MORPHOLOGY

Morphological Structure of Words

1.Types of Words: Monomorphic

Polymorphic

2.Morphemes: Types

DIVIDE THE FOLLOWING WORDS INTO MEANINGFUL PARTS

workers

pre-reading

loves

bicycles

classified

impossible

dresses

beautifully

OBJECTIVES

• To know how to divide words into morphemes
• To identify the different types of morphemes
• To classify morphemes

GRAMMAR IS DIVIDED INTO MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

• Syntax –structure of sentences
• Morphology –structure of words
• Words
• Words are composed of morphemes.
• Words that consist of just one morpheme are monomorphic words.
• Words that consist of more than one morpheme are polymorphic words
  Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning
• Morphemes are classified according to different principles
• Degree of independence: free or bound
• Role they play in forming words: roots or affixes
• Degree of independence

Free morphemes stand alone in the language. Ex. work -worker

write -writer

Bound morphemes are used exclusively with free or bound morphemes.

Ex. -er worker writer

leg- - legible

arrog- - arrogant

ROLE THEY PLAY IN FORMING WORDS

Root morphemes -

The root is the primary lexical unit of a word which carries semantic aspects of a word and cannot be reduced to smaller constituents.

It is the common element in a word family.

Roots can be free or bound

Most native English roots are free morphemes. Ex. read, eat, write

Most borrowed roots are bound

Arrog- -ance

Char- -ity

Leg- -ible

Toler- -able

Affixes

Affixes are always bound forms. Ex. -ful, -ly, -ity,

Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes.

Prefixes come before the base or root.

Ex. im- possible un- happy

• Suffixes come after a base or root.
• They may be inflectional or derivational.

Derivational morphemes

Change the meaning of a word or the part of speech or both. Derivational morphemes create new words.

Example: kind - kindness

friend - friendship

Inflectional morphemes

They can only be suffixes.

Example -s cats

-s reads

An inflectional morpheme creates a change in the function of a word. Ex. invited

English has only seven inflectional morphemes---plural, possessive -nouns

3rd.person singular, past tense, past participle, present participle -verbs

comparative , superlative - adjectives

allomorphs

Different phonetic forms or variations of a morpheme

/Z/ /S/ /IZ/

Plural dogs cats horses

3rd person reads talks dresses

eatable edible soluble