ENGL 312

General Linguistics
Dr Abdulqader Alyasin

Chapter 6
Morpholog
y
Overvie
w

 Morphology
 Types of morphemes
 Morphological
description
 Morphs, allomorphs
and special cases
Discuss:

1. What is morphology?
2. What type of morphemes do you know?
 • What is a ‘word’?
Items marked in black separated by spaces!

In this chapter, we'll investigate ways of taking a closer look inside words.
Morpholog
y
 ambidextrous

•Perhaps a better way of looking at linguistic

forms in different languages would be to use
this notion of "elements“ in the message,
rather than depend on identifying only
"words.”

• Morphology means ‘the study of forms’

or basic elements in a language called
Morpheme
s
• Talk, talks, talker, talked, talking

consist of (one element ‘talk’ + other elements ‘ -s, -er, -ed, -ing’)

• All these elements are described as morphemes

A morpheme: A minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function

Can’t be broken down any further

Units of grammatical function include forms used to indicate past tense or
plural, for example.
Study the morphological elements of the following words.
Divide them into minimal units of meaning and grammatical function.

• Reopened
• Tourists
The police reopened the investigation.

reopened

re- open -ed

Minimal unit of Minimal unit Minimal unit of

meaning of meaning grammatical function
 The tourists were so happy.

tourists

tour -ist -s

Minimal unit of Minimal unit Minimal unit of

meaning of meaning grammatical function
1. Free & Bound Morphemes

morphemes

Free morphemes Bound morphemes

Morphemes that can stand by Morphemes that cannot normally stand alone and
themselves as single words are typically attached to another form

e.g. new, open, tour e.g. re-, -ed, -ist, -s

• All affixes (prefixes & suffixes) in English are bound morphemes.

• Free morphemes = separate English word forms (basic nouns, verbs,

adjectives, and adverbs.)

• When free morphemes are used with bound morphemes, the basic

word forms are known as stems

undressed carelessness
un- dress -ed care -less -ness

prefix stem suffix stem suffix suffix

(bound) (free) (bound) (free) (bound) (bound)

2. Lexical & Functional Morphemes
Free morphemes fall into two categories:
a. Lexical morphemes:
• ordinary nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs
• carry the ‘content’ of the messages we convey
e.g. girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow, open, look, break, never, quickly
• New lexical morphemes can easily be added to the language, so they are treated as an open
class of words

b. Functional morphemes:
• Functional words (articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns)
e.g. a, the, and, because, on, near, it, me.
• Because we almost never add new functional morphemes to the language, they are described as a
closed class of words.
3. Derivational & Inflectional Morphemes
Bound morphemes (affixes) fall into two categories:
a. Derivational morphemes:
We use them to make new words or words of a different grammatical category from the stem.
Derivational morphemes can be suffixes like -ment and -ify and also prefixes, such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-,
co-, un-.
e.g. good (adj.) >> goodness (n.)
care (n.) >> careful or careless (adj.)
write (v.) >> rewrite (v.)
judge (v.) >> prejudge (v.)

More examples:
Pairwork:
• -ly Adj >> Adv quick >> quickly
Provide 5 examples of derivational morphemes.
• -ate Noun >> Verb vaccine >> vaccinate
• -ity Adj >> Noun active >> activity
• -ship Noun >> Noun friend >> friendship
• -ish Adj >> Noun fool >> foolish
• -ment Verb >> Noun pay >> payment
b. Inflectional morphemes (inflections):

• Not used to produce new words in the language.

Used to indicate the grammatical function of a word (plural, singular, past tense,
comparat• ive, possessive).
In English,• all the 8 inflectional morphemes are suffixes.

Pairwork:
Identify the inflectional morphemes in the following sentences.

Jim's two sisters are really different.

One likes to have fun and is always laughing.
The other enjoyed school as a child and has always been very serious.
One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quieter than a mouse.
• Jim’s (possessive (-'s)) two sisters (plural (-s)) are really different.

• One likes (-s (3rd person singular, present tense)) to have fun and is always laughing
(-ing (present participle)).

• The other enjoyed (-ed (past tense)) school as a child and has always been (-en
(past participle)) very serious.

• One is the loudest (-est (superlative)) person in the house and the other is quieter (-
er (comparative)) than a mouse.
More examples:

• Noun
• -s plural e.g. books
• -’s possessive e.g. The girl’s book

• Verb
• -s 3rd person singular simple present e.g. walks

• -ing present progressive e.g. walking

• -ed past tense e.g. walked
• -en past participle e.g. written
• Adjective
• -er comparative e.g. taller
• -est superlative e.g. the tallest
Let’s sum up
derivational
&
inflectional
morphemes.
Morphological description
• An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a
word.

e.g. old, older, oldest are all adjectives

• A derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word.

e.g. teach (v.) >> teacher (n.)

• Bound morphemes always appear in order, first derivational then inflectional. (e.g.
teachers)
How many morphemes are there in the following sentence?
Identify all the morphemes.

• The child’s wildness shocked the teachers

• There are 11 morphemes.

The child’s wildness shocked the teachers

There are 11 morphemes.

child, wild,
lexical
shock, teach
free
functional The , the
morphemes

derivational -ness, -er

bound
inflectional -’s, -ed, -s
Morphs, allomorphs & special
cases
 cars (car + -s) = (lexical + inflectional ‘plural’)
buses (bus + -es) = (lexical + inflectional ‘plural’)

• 2 morphs (-s & -es) are used to realize the inflectional morpheme ‘plural’.

• -s & -es are allomorphs of the morpheme ‘plural’

• Cat + plural = cats = (cat + -s)

• Bus + plural = buses = (bus + -es)
• Morphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes.

• When we find a group of different morphs, all versions of one morpheme, we can

use the prefix ‘allo-” (= one of a closely related set) and describe them as
allomorphs of that morpheme
Special
cases

• There may be a "zero-morph” involved when we add the "plural" morpheme to a

word like sheep, so that the plural of sheep can be analyzed as /i:p/ + //,

• Sheep + plural. = sheep = (sheep +  )

• Man + plural = men = (æ e)

Identify types of morphemes in the following
words.
impossible

terrorized
him

desks

dislike

humanity

to
Identify types of morphemes in the following
words.
fastest

premature

and

untie

darken

fallen

faster

lecturer
Identify types of morphemes in the following
words.
• The young boy played with his
friends.
the
young
boy
play
-ed
with
his
friend
-s
Questions
 • ordinary nouns, adjectives,
lexical verbs and adverbs
free • Functional words (articles,
functional conjunctions, prepositions,
morphemes and pronouns)
prefixes, as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-,
derivational co-, un-, & suffix as –ly, -ate, -ity, -
ship, -ish, -ment
bound
inflectional Plural, possessive, 3rd person, singular,
simple present, present progressive, past
tense, past participle, comparative,
superlative