TSLB3013 LINGUISTICS

TOPIC 3 MORPHOLOGY: THE WORDS OF LANGUAGE

3.0 SYNOPSIS

Topic 4 introduces you to the word structure and word formation of the English
language. It seeks to develop your knowledge in English language, by
understanding the different types of morphemes and how English words are
structured and formed. It also aims to help you further improve your skills in
listening, speaking, reading and writing and develop your confidence and fluency
in using English in a variety of context.

3.1 LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this Session, you will be able to:

1. discuss word structure and formation;

2. identify the different classification of morphemes
3. give reasons for the classification
4. analyse word formation processes

3.2 FRAMEWORK OF TOPIC

Morphology:
The Words of
Language

Types of Word Formation

Morphemes Processes

Free Bound Derivational Inflectional

Morpheme Morpheme Morpheme Morpheme

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CONTENT

3.2.1 What is Morphology?

Morphology is the study of word structure and word formation. Words - though
impossible to define in absolute terms, can be thought of as the units that are
combined to form sentences in a language such as English.

Simple Words - consisting of a single morpheme; a word that cannot be analysed

into smaller meaningful parts, e.g. ‘item’, ‘five’, ‘chunk’, ‘the’. Complex words
consist of a root, plus one or more affixes (e.g. ‘items’, ‘walked’, ‘dirty’).
Compound word is a word that is formed from two or more simple or complex
words (e.g. landlord, red-hot, window cleaner)

3.2.2 Types of Morphemes

Just as sentences can be broken down in smaller units (words), we can break
words down into smaller, meaningful parts. The smallest meaningful part of a
word is called a morpheme. Not all words have more than one morpheme.
Words that have only one morpheme are also called monomorphemic words
(e.g. boy). Words with more than one morpheme are called polymorphemic
words, as in foolishness (fool + ish + ness). Morphemes can be classified as
either free or bound.

3.2.2.1 Free and Bound Morphemes

Free morphemes are units of meaning which can stand alone as an

independent word or alongside another free or bound morpheme (e.g. lid, sink,
air, car – individual words). They cannot be split into anything smaller (e.g. tree,
gate, pillow, butter, flower, rhinoceros etc.). However, the terms gate, butter and
flower can also exist alongside another free morpheme e.g. gatepost,
buttermilk, sunflower – consists two free morphemes.

A bound morpheme is a unit of meaning which can only exist alongside a free
morpheme. It cannot stand alone as an independent word, but must be attached
to another morpheme/word (affixes, such as plural ‘-s’, prefixes – ungrateful,
insufficient, and suffixes – childish, goodness - are always bound). It cannot be
split into anything smaller. They must be bound to one or more free morphemes.

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A base is an element (free or bound, root morpheme or complex word) to which

additional morphemes are added. It is also called a stem. It can consist of a
single root morpheme, as with the ‘care’ of ‘careless’. It can also be a word that
itself contains more than one morpheme (e.g. careless as a base to form the
word ‘carelessness’)

A root is a (usually free) morpheme around which words can be built up through
the addition of affixes (e.g. the root ‘kind’ can have affixes added to it to form
‘kindly’, ‘kindness’, ‘kinder’, ‘kindest’. The root is the item you have left when you
strip all other morphemes off of a complex word.

The meaning of a word can be changed by adding another word or part of a word
to it. Examples:
Root-word Prefix Suffix
able unable ability
care uncaring careless/careful/carefully

able – means can She is able to do the job.

unable – means cannot She is unable to do the job.
ability – means skill need She has the ability to take up the challenge of
to do something. the job.

Now, take a look at the Prefixes.

We add prefixes at the start of a word. Some prefixes are:

Prefix Meaning Example

anti- Against something anti-social
counter- Take opposite action counter-attack
dis Not dislike, disapprove, disagree
ex- Former, previous, past ex-wife, ex-student, ex-boyfriend
in-, im-, Not inactive, impossible,
il-, ir- iilogical, irreplaceable
un- Not, changes a word to the unkind, untidy, unable
opposite meaning
mis- Done incorrectly mistake, misadventure, misuse
non- Not non-violent, non-conformist
re- Do over again, go back redo, replace, recycle, rewind
inter- Between interfere, international, interchange

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Remember, when words are added at the start of a word, they are called
prefixes. Now, take at a look at Exercises 1 and 2 and do the exercises to
check your understanding.

Exercise 1

Using the dictionary, find out what these words mean.

Word Meaning Root-word

glorious
eateries
probably
assortments
temptation
surrounded

Exercise 2

Add suitable prefixes to the following words.

Word Prefix Word Prefix

like behave
proper unite
responsible rational
known pack

Did you get the answers all right? Well done! Now look at the suffixes.

In the meantime take a break first and move on to suffixes!

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Suffixes

Suffixes are added to the end of a word. They not only change the meaning of a
word, they also change the part of speech.

Suffix Meaning New word is a: Example

-or, -er Person noun Teenager, actor
-eer Person noun Engineer, auctioneer
-ster Person doing an noun Gangster
activity
-let, -ette Small noun Booklet, statuette
-ess Female noun Waitress
-hood, - Status, condition noun Childhood, friendship,
ship, -dom freedom
-ful The amount something noun, adjective Spoonful
has, being full of Wasteful
-ite Member of a noun Penangite
community
-ese, -(i)an Member of a noun, adjective Chinese, Christian
community
-ist Person or party noun, adjective Buddhist
-ism Belief, attitude, actions abstract noun Marxism, heroism,
tourism
-ant Person or instrument noun Combatant
-tion, -sion State, action, group abstract, Generation,
collective noun persuasion
-ment State mainly abstract Excitement
-age Result of action abstract noun Weightage
-ness, -ity
-ify, -ize Cause to make or verb Quantify, specialize,
become madden
-less Being empty of adjective Sleepless
-ay, -al, -ish, Having the qualities of adjective Friendly, nutty, global,
-ive, -ous, bookish, talkative,
-able, -ible, tortuous, readable,
-like credible, warlike
-ly In this way adverb Cheaply, tiredly

Remember, for suffixes, the word is added at the end of the word. Now, look at
Exercise 1 and try to add suffixes to the words.

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Exercise 1:

Add suffixes to the following words. Use your dictionary to check your answers

glorious polite
regular unite
proper lawful
possible difficult
safe savour

Would you like to have more practice in prefixes and suffixes? You can list
down as many words as you can think of and add prefixes or suffixes to these
words.

The previous section gives you an idea of how words if added new word or part
of a word to them would mean different things. Therefore, when you come
across words with prefixes or suffixes, you need to be extra careful with their
meanings.

Take a break first before you read on to other categories of morphemes

and allormorphs.

Categories of Morphemes

A content morpheme is a morpheme that names a concept/idea in our record of

experience of the world. It has semantic content – independent and identifiable
meaning; and has a full lexical meaning of its own. They fall into the classes of
noun, verb, adjective, adverb.

A function morpheme is a morpheme whose primary meaning/function is to

signal relationships between other morphemes. They provide information about
grammatical function by relating certain words in a sentence to each other. Free
morphemes can also be function morphemes. Function words have no
independent meaning but just contributes to the grammatical meaning of a
construction (the, by, of). Generally, they fall into classes such as articles (a, the),
prepositions (of, at), auxiliary verbs (was eating, have slept), etc.

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Allomorphs are the different forms/variations (pronunciations) of a single

morpheme. Example: the plural morpheme in English is { -z }. Its allormorphs
are / s /, / z /, and the upside-down, backwards e / ez /. Also the morpheme ‘leaf’
has two allormorphs: ‘leaf’ in words built from it (e.g. leafy) and ‘leav-’, found only
in the plural ‘leaves’.

Types of Allormorphs

Allormorphs of plural morpheme:-

 / s / - shops, nuts, books
 / z / - cubs, mugs, stands
 / ɪz / - glasses, judges, dishes, houses

Allormorphs of past tense morpheme:-

 / t / - packed, milked, faked, chopped
 / d / - played, robbed, cared, died
 / ɪd / - shouted, arrested, counted, pointed

Allormorphs of negative morpheme

 Un – able, certain, lucky, true
 Ir – responsible, relevant, regular
 Im – possible, proper, polite
 In – ability, correct, experienced
 Dis – agree, qualify, regard
 Mis – spell, spend, use, management
 Non – smoker, stop, payment, resident
 Il – logical, legal, legitimate
 De – frost, camp, classify, throne
 Mal – function, nutrition, formation

3.2.2.2 Derivational & Inflectional Morphemes

Derivation is the process by which affixes combine with roots to create new
words (e.g. in ‘modern-ize’, ‘read-er’, ‘-ize’ and ‘-er’ are derivational suffixes. It is
viewed as using existing words to make new words. It is much less regular, (e.g.
plural form – add ‘s’ or ‘es’ ; and much less predictable (e.g. nouns derived from
verbs – refuse – refusal, pay – payment).

Derivational morphemes change the part of speech or meaning of a word. E.g.,

-ment added to a verb forms a noun, judg-ment, re-activate means “activate

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again”. They are not required by syntax. They typically indicate semantic
semantic relations within a word, but no syntactic relations outside the word…,
e.g., un-kind relates un-”not” to kind but has no particular syntactic connections
outside the word – note that the same word can be used in he is unkind and they
are unkind.

They are usually not very productive and are generally selective about what they
will combine with, e.g., the suffix –hood occurs with just a few nouns such as
brother, neighbour, and knight, but not with most others. E.g., friend, daughter,
or candle.

They typically occur before inflectional suffixes, e.g. govern-ment-s: -ment, a

derivational suffix, precedes –s, an inflectional suffix. May be prefixes or suffixes
(in English), e.g. pre-arrange, arrange-ment

Inflection is the process by which affixes combine with roots to indicate basic
grammatical categories such as tense or plurality (e.g. in ‘cat-s’, ‘talk-ed’, ‘-s’ and
‘-ed’ are inflectional suffixes). It is viewed as the process of adding very general
meanings to existing words, not as the creation of new words.

Inflectional morphemes do not change meaning or part of speech, e.g big,

bigg-er, bigg-est are all adjectives. They are required by the syntax. They
typically indicate syntactic or semantic relations between different words in the
sentence, e.g Nim love-s banana-s: -s marks the 3rd person singular present form
of the verb, relating it to the 3rd singular subject Nim.

They are very productive. They typically occur with all members of some large
class of morphemes, e.g. the plural morpheme –s occurs with almost all nouns.
They occur at the margin of a word, after any derivational morphemes, e.g.,
ration-al-ation-s: -s is inflectional, and appears at the very end of the word. They
are suffixes only (in English).

3.2.3 Word Formation Processes

Many words are formed or created from combinations of other words, or from
combinations of words and prefixes or suffixes. There are many possible ways
of forming or creating new words in English.

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Derivation

The most productive process of word formation in a language is the use of

derivational morphemes to form new words from already existing forms (.e.g.
from arrange we can derive rearrange, from which we can still derive
rearrangement). Can you think of other examples?

Coinage

Coinage is the invention of totally new words. The process usually involves the
extension of a product a name from a specific reference to a more general one,
e.g. Kleenex, Xerox and Kodak. These started as names of specific products
but now used as the generic names for different brands of types of product. Can
you think of other examples?

Conversion

Conversion is the extension of the use of one word from its original grammatical
category to another category as well, e.g. the word must is a verb (e.g. “You
must attend classes regularly”), but it can also used as a noun as in “Class
attendance is a must”.

Borrowing

New words also enter a language through borrowing from other languages.
English, for example, borrowed a lot of French words as a result of the Norman
invasion in 1066. (e.g. croissant, chauffeur, dentist, resign)

Other examples of foreign words found their way into English:

(a) leak, yacht (from Dutch)
(b) Barbecue, cockroach (from Spanish)
(c) Piano, concerto (from Italian)
(d) Algebra, amulet, caramel, carat, coffee, safari, syrup, sheriff, soda (from
Arabic).
(e) Yam, banana (from African languages).

Back-formation

Back-formation is the formation of a new word by removing an affix; that base

then is used as a root, and becomes a word through widespread use.
Examples: pronunciate (pronunciation, pronounce), enthuse (enthusiasm), burgle
(burglar), burger (hamburger) televise (television), edit (editor).
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Compounding

Compounding is combining two or more words together to form a new complex

word. Examples:

(a) post + card = postcard

(b) post + office = post office
(c) book + case = bookcase
(d) mother-in-law,
(e) sergeant-at-arms.

Blending

Blending is another way of combining words to form a new word. The difference
between blending and compounding, however, is that in blending only parts of
the words, not the whole words, are combined.

Examples: smoke + fog = smog

motor + hotel = motel
breakfast + lunch = brunch

Clipping

Clipping is the shortening of a longer word. Examples: pro (professional), prof

(professor), math (mathematics), sub (substitute or submarine), fax (facsimile),
gym (gymnasium), lab (laboratory)

Acronyms

They are words created from the initial letters of several words. Examples:
NATO, FBI, CIA, UN, UNICEF, UNESCO, RECSAM, RELC, AIDS, radar (radio
detecting and ranging), laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of
radiation).

Onomatopoeia

A new word is formed by analogy with the sound made by the thing it names.
Examples: buzz, beep, hiss,

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Suppletion

Suppletion is about irregularity. It is the replacement of a word form by a

completely different word. They are morphologically complex forms in which the
connection between the base and the newly created form is not obvious at all.
Examples: go (present) = went (past); good = better.

Reduplication

A way of building up words by repeating either a part or all of the base word.
We don’t have this in English. Examples: total reduplication in B.M. (rumah-
rumah); partial reduplication in Tagalog. We take the verb {bili} and reduplicate
only the first two sounds to get the future form {bibili}

Morpheme-internal changes (ablaut)

Adding morphemes results in changes to a part of the word (stem internal vowel
change). Some cases of this in English, though not “productive” ones.
Examples:
sing (present) - sang (past)
mouse (singular) - mice (plural)

Exercise 1

Identify the word formation processes that created the bold-printed words and try
to find their meaning!

1). Eggers is owner of probably the most Googled name out there right now.
2). Hollywood has put Evita through the banalysis machine and found her just
another little girl who wants to be a star.
3). Scuba divers can protect only small areas.
4). Hyperfliers can be identified by pale complexion, red, watery eyes and a
crease in their stomach from having a laptop crushed into their body by the
reclining seat in front of them.

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5). Similar high-pressure zones on Earth —under the Antarctic ice, for instance
— are suitable only for specially adapted organisms known as
extremophiles.
6). Tornado chasing, one form of weather tourism, has become particularly
popular lately.
7). Can I talk to my bro on the phone ?
8). Rock was a roly-poly detective who looked like a no-hoper but who always
outwitted the opposition with sly brilliance.
9). Jauch's fund-raising show not only was a telethon but turned out to be a
begathon.
10). If I did burgle Madge's house, like you said, then I wouldn't come round here
and tell you about it.
11). He was taken off the CIA payroll.

Exercise 2

Can you guess which words have combined to form the following computer terms?

 Emoticon
 netiquette
 netizen
 technophobe

Relax for a while. When you are ready, do exercise 3.

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Exercise 3

Fill in blanks transforming the words in brackets:

1. The tailor took my _______ and said my suit would be ready in two weeks.
(measure)

2. The cream cakes looked delicious but Harry resisted the _______ to have one.
(tempt)

3. The police were puzzled by the _______ disappearance of the jewels.

(mystery)

4. Bill always looks smart although his clothes are not very _______. (fashion)

5. Thompson's new novel is a considerable _______ on his last one. (improve)

6. It is very _______ whether the plan will go ahead. (doubt)

7. Despite hours of discussion, the members of the committee could not reach
_______. (agree)

8. Karen is a very _______ person and loves outdoor holidays. (energy)

9. Leslie _______ broke a plate while doing the washing up. (accident)

10. Is everything included in the price or are there any _______ charges? (add)

Bravo

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