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Morphology: The Words of Language
Morphology: The Words of Language
Morphology: The Words of Language
Phoneme
(the smallest significant unit of speech)
Morphemes
(the smallest significant units of meaning/grammar)
MORPHemes
CASE:
a) cat /kæt/ : consists of three (3) combination of
phonemes /k/, /æ/, & /t/. That is, /k/ is meaningless
and /æt/ is meaningless but /kæt/ is meaningful.
b) Singular Plural
cat /kæt/ cats cat+s /kæts/
The combination of phonemes /kæt/ carry the meaning
of the word “cat”and the adding /s/ carries the
meaning of“plural”. The word cat contains one (1)
morpheme; but cats contains two (2) morphemes, that
is, the morpheme“cat” and the morpheme “s”
which marks the difference between singular and plural.
c) Present Past
cook cooked cook+ed
look looked look+ed
book booked book+ed
Each of the examples contains two (2) morphemes,
that is, the morpheme “cook, look, book”and the
morpheme “ed” which indicates the past tense for
many English verbs.
TYPEs OF MORPHEMEs
There are two (2) classes of morphemes:
1) Free Morphemes (“stem” or “base”)
Morphemes which can occur freely on their own or
morphemes which can meaning-fully occur alone.
E.g.: book, pencil, elephant, love, give, happy, etc.