Morphology (01) : The Concept of Morphology

§  Morphology is the analysis of the structure of the word.

§  The definition of word?

·         Written or spoken unit of language.

·         Is difficult to decide for each language.

·         Cannot be generalized across languages.

·         Must incorporate phonological consideration.

Example:

·         Room = 1 word

·         Classroom = 2 words

·         Board = 1 word

·         White board = 1 word

·         Interactive = 1 word

·         Non-interactive white board = 2 word

·         I will like it = 4 words

There are 2 types of words:

1.      Variable

Example: Woman, sweet and walk

2.      Invariable

Example: Myself, but, about, and if

§  Morpheme

Morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning or grammatical function. Units of grammatical function include forms used to indicate past tense, progressive or plural, for example. Here are the examples of morpheme:

·         Tempting = Temp + ing = 2 morphemes

·         Dog = 1 morphemes

·         Cats = cat + s = 2 morphemes

·         Judgers = judge + er + s = 3 morphemes

Morpheme is divided become 2:

1.      Free Morpheme

Free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand by itself as a single word.

Example: Open and tour

2.      Bound Morpheme

Bound Morpheme is a morpheme such as un- or –ed that cannot stand alone and must be attached to another form.

Example:

·         Jumper =jump _(free) + er _(bound)

·         Implied = imply _(free) + ed _(bound)

·         Faithful = faith _(free) + ful _(bound)

§  Morph is an actual form used as part of a word representing one version of a morpheme.

Example:

·         “cats” consists of two morphs, cat + s

·         “buses” consist of two morphs , bus + es

So there are at least two different morphs, -s and –es.

§  Affixes

An affix is a bound morpheme such as un- or –ed added to a word.

Example: some familiar example are the elements un-, mis-, pre-, -ful, -less, -ish, -ism, and –ness which appear in words like unhappy, misrepresent, prejudge, joyful, careless, boyish, naturalism and kindness.

There are two kinds of affixes:

1.      Prefixes

Prefix is a bound morpheme added to the beginning of a word.

Example: un-   = unhappy                               mis- = misunderstanding

2.      Suffixes

Suffix is a bound morpheme added to the end of a word.

Example: -less = careless                                -ful = beautiful