Morphology Morphemes Word Structure

Morphology

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.  Background of the Studies

        In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. When it stands by itself, it is considered a root because it has a meaning of its own (e.g. the morpheme cat) and when it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an affix because it has a grammatical function (e.g. the –s in cats to specify that it is plural). Every word comprises one or more morphemes. The more combinations a morpheme is found in, the more productive it is said to be.  

        Content morphemes express a concrete meaning or content, while function morphemes have more of a grammatical role. For example, the morphemes fast and sad can be considered content morphemes. On the other hand, the suffix –ed belongs to the function morphemes given that it has the grammatical function of indicating past tense. Although these categories seem very clear and counter-intuitive, the idea behind it can be harder to grasp given that they overlap with each other. Examples of an ambiguous situation are the preposition over and the determiner your, which seem to have a concrete meaning, but are considered function morphemes because their role is to connect ideas grammatically. A general rule to follow to determine the category of a morpheme is: Content morphemes include free morphemes that are nouns, adverbs, adjective, and verbs. It also includes bound morphemes that are bound roots and derivational affixes, Function morphemes can be free morphemes that are prepositions, pronouns, determiners, and conjunctions. Additionally, they can be bound morphemes that are inflectional affixes.

B.  Formulation of The Problem

1.    What the Definition of Morphology is?

2.    What the Classification of Morphemes is?

3.    What the Derivational Morphemes is?

4.    What the Inflectional Morphemes is?

5.    What the Cranberry Morphemes is?

6.    What the Content and Function Morphemes is?

7.    What the Pitfalls Of Identifying Morphemes is?

8.    What the Hierarchical Structure of Words is?

9.    What the Morphemes and multiple parts of speeches?

10.               What the Word Formation Processes is?

11.               What the Word Formation Processes (cont.) is?

12.               What the Minor Word Formation Processes is?

13.               What the Minor Word Formation Processes (cont.) is?

14.               What the Morphological Types Of Languages is?

15.               What the Sub-types of synthetic languages is?

C.  Purpose of Writing

1.      To know about Definition of morpheme,

2.      To know about Distribution of morpheme,

3.      To know about Classification of morpheme.

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A.  Definition of Morphology

1.      What is Morphology

·         Morph = form or shape, ology = 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.

2.      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, _shing, 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".

3.      Basic Concept of Word Structure

·      Morphemes do not combine in arbitrary ways. These are definition patterns to the distribution of morpheme in poly-morphemic word. e.g. rewrite ≠ write-re, walks≠ s-walk. The number, order of and type of morphemes used to make up a particular words called its structure. Morphologists study not only the meanings of the various morphemes, but also their patterns of distribution – the structures they are capable of forming. This knowledge is part of linguistic competence.

·      The structure of words can be represented by trees.

B.  Classification of Morphemes

Free And Bound Morphemes

·      A morphemes is free if it is able to appear a word by itself. It is bound if it can only appear as part of a large, 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

·      A stem can be defined as a root to which an affix can be added. Thus, the root dog is also a stem, because, even though it contains no affix (es), an affix could be added to it-to form, e.g., dog-s. This notion is necessary because not all roots are such that affixes can be added to them –e.g., of, or. I, etc. 

C.  Derivational Morphemes

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

e.g.

- unhappy → un + happy

- happines→ 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 su_xes: work-er-s

·           can be either su_xes or pre_xes (in english)

D.  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.

e.g: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 derivation morphemes, usually at the very end of the word (in English)

·           They can only be suffixes (in English)

E.   Cranberry Morphemes

In the word cranberry, is cranan affix?

No, it is a bound root, a so-called cranberry morpheme.

Cranberry morphemes are morphemes that occur only as bound roots and that have no constant associated meaning.

-          cranberry, boysenberry

-          permit, commit, submit

-          receive, perceive, conceive

F.   Content and Function Morphemes

Morphemes (bound or free) can be either content or function morphemes.

·         Content morphemes carry some semantic content as opposed to performing a grammatical function.

For example car, -able, -un.

·         Function morphemes act solely to provide grammatical information and syntactic agreement and, plural –s

·         Note that these are not simply different names for the derivation/inflectional distinction - D/I morphemes are all bound, while content/function morphemes may be free as well (e.g., prepositions are free function morphemes)

G. Pitfalls Of Identifying Morphemes

·      Morphemes ≠ syllables.

a.       Mono-morphemic : rigmarole, syllable, rutabaga

b.      Poly-morphemic     : cats, likes, its, cried

·      The sounds associated with a morpheme are not unique –other morphemes may share them.

a.       Cats ≠ cat’s, likes ≠ likes (..... and dislikes)

b.      (care)-ful ≠ full, (care)-less (...... and dislikes)

·      Don’t be fooled by spelling obscuring the phonetic representations or morphemes.

a.       writ-er, edit-or, li-ar

b.      ed-ible, wash-able

H. The Hierarchical Structure of Words

·      Words are formed in steps, with one affix attaching to a complete word, which can be a free word or a morphological complex word.

·      Affixes in general can only combine with words of a single part of speech. (e.g., “able” and “re” only combine with verbs). Also, the word affixes form after combinations are usually of single part of speech as well, not necessarily the same as the words with which it combines. (“able” forms adjectives, “re” forms verbs).

·      This fact implies that the order of combination for morphemes makes a difference, because otherwise you would end up with “non-well-formed” words.

a.       Unusable = un + (use + able), not * (un + use) + able.

b.      Reusable = (re + use) + able, not Pre + (use + able). 

·      Because trees have a particular order of morphemic combination associated with them, we can say that their structure is hierarchical.

·         There is a hierarchy among the various morphemes as to the order in which they were added to the word.

·         Some words can have multiple structures associated with them because of various combinatorial possibilities for the constituent morphemes. This is usually due to phonetically identical but otherwise differing morphemes causing some sort of ambiguity, e.g., unlock able. These are ambiguous in their word structure.

I.     Morphemes and multiple parts of speech

      There are (a very small number of) examples of affixes which combine with more than one part of speech

(e.g., pre-).

a.       preexist, precede, predetermine (V →V)

b.      preseason, prewar (N →A)

c.       prefrontal, predental, prehistoric (A → A)

We want to say that all these "pre-s" are the same morpheme and not just different morphemes which happen to be phonetically identical, since the meaning of the prefix does not change, regardless of which part of speech it is combined with. The combinations are nevertheless rule governed.

J. Word Formation Processes

·         Affixation: process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes.

V + -able →A: predict+ -able

V + -er→N: sing+er

un + A →A: un-productive

A + en →V: deep+ -en, thick+ -en

·         Compounding: word formation process by which new words are formed by combining two or more independent words.

A + A →A: bittersweet

N + N →N: rainbow

V + V →V: sleepwalk

P + P →P: without

V + N →N: pickpocket

N + V →V: spoon-feed

P + V → V: overdo

K. Word Formation Processes (cont.)

·           Reduplication: process of forming new words either by doubling an entire word (total reduplication) or part of a word (partial reduplication).

-          English: humpty-dumpty, higgledy-piggeldy (partial reduplication)

-          Creole: blak\black", blakblak\very black" (total reduplication)

·         Morpheme-internal Changes: a type of word formation process wherein a word changes internally to indicate grammatical information.

-          ablaut: sing, sang, sung; swim, swam, swum

-          other changes: man, men; mouse, mice, goose,geese

·         Suppletion: a relationship between forms of a word wherein on form cannot be phonologically or morphological derived from the other, this process is rare.

-          am - was; go –went

-          good - better; bad – worse

L. Minor Word Formation Processes

·      Acronyms : abbreviations formed by taking the initial sounds (letters)  of the words of a phrase and uniting them to form a pronounceable word.

-          Laser           : light amplification by simulated emission of radiation

-          Scuba          : self-contained underwater breathing apparatus

-          Radar          : radio detecting and ranging

-          AIDS           : acquired immune deficiency syndrome

·      Blending    : process of creating a new word by combining the parts of two different words, usually the beginning of one word and the end of another. 

-          Breakfast + lunch → brunch

-          Smoke + fog → Smog

-          Motor + hotel → motel

M. Minor Word Formation Processes (cont.)

·      Back formation: word formation process in which a new base form is created from an apparently similar form by using proportional analogy.

-          revise : revision; televise : television

-          actor : act; editor : edit

-          create : creation; donate : donation

·      Clipping     : process of creating new words by shortening parts of longer words.

-. Doctor, professional, veterinarian, laboratory,

   Advertisement, dormitory, examination

-. Bicycle (bike)

-  Refrigerator

N. Morphological Types Of Languages

There are two basic morphological types of language structure: analytic vs synthetic.

·      (purely) Analytic languages have only free morphemes{ sentences are sequences of single-morpheme words.

·      Synthetic languages make use of both free and bound morphemes. In general, poly-morphemic words consist of a stem onto which various affixes are added.

O. Subtypes of synthetic languages

There are 3 major sub-types of synthetic languages: agglutinating, fusional, poly-synthetic.

·      Agglutinating: morphemes are combined "loosely” -morphemes are attached to each other "cleanly”, so it is simple to pick out where one morpheme ends and the next one begins. (e.g., Hungarian, LF - p.130)

·      Fusional: like agglutinating, but affixes tend to "fuse together", making them difficult or impossible to separate from each other (and the stem). (e.g., Spanish { LF p. 131)

·      Poly-synthetic: extremely complex, multi-stem and multi-a_x words can be constructed, frequently corresponding to entire complex sentences in other, less synthetic, languages. (e.g., Sora{ LF, p. 132)

  

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. When it stands by itself, it is considered a root because it has a meaning of its own (e.g. the morpheme cat) and when it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an affix because it has a grammatical function (e.g. the –s in cats to specify that it is plural). Every word comprises one or more morphemes. The more combinations a morpheme is found in, the more productive it is said to be.