‫الكورس الثاني‬

‫الفصل السادس‬
‫من مادة اللغة‬
The Study of Language

Morphology

6.0 Introduction
The grammar of a language consists of two things, i.e., morphology
and syntax. This can be shown in the following diagram

Grammar

Morphology Syntax

Morphology is a branch of grammar which studies the structure of

forms of words, primarily through the use of the morpheme construct.

6.1 The Morpheme

It is the basic unit of the grammatical structure. It refers to the

minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. For example, the word
re open ed. Morphemes are of two kinds:
6.1.1 Free Morpheme
It is one that can be uttered alone with meaning, for example, in
reply to ‘what are you going to do?’, you might answer ‘swim’. This ‘swim’
is a free morpheme.

6.1.2 Bound Morpheme

It is one that cannot be uttered aloe with meaning. It is always
annexed to one or more morphemes to form a word like ante-, re-, -ly,
-er, un-, and others such as played, speaker, undo, and womanly. The
following diagram refers to the kinds of morphemes:

Morphemes

Free Morphemes Bound Morphemes

6.2 Another Classification of Morphemes

Another classification of morphemes puts them into two classes as
can be shown in the following diagram:

Morphemes

Bases Affixes

Free Bases Bound Bases Prefixes Infixes Suffixes

 There are two classes bases and affixes. A base is the part of a word
that has the principal meaning ad most of them are free bases, but some
are bound bases. Affixes are bound morphemes that occur before or
withing or after a base.

There are three kinds of affixes prefixes, infixes, and suffixes.

Prefixes are bound morphemes that occur before a base such as rewrite,
import, and others. Infixes are bound morphemes that have been inserted
within a word. They are replacement not additions. They occur in a few
noun plurals, such as foot feet, man men, tooth teeth, and
goose geese. They also occur in the past and past participle of verbs
(irregular verbs) as in
choose chose chosen and take took taken.
Suffixes are bound morphemes that occur after a base as in ‘normalizer’.
This word consists of a free morpheme(norm) and four suffixes (al, ize,
err, and s)

Good Luck
Dr. Hatem Al-Janabi