MORPHOLOGY (LINGUISTICS)

WHAT'S MORPHOLOGY?

 a) Morphology is the study of the structure of words.

-Paradoxically, however, the concept of word itself
defies simple definition. In English, for example, words
tend to be smaller than the sentence, and we combine
words to form sentences. One tricky thing, however, is
that in many languages, a single word can have
"sentence" meaning
SUMMING UP THE TOPICS :
 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.
 Just as sentences can be broken down into smaller units (words),
we can break words down into smaller, meaningful parts.
 The smallest meaningful part of a word is called a morpheme.

 Note: not all words have more than one morpheme. Words that
have only one morpheme are also called monomorphemic words
(e.g. pig). Words with more than one morpheme are called
polymorphemic words, as in foolishness (fool + ish + ness).
  
MORPHEMES:
minimal unit in which there is an arbitrary union of a sound
and a meaning (lexical meaning or grammatical function).
A morpheme: may be represented by a single sound ( ‘a’ in
“amoral” )
: may be represented by a single syllable
( “child” “ish” )
: may be represented by more than one
syllable
2 syllables: (camel ,lady , water)
3 syllables: (crocodile)
4 syllables: (elevator)
MORPHEMES
Homonyms (a.k.a
Homograph
Homophones)

one of two or more words One of two or more words

pronounced alike but spelled identically but differ
differ in meaning or in meaning or pronunciation
spelling.   Example:
Example: to too two Bow and arrow
Bow of a violin
Bow of a ship
Bow a tie
Japanese bow
TYPES OF MORPHEMES
Free Morphemes :
is a morpheme that by itself can function as a word in a
language
Examples : Boy , desire , gentle , man.
CONTENT VERSUS FUNCTION WORDS
Content Words Function Words

 Content Words: The  Function Words: A word that

nouns, verbs, adjectives,
and adverbs that
constitute the major part
of the vocabulary.
Content words are
referred to as OPEN
CLASS words because
we can add new words to
these classes
does not have clear lexical
meaning but has a grammatical
function. Function words
include: conjunctions,
prepositions, articles,
auxiliaries, complementizers,
and pronouns. Function words
are referred to as CLOSED
CLASS words because we can
not add new words to these
classes.
Bound Morpheme:
is a morpheme that cannot stand by itself to form a word;
it must be joined to other morphemes It is bound because
although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be
attached to another morpheme to produce a word.
Examples : -ish -ness -ly dis- trans-
Free morpheme : bad
Bound morpheme : ly
Word : badly
AFFIXES
 Affix: is a bound morpheme that occurs before (prefix),
after (suffix), in the middle of (infix), and around
(circumfix) stems (root morphemes)
Prefix: un-, pre-, bi-
Suffix: -ing, -er, -ist, -ly
Infix: un-freaking-believable
Morphemes that are inserted between other
morphemes
Circumfix:
Morphemes that are attached to another morpheme both
initially and finally. Also known as: discontinuous
morphemes
ROOTS & STEMS
 Root : is a non-affix lexical morpheme that cannot be
analyzed into smaller parts. Roots may or may not
stand alone as a word
Examples : Paint (paint-er) Read (re-read)
Ceive (con-ceive)
 Stem : is that part of a word to which grammatical/
inflectional affixes are added. It may consist amongst
others
a). Solely single root morpheme such as e.g. (Simple
stem such as dog)
b). Two root morphemes e.g. ( compound stem as in
blackbird)
c). A root morpheme plus a derivational suffix e.g.
(a complex stem as in unscrew)

a) cats: single root morpheme: cat + inflectional

suffix –s
b) crowbar: two root morphemes (crow + bar) ) +
inflectional suffix –s
c) inventions: : root morpheme invent + lexical suffix
-ion+ inflectional suffix -s
WORD FORMATION (WORD
COINAGE)
In linguistics, the ways in which new words are made on the
basis of other words or morphemes.
COMMON TYPES OF WORD
FORMATION
Coinages
Nonce words
Borrowing
Calquing
Clipping
COINAGES
Coinage is the word formation process in which a new word is
created either deliberately or accidentally without using the
other word formation processes and often from seemingly
nothing .For example, the following list of words provides some
common coinages found in everyday English:
 Aspirin

 Escalator

 heroin

 Band-aid

 Factoid

 Frisbee

 Google

 linoluem
NONCE WORDS
Nonce words are new words formed through any number
of word formation processes with the resulting word
meeting a lexical need that is not expected to recur.
Nonce words are created for a single occasion. For
example, the following list of words provide some nonce
words with definitions as identified in the Oxford
English Dictionary
 Cotton-wool: to stuff or close ears with cotton wool.

 Twi-thought: an indistinct or vague thought

BORROWING
ARE ALSO REFERRED TO AS
LOANWORDS
 Borrowing is the word formation process in which a word from one language is borrowed
directly into another language. For example, the following common English words are
borrowed from foreign languages:
 algebra – Arabic
 bagel – Yiddish
 cherub – Hebrew
 chow mein – Chinese
 fjord – Norwegian
 galore – Irish
 haiku – Japanese
 kielbasa – Polish
 murder – French
 near – Sanskrit
 paprika – Hungarian
 pizza – Italian
 smorgasbord – Swedish
 tamale – Spanish
 yo-yo – Tagalog
CALQUING

 Calquing is the word formation process in which a borrowed word or

phrase is translated from one language to another. For example, the
following common English words are calqued from foreign languages:
 beer garden – German – Biergarten
 blue-blood – Spanish – sangre azul
 commonplace – Latin – locus commūnis
 flea market – French – marché aux puces
 free verse – French – vers libre
 loanword – German – Lehnwort
 long time no see – Chinese – hǎo jiǔ bu jiàn
 pineapple – Dutch – pijnappel
 scapegoat – Hebrew – ez ozel
 wisdom tooth – Latin – dēns sapientiae
 Calques are also referred to as root-for-root or word-for-word translations
CLIPPING
 Clipping is the word formation process in which a word is
reduced or shortened without changing the meaning of the
word. Clipping differs from back-formation in that the new
word retains the meaning of the original word. For example:
 advertisement – ad

 alligator – gator

 examination – exam

 gasoline – gas

 gymnasium – gym

 influenza – flu

 laboratory – lab

 mathematics – math
 memorandum – memo
 photograph – photo

 public house – pub

 raccoon – coon

 reputation – rep

 situation comedy – sitcom

 telephone – phone

The four types of clipping are back clipping, fore-clipping,

middle clipping, and complex clipping. Back clipping is
removing the end of a word as in gas from gasoline.
Fore-clipping is removing the beginning of a word as in
gator from alligator. Middle clipping is retaining only
the middle of a word as in flu from influenza. Complex
clipping is removing multiple parts from multiple words
as in sitcom from situation comedy
IDENTIFYING MORPHEMES
1. Segmentation of words into minimal sound-meaning
constituents
 basic strategy
 comparing and contrasting forms that are partially
similar in sound and meaning
 associating shared sound with shared meaning
 continuing to do so until forms cannot be broken into
smaller sound-meaning units
 EXAMPLES
1. segmenting repayment into its constituent morphemes:
comparing  contrasting  isolating
1. repayment : payment  re- payment
2. payment : pay  pay-ment
re- pay-ment
  
prefix+root+suffix
2. segmenting instructions into its constituent
morphemes:
 comparing  contrasting  isolating
1. instructions : instruction  instruction-s
2. instruction : instruct  instruct-ion
3. instruct : construct in-struct
in-struct-ion-s
   
prefix+root+suffix+suffix
3. segmenting inconsistent into its constituent
morphemes:
comparing  contrasting  isolating
1. inconsistent : consistent  in- consistent
2. consistent : consist  in-consist-ent
3. consist : desist, insist, persist con-sist
 in- con-sist –ent
   
prefix+prefix+root+suffix
 identifying the meaning of the various forms

 the meaning of re-pay-ment =

the meaning of re- + the meaning of pay- + the meaning of
-ment
 the meaning of in-struct-ion-s =

 the meaning of in- + the meaning of -struct + the

meaning of -ion + the meaning of –s
  the meaning of in-con-sist-ent =

 the meaning of in- + the meaning of con- + the meaning

of -sist + the meaning of -ent
2. Bound roots
 in segmenting a word into its constituent morphemes,

not all morphemes obvious

  some of the segmentations, or breaks, are less
obvious
compare: -sist in consist
re- in rewrite
-er in writer
 some root morphemes never occur alone

in modern English, morphemes such as -ceive, -mit, -fer

have lost their independent meaning –
their meaning depends on the entire word in which
they occur