

MORPHEMES

Example:

"Unbreakable" comprises three morphemes:

un- (a bound morpheme signifying "not"),

-break- (the root, a free morpheme),

and -able (a free morpheme signifying "can be done")

Allomorphs of the plural morpheme for regular nouns: /s/ (e.g in cats /kæts/),

/ z/ ɨ (e.g in dish es /d z/), ɪʃɨ

MORPHEMES

Every morpheme can be classified as either free

or bound These categories are mutually

exclusive, and as such, a given morpheme will belong to exactly one of them

CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEMES

FREE VS BOUND

Free morphemes can

function independently as

words

(e.g town, dog)

and can appear with other

lexemes

(e.g town hall, doghouse)

CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEMES

FREE VS BOUND

Bound morphemes appear only as parts of words, always in conjunction with a root and sometimes with other bound morphemes

•For example, un- appears only accompanied by other morphemes to form a word Most bound morphemes in English are affixes,

particularly prefixes and suffixes,

Examples of suffixes are: tion, ation,

ible, ing, etc

•Bound morphemes that are not affixes

Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root, change either the semantic meaning or part of speech of the affected word

For example, in the word happiness, the addition of the bound morpheme -ness to the

root happy changes the word from an adjective

(happy) to a noun (happiness)

In the word unkind, un - functions as a derivational

morpheme, for it inverts the meaning of the word

MORPHEMES

Inflectional morphemes modify a verb’s

tense or a noun's number without affecting

the word's meaning or class Examples of

applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to form dogs and adding -ed to wait to form waited In English,

there are eight inflections.

MORPHEMES

FREE MORPHEMES

MORPHEMES

BOUND MORPHEMES

un-, in-, im-, en-, re- …

modify a verb’s tense

adding –es  watch  watch es

or modify a noun's number