First: What is Morphology? It is the ”study of forms” (Yule).

It is the study of word structure.

It is “the system of categories and rules involved in wordformation and interpretation” (O’GRADY).

It is “the identification, analysis and description of thestructure of words” (Wikipedia)

As a result, when we study morphology, we examine thedifferent categories of morphemes that make up wordsand the different morphological processes through whichnew words are formed.

What is a MORPHEME? A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that

carries information about the meaning orfunction. It is “the minimal unit of meaning orgrammatical function”.

Example:

The word “hospitalize" has two morphemes:hospital (with the meaning of a place wherepatients are treated) and –ize (which indicatesthat the entire word functions as a verb with themeaning of ’being admitted to a hospital‘).

What is a Free Morpheme ? A free morpheme is a morpheme that can be a

word by itself.

Examples: cut, car, book, and pray

What is a Bound Morpheme ? A bound morpheme is a morpheme that

cannot stand alone as an independent word. Itmust be attached to another element.

Examples: -ed, -s, re-, in-, and –ness.

NOTE: Refer to page 76 for an importantobservation.

What is a Lexical Morpheme ? Words that have meaning by themselves—boy,

food, door—are called lexical morphemes.

What is a Functional Morpheme ? words that function to specify the relationship

between one lexical morpheme and another—words like at, in, on, -ed, -s—are calledfunctional morphemes.

NOTE: Sometimes functional morphemes arereferred to as grammatical morphemes.

Derivational Morphemes

“Morphemes that change the meaning or part of speech of a word they attach to” (Clark, 1998).

Examples:

happy and unhappy

happy and happiness

Inflectional Morphemes: “Morphemes that serve a purely

grammatical function, never crating a newword but only a different form of the sameword, are called inflectional morphemes”(Clark, 1998).

Examples:

Car and Cars

Look and Looked

Inflectional Morphemes:STEM SUFFFIX FUNCTION EXAMPLE

WAIT -s 3rd per. sg. present She waits there at noon.

WAIT -ed Past tense She waited there last night.

WAIT -ing Progressive She is waiting there now.

EAT -en Past participle Ahmed has eaten the apples.

CHAIR -s plural The chairs are in the room.

CHAIR -’s Possessive The chair’s leg is broken.

FAST -er Comparative Jill runs faster than Joe.

FAST -est Superlative I have no idea what the fastest car is.

Tree Diagrams: Some practice with tree diagram. Reformer Reconstruction Unbreakable Nonrefundable Irreplaceability Overgeneralization* Activation

Unhappiness*

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