English Morphology

Morphology

(/mɔ:rˈfɒlədʒi/)

Definition

Morphology (Greek) is study of shape.

Morphology is the study of how words are put together (Lieber:2009).

Morphology is the internal structure of words (Payne:1997).

Morphology is study about internal structure or form of words, how words are formed and its relationship with other words in the same language.

A.     Morpheme

Morpheme has three criteria:

a.       A part of word that has meaning

b.      Cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts

c.       It recurs in differing verbal environment with relatively stable meaning

Examples:

1.	Special	Specialist
2.	Moral	Moralize
3.	Assign	Reassign
4.	Design	Designer
5.	Capable	Incapable
6.	High	Highest
7.	Convent	Convention
8.	Stable	Unstable
9.	Execute	Executive
10.	Conduct	Conductor

B.      Free and Bound Morpheme

a.       Free morpheme: can appear as a word by itselfor can be uttered alone with meaning also.

b.      Bound Morpheme: can not be appeared or uttered as a word by itself with meaning

.

Examples:

No.	Morphemes	Free morphemes	Bound Moprhemes
1.	Effective	Effect	-ive
2.	Modeling	Model	-ing
3.	Magician	Magic	-ian
4.	Launching	Launch	-ing
5.	Preview	View	-pre
6.	Effortless	Effort	-less
7.	Unsuitable	Suitable	-un
8.	Moderately	Moderate	-ly
9.	Imbalance	Balance	-im
10.	Rapturous	Repture	-ous

C.     Bases

Bases is basic words that has principle meaning.

Occur as an immediate constituent of word.

It is an allomorph of a morpheme which has another allomorph that is free form

Borrowing from another language which it can be free form or base.

Sometime bases are bound: -sent in consent and assent.

Examples:

No.	Morphemes	Free or Base
1.	Outrageous	Outrage
2.	Redistribute	Distribute
3.	Improbability	Probable
4.	Mannerism	Manner
5.	Predetermine	Determine
6.	Reshuffle	Shuffle
7.	Satisfying	Satisfy
8.	Spotless	Spot
9.	Weaken	Weak
10.	Reviewer	View

D.     Difficulties in Morphemic Analysis

a.       You have your own individual stock of morpheme just as you have a vocabulary that is peculiarly your own.

b.      Person may know a given morpheme but differ in the degree to which they are aware of its presence in various words.

c.       Addictive meanings.

E.      Affixes

Affixes is a bound morpheme that occurs before or within or after base. There are three kinds: prefixes, infixes, and suffixes.

a.       Prefixes: bound morphemes that occur before base. In english, it is a small class of morphemes.

Prefix	Meaning	Prefix	Meaning	Prefix	Meaning	Prefix	Meaning
a- an-	·   Without ·   Lack of ·   Not	contra-anti-	·   Againts ·   Opposite of	hetero-	·     Different ·     Other	intra-intro-	·     Within ·     Inside
ante-	·  Before ·  Earlier ·  In front of	de-	·   Down ·   Off ·   Away from	sub-	·     Under ·     Lower	macro-	·     Large ·     Prominent
auto- homo-	·  Self ·  Same	dis-	·   Not ·   Apart ·   Away	hyper-	·     Over ·     More ·     Beyond	micro-	·     Very small
circum-	·  Around ·  About	en-	·   Put into ·   Cover with	it- im- in- ir- non-	·     Not ·     Without	mono-uni-	·     One ·     Single ·     Alone
Pre- pro-	·   Before ·   Forward	ex-	·   Out of ·   From ·   Former	in-	·     In ·     Into	omni-	·     All ·     Every
Com-con- co-	·   Together ·   With	extra-	·   Beyond ·   Outside ·   More than	inter-	·     Between ·     Among	post-	·     After ·     Behind

Example:

o  antecedent

o  intravenous

o  unfriendly

o  nonfiction

o  extracurricular

b.      Infixes: bound morphemes that is inserted within a word. There are few kinds of infixes:

1.     Inserted inside the word

Example: beawfullyware, absobleedingtulety, theojollylogical, etc.

2.      Reduplication is repeating the entire word (full reduplication) or partial reduplication.

Example: hugger-mugger, itty-bitty, ding-dong, tick-tock, etc.

3.      Internal change is process that substitutes one none morphemic segment for another.

Example: ring-rang-rung, see-saw-seen, sink-sank-sunk, etc.

4.      Suppletion is morphological process where a root morpheme is replacing by phonologically unrelated form.

Example: go-went-gone, little-less-least, good-better-best,etc.  

  

c.       Suffixes: bound morphemes that occur after base.

Suffixes	Meaning	Suffixes	Meaning	Suffixes	Meaning
-acy	·     State or quality	-er -or -ist	·        One who	-ness -sion -tion	·        State of being
-al	·     Act or process of	-ism	·        Doctrine belief	-ate -en -ize -ise	·        Become
-ify -fy	·     Make or become	-ity -ty	·        Quality of	-able -ible	·        Capable of being
-dom	·     Place or state of being	-ment	·        Condition of	-al -il -ical	·        Pertaining of
-esque	·     Reminiscent of	-ious -ous -y	·        Characterized by	-ive	·        Having the nature
-ful	·     Notable for	-ish -ian	·        Having the quality of	-less	·        Without
-ship	·     Position held	-ance -ence	·        State or quality of	-er	·        Action ·        Process

Example:

o  Kingdom

o  Resentful

o  Fellowship

o  Heaviness

o  Argument

F.     Inflectional Suffixes

The inflectional suffixes is bound morpheme in which does not change the stable meaning.

No.	Morphemic Symbols	Name	Examples
1.	-s pl	Noun plural	mice, hens, oxen, cats
2.	-s sg ps	Noun singular possessive	king’s,queen’s
3.	-s pl ps	Noun plural possessive	princes’, women’s
4.	-s 3d	Present third-person singular	drives
5.	-ING vb	Present participle	reading, repeating
6.	-D pt	Past tense	selected, sent
7.	-D pp	Past participle	eaten
8.	-ER cp	Comparative	sooner
9.	-EST sp	Superlative	soonest

It differs from the derivational suffixes in the following ways, to which there are few exceptions:

o  They do not change the part of speech.

Examples:

-          place, places (both nouns)

-          look, looked (both verbs)

-          tall, taller (both adjective)

o  They come in last word.

Examples:

-          shortened

-          villaiinies

-          industrializine

They go with all stems of a given part of speech.

Examples:

-          She sleeps, eats, buys, dreams.

o  They do not pile up only one ends a word.

Examples:

-          flakes

-          sleeping

-          lower

-          written

G.  Derivational suffixes

It changes the meaning of word (unstable meaning). The characteristics of derivational suffixes are:

o   The words with which derivational suffixes combine is an arbitary matter. It means that only specific word that can be combined with varieties of derivational suffixes.

Example:

o   discover + y => discovery