English Morphology Exercises - Part 1

English morphology exercises about: open and closed class words, word
root and stem, syntactic category, suffixes, prefixes, affixes, free and bound
morphemes, compound words and word formation process in English.

Exercise 1                   
Fill in the table using words from the text below:

“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those
intensely right words . . . the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual,
and electrically prompt.”
MARK TWAIN

Open class words Closed class words

............................ ............................
............................ ............................

Exercise 2                   
Identify the root in these words by underlining it and state which
syntactic category it belongs to:
Example: faster: adjective.

a. hushes
b. kindness
c. fried
d. gamers
e. heavily
f. grandfathers

Exercise 3                     

A. Identify the suffixes by underlining them:

a. singing
b. unhappy
c. mechanism
d. trousers
e. brother
f. blackboard
B. Identify the prefixes by underlining them:
a. rewarded
b. misfortune
c. establish
d. submit
e. strawberry
f. abnormal

Exercise 4                     
Identify the free morphemes in the following words by underlining
them:
a. kissed
b. freedom
c. stronger
d. follow
e. awe
f. goodness
g. talkative
h. teacher
i. actor.

Exercise 5 (From studylib.net)

Divide the following into free and bound sets:
ation, nation, pre, post, angle, ible, infra, out

Free sets Bound sets

............................ ............................
............................ ............................

Exercise 6  (From studylib.net)                     

Separate the affixes from the stems in the following words:

Example: faster = fast + er

Trains, succeeded, lighter, predetermined, retroactive, confusions,

instructional.
Exercise 7   (From : https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/sound/chapter5.pdf)     

Use the words that you think are relevant to answer the following
questions:
a. Can a morpheme be represented by a single phoneme? Give examples. By
more than one phoneme? Give examples.
b. Can a free morpheme be more than one syllable in length? Give examples.
Can a bound morpheme? Give examples.
c. Does the same letter or phoneme-or sequence of letters or phonemes-
always represent the same morpheme? Why or why not?
(Hint: you must refer to the definition of morpheme to be able to answer this.)
d. Can the same morpheme be spelled differently? Give examples.
e. Can different morphemes be pronounced identically? Give examples.
f. A morpheme is basically the same as:

i. a letter
ii. a sound
iii. a group of sounds
iv. none of the above

Exercise 8   (From studylib.net)                 

Compounds are often frequent in modern technical areas where

new vocabulary is being created. Find the compounds in the
following passage:

Free Talker
Nokia 610 Car Kit
The cell phone stays by your side -- instead of your ear -- with Nokia's
hands-free Bluetooth system. An unobtrusive dash-mounted screen provides
the same information as your cell-phone display, and you can effortlessly
download contact info from your phone.
A small console-mounted control unit with three intuitive buttons and a dial
is but one way to manage calls and messages, which sound off through your
car's speakers: Choose to use Nokia's decent voice-recognition software and
neither hand has to leave the wheel.
www.nokia.com

Exercise 9                     
 Complete the process and identify the type of word formation in
English:

Influenza flu Clipping

Teleprinter, exchanger telex ..............

Megabyte meg ..............

Random access memory RAM ..............

A progress To progress ..............

Black,board Blackboard ..............

United States of America USA ..............

Compact disc CD ..............

Act action ..............