Noun

A noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea. Nouns are usually the first words which small children learn. The highlighted words in the following sentences are all nouns:

• Last year our neighbours bought a goat.

Possessive Nouns

In the possessive case, a noun or pronoun changes its form to show that it owns or is closely related to something else. Usually, nouns become possessive by adding a combination of an apostrophe and the letter "s."

You can form the possessive case of a singular noun that does not end in "s" by adding an apostrophe and "s," as in the following sentences:

• The bus's seats are very uncomfortable.

• The film crew accidentally crushed the platypus's eggs.

Concrete Nouns

A concrete noun is a noun which names anything (or anyone) that you can perceive through your physical senses: touch, sight, taste, hearing, or smell. A concrete noun is the opposite of a abstract noun.

The highlighted words in the following sentences are all concrete nouns:

The judge handed the files to the clerk.

Whenever they take the dog to the beach, it spends hours chasing waves.

The real estate agent urged the couple to buy the second house because it had new shingles.

As the car drove past the park, the thump of a disco tune overwhelmed the string quartet's rendition of a minuet.

The book binder replaced the flimsy paper cover with a sturdy, cloth-covered board.

Abstract Nouns

An abstract noun is a noun which names anything which you can not perceive through your five physical senses, and is the opposite of a concrete noun. The highlighted words in the following sentences are all abstract nouns:

Buying the fire extinguisher was an afterthought.

Tillie is amused by people who are nostalgic about childhood.

Justice often seems to slip out of our grasp.

Some scientists believe that schizophrenia is transmitted genetically.

Determiners

Determiners are words that are used with nouns to clarify the noun. They can clarify:

• to define something or someone
• to state the amount of people, things or other nouns
• to state possessives
• to state something or someone is specific
• to state how things or people are distributed
• to state the difference between nouns
• to state someone or something is not specific

There are different types of determiners. There type of determiner depends on the type of noun. Singular nouns always need a determiner. Plural nouns the determiner is optional. Uncountable nouns the determiner is also optional.

There are about 50 different determiners in the English language they include:

• Articles: a, an, the
• Demonstratives: this, that, these, those, which etc.
• Possessives: my, your, our, their, his, hers, whose, my friend's, our friends', etc.
• Quantifiers:few, a few, many, much, each, every, some, any etc.
• Numbers: one, two, three, twenty, forty
• Ordinals: first, second, 1st 2nd, 3rd, last, next, etc.

Morphology

What is Morphology?

 

   Study of Morphology is the study of the basic building blocks of meaning in language. These building blocks, called morphemes, are the smallest units of form that bear meaning or have a grammatical function.

What Are Morphemes?

    Words are not the most basic units of meaning. They are frequently composed of even more basic elements.

A. obvious: homework, dinnertime, moonlight, classroom.

B. medium: fearless, quickly, fishing, momentary.

C. difficult: walks, tenth, dog's, flipped.

   The most basic elements of meaning are called morphemes. Each of the preceding examples contained at least 2 morphemes. We can take, for instance, "th" from "tenth" and say that it has a meaning all to itself { namely, "the ordinal numeral corresponding to the cardinal numeral I'm attached to".

Classication Of Morphemes

Free and Bound Morphemes

   A morpheme is free if it is able to appear as a word by itself. It is bound if it can only appear as part of a larger, multi-morphemic word. Every morpheme is either free or bound.

  
Free morphemes are also referred as roots.

  Bound morphemes are also referred to as affixes, among which there are prefixes, infixes, and suffixes.

A. prefixes: un-happy, re-write, pre-view.

B. suffixes: writ-ing, quick-ly, neighbor-hood.

C. infixes: (very rare in English) speech-o- meter.

Bound morphemes may be derivational or inflectional.

Derivational Morphemes

   Derivational morphemes create new words. They derive new words from other words.

Unhappy   un + happy.

Happiness   happy + ness.

Preview   pre + view.

Further properties

Change part of speech or the meaning of a word

A. part of speech: us-able (V -> A), trouble-some (N _< A), judg-ment (V -> N).

B. meaning: dis-comfort, ex-boyfriend.

C. both: use-less (V -> A).

  

• Are not required by syntax.

• Are not very productive: dis-like, *dis-hate.

• Usually occur before inflectional suffixes: work-er-s.

• Can be either suffixes or prefixes (in english).

 

Inflectional Morphemes

   Inflectional morphemes, on the other hand, do not change meanings or parts of speech, but instead simply make minor grammatical changes necessary for agreement with other words.

Cats   cat + s

Cooler   cool + er.

There are only eight inflectional morphemes: -s, -ed, -ing, - en, -s, -'s, -er, -est.

 They do not change meaning or part of speech: cat - cats - cat's -> nouns.

They are required by the syntax.

 They are very productive.

They occur after derivational morphemes, usually at he very end of the word (in english).

They can only be suffixes (in english).