Morphology
Morphology is the investigation into the basic forms in a language.
Morphemes
A morpheme is the minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.
If we look at the words renewed and tourists we can break their morphology down as follows:
| Minimal unit of meaning | Grammatical function |
|---|---|
| re- (“again”) new (“recently made”) | -ed (past tense) |
| tour (“travel for pleasure”) -ist (“person who”) | -s (plural) |
There are two types of morphemes, free and bound. A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand by themselves as a single word (from the example above this is new and tour). A bound morpheme is one whose forms can not stand alone and are normally attached (from the example above re-, -ist, -ed, -s), all affixes are bound morphemes. When a free morpheme has a bound morpheme attached the basic word formed is called a stem. When one can not remove the bound morpheme and be left with an English word then it is called a bound stem.
Free morphemes have two categories. Lexical morphemes which carry content (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) are also open class and functional morphemes (articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns). We rarely add to functional morphemes list so are a closed class.
Bound morphemes have two categories too. Derivational morphemes which contain affixes that create a new word or a different grammatical category. The other is inflectional morphemes which indicated the grammatical function of a word. English only has 8.
| Nouns | Verbs | Adjectives | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Derivational | -ism | -ize | -al |
| -ment | -ify | -ful | |
| Inflectional | -’s | -s (present tense), -ing | -er |
| -s (plural) | -ed, -en | -est |
Morphological Description
An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word. When there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix they always appear in that order.
Morphs, Allomorphs, and Special Cases
The above chart doesn’t take into account exceptions to general patterns (mans is not plural of man nor is shitted past form of shit). Morphs are the forms used to realize morphemes. We can visualize this and the various forms of pronunciation of the morpheme, known as allomorphs, through a table as shown below.
| Morpheme | Allomorphs | Example |
|---|---|---|
| /-s/ | cats | |
| /-z/ | dogs | |
| Plural | /-əz/ | horses |
| /⊘/ | sheep |
When there are words like men and man with irregular forms they are treated as different lexical morphemes.
Other Languages
Kanuri is a Nigerian language. They use the prefix nəm- as a derivational morpheme which is used to derive nouns from adjectives.
Ganda is a Ugandan language. They use inflectional prefix omu- for singular nouns and inflectional prefix aba- for plurals.
Ilocano is a Filipino language. They use reduplication to differ between singular and plural. This means they repeat the first part of the single form to make it plural.
Tagalog is also a Filipino language. They use the infix -um- after first syllable onset to signify an order. They use reduplication when referring to the future.
Study Questions
- How many morphemes are there in the word terrorists? Three. Terror is free lexical, -ist is bound derivational, -s is bound inflectional.
- What kind of morpheme is the suffix in slowly? -ly is a bound derivational morpheme.
- What are the functional morphemes in the following sentence? See bold for answer
When she walked into the room, the doctor asked me if I had a sore throat or an annoying cough.
(i) List the bound morphemes in these words:
| Word | Bound Morphemes |
|---|---|
| Fearlessly | -less, -ly |
| Happier | -ier |
| Misleads | Mis-, -s |
| Previewer | Pre-, -er |
| Shortening | -en, -ing |
| Unreconstructed | Un-, re-, construct, -ed |
(ii) Which of these words has a bound stem:
| Word | Bound Stem |
|---|---|
| Consist | -sist |
| Deceive | -ceive |
| Introduce | -duce |
| Repeat | -peat |
(iii) Which of these words contains an allomorph of the morpheme “past tense”:
| Word | Morpheme |
|---|---|
| are | No - were |
| have | No - had |
| must | No |
| sitting | No - sat |
| waits | No - waited |
(i) Which word(s) in the following sentence would you put in a closed class? Answers in bold.
Bob brought hot donuts to class.
(ii) Which word(s) in the following sentence would you put in an open class? Answers in bold.
I put it on the shelf near you and him.
- How many regular inflectional morphemes are there in English? There are 8.
- What are the inflectional morphemes in these expressions?
| Sentence | Morphemes |
|---|---|
| Have you eaten yet? | -en |
| Do you know how long I’ve been waiting? | -en, -ing |
| She’s younger than me and always dresses in the latest cycle. | -er, -es, -est |
| We looked through my grandmother’s old photo albums. | -ed, -’s, -s |
| My parents’ parents were all from Scotland. | -’s, -s |
- What is the difference between the -er morphemes in the words smaller and singer? -er in smaller is inflectional as it doesn’t change word category while -er in singer is derivational as it changes word category from verb (to sing) to noun (singer).
- What are the allomorphs of the morpheme “plural” in the following set of English words?
| Morpheme | Allomorphs |
|---|---|
| criteria | -on → -a |
| dogs | -s |
| oxen | -en |
| deer | ø |
| judges | -es |
| stimuli | -us → -i |
- In Indoenesian, the singular form translating “child” is anak and the plural form (“children”) is anakanak. What is the technical term used to describe this relationship? It is reduplication.
- When she head some exciting news, one BrE speaker exclaimed, “Fanflamingtastic!” What is the morphological process involved here? Expletive insertion.