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).
