MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF WORD

WHAT IS A WORD?

Word is a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone)
to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.

Word is a speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning
usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use

It can also be said as the entire set of linguistic forms produced by combining a single base with
various inflectional elements without change in the part of speech elements.

HOW ARE WORDS FORMED OR BUILT?

Many words are built using a combination of linguistic elements, such as prefixes, suffixes, and
combining forms. Whereas prefixes and suffixes adjust the sense of a word or its word class, combining
forms differ by contributing to the particular meaning of that word.The words morphology and
morpheme both come from the Greek root word morph meaning “shape;” morphology is therefore the
study of the “shape” words take, whereas morphemes are those building blocks which “shape” the
word.

The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning ‘shape, form’, and -ology which
means ‘the study of something’.

Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the first time in 1859 by the German
linguist August Schleicher who used the term for the study of the form of words.

MORPHOLOGY AND WORD.

What is Morphology?

Morphology is a branch of linguistics that involves the study of the grammatical structure of words and
how words are formed and varied within the lexicon of any given language. Morphology studies the
relationship between morphemes, referring to the smallest meaningful unit in a word, and how these
units can be arranged to create new words or new forms of the same word. Within the study of
morphology, a morpheme is further distinguished from a lexeme, the latter being the minimal word unit
that has content meaning in itself. To put it simply, lexemes are the basis of dictionary entries. A
morpheme is, more broadly speaking, a language unit, which can be a word unit, and therefore a
lexeme. It can also be an affix or a word part that has no content meaning in itself but has functional
meaning.
For instance, the words "laughs", "laughed" and "laughing" belong to the lexeme "laugh". "Laugh" can
be reduced to the morphemes "laugh" and "-s"; "laughed" to the morphemes "laughp" and "-ed"; and
"laughing" to the morphemes "laugh" and "-ing". The formation of words like "laugh", " laughed" and
laughing" from the lexeme "laugh", through a process known as inflection, is the focus of morphology.

Finally, it is worth noting that certain lexemes can be further reduced to their constitutive morphemes.
For instance, "constitute" and "constitution" are different lexemes, since they are both word units with
their own individual content meanings. Within the study of morphology, the lexeme "constitution" can
be further reduced to two morphemes, these being "constitute" and the derivational suffix "-ion". Stem
or root words, suffixes, and prefixes are morphological features in linguistics, and together they make up
the structure of words.

Morphological features of word

Word is single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone)
to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.

Etymology is the study of the origins of words. The English language is living and growing. Although
many of our words have been part of our language for many years, new words are added all the time.

logos, (Greek: “word,” “reason,” or “plan”) plural logoi, in ancient Greek philosophy and early
Christian theology, the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning

Morphology on the other hand is the study of the internal structure of words and forms a core part of
linguistic study today.

The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning ‘shape, form’, and -ology which
means ‘the study of something’. Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the first
time in 1859 by the German linguist August Schleicher who used the term for the study of the form of
words.

FREE VS BOUND MORPHEMES

Free morpheme: a simple word, consisting of one morpheme eg house, work, high, chair, wrap. They are
words in themselves.

Bound morpheme: morphemes that must be attached to another morpheme to receive meaning.

EG: UNKINDNESS

UN- and -NESS are the bound morphemes, requiring the root KIND to form the word.
These are also called affixes as they are attached to the stem. There are two types as outlined below:

Prefix (front of the base)= Un-

Suffix (end of the base)= -ness

From the above we can see that morphology is guided by grammatical rules on how words are
formed or reduplicated

Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word or even the
whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.

Reduplication refers to words formed through repetition of sounds. Examples include okey-dokey, film-
flam, and pitter-patter. English is replete with these playful coinages. Many are baby words: tum-tum,
pee-pee, boo-boo. Some are recent slang terms: bling-bling, hip hop, cray-cray.From this we can see
that the morphological process of reduplication helps us in laying emphasis , telling a baby speech
development and even the formation of new words

This brings us to MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF WORDS

This is also the study of synthetic language in which grammatical relations and distinctions are realized
within words .

Synthetic language is , any language in which syntactic relations within sentences are expressed by
inflection (the change in the form of a word that indicates distinctions of tense, person, gender, number,
mood, voice, and case) or by agglutination (word formation by means of morpheme, or word unit,
clustering) .

It uses uses inflection or agglutination to express syntactic relationships within a sentence. Inflection is
the addition of morphemes to a root word that assigns grammatical property to that word, while
agglutination is the combination of two or more morphemes into one word.

Therefore morphological features of words are just how words are created , formed , used ,
reduplicated and realized in different forms (e.g present, past, future, singular and plural) within a
particular synthetic language

Morphological features of words is also the study of synthetic language in which grammatical relations
and distinctions are realized within words for instance the word “laugh” is part of the synthetic language
since the plural form is realized within the word itself through addiction of the suffix “ed” to the word
“laugh”the addiction of suffix denotes an infection which refers to the creation of a new form of lexeme
or minimal word unit.

How can Morphology be features of word.

There are a lot of processes that make a word a word.And the root is from Morphology.

Without morphology, words will not be in existence. It is the morphemes that add up to form a word.
Here are some of the processes that gives word it's attributes.

How morphology features in Word.

1.Affixation (Subtype of Derivation)

The most common type of derivation is the addition of one or more affixes to a root, as in the word
derivation itself. This process is called affixation, a term which covers both prefixation and suffixation.
E.g Im+possible= impossible(prefix)

Joy+full=joyful(suffix)

Un+ending=unending (prefix)

Move+able= moveable(suffix) etc

2.Blending

Blending is one of the most beloved of word formation processes in English. It is especially creative in
that speakers take two words and merge them based not on morpheme structure but on sound
structure. The resulting words are called blends.

Usually in word formation we combine roots or affixes along their edges: one morpheme comes to an
end before the next one starts. For example, we form derivation out of the sequence of morphemes
de+riv+at(e)+ion. One morpheme follows the next and each one has identifiable boundaries. The
morphemes do not overlap.

But in blending, part of one word is stitched onto another word, without any regard for where one
morpheme ends and another begins.

E.g 1. Motor+hotel= motel

2. Cheese+hamburger = chesse burger

3. Spoon and fork = spork etc

Clipping
Clipping is a type of abbreviation of a word in which one part is 'clipped' off the rest, and the remaining
word now means essentially the same thing as wh8dern clipping of an earlier compound rifle gun,
meaning a gun with a rifled barrel. (Rifled means having a spiral groove causing the bullet to spin, and
thus making it more accurate.) Another clipping is burger, formed by clipping off the beginning of the
word hamburger. (This clipping could only come about once hamburg+er was reanalyzed as
ham+burger.)

Acronyms

Acronyms are formed by taking the initial letters of a phrase and making a word out of it. Acronyms
provide a way of turning a phrase into a word. The classical acronym is also pronounced as a word.

Examples are:

1. WHO-- World Health Organization.

2.NAFDAC- National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control.

3.UNESCO:United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Hence, the above illustrations and explanations explain in details the Morphological features of Word.
Adequate examples are added also for more comprehension.
GROUP 2.

MEMBERS OF THE GROUP

1.Toogun Mercy Victoria. Lcu/ug/20/16905

2.Abbah Ozioma Favour. Lcu/ug/21/20236

3.Otabor Joy. Lcu/ug/20/17164

4. Alabi Precious Ayomide. Lcu/ug/20/16274

5.Oladiti Temilade. Lcu/ug/16306

6. Musah Fatimah. Lcu/ug/20/16911.

7.Sanni Farouq. Lcu/ug/20/17595

8.Gbolagade Afolabi. Lcu/ug/

9.Babalola Jeremiah. Lcu/ug/20/17750

10 .Iyiola Abraham. Lcu/ug/21/19493

COURSR TITLE: INTRODUCTION TO SEMANTICS.

LECTURER IN CHARGE: DR. ALUKO

TOPIC: MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF WORD.