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What is Morphology?
Morphology is the study of word formations and internal structure.

Morphology

It studies how words are put together from their smaller elements or parts and the rules that govern the process. The unit in the account of morphology is morpheme.

What is Morphology?
Morphology is derived from the Greek words morph and lgos. morph means shape or form. lgos means talk, claim, or story. Morphology used to be a branch of biology which studies the forms and structures of human beings and animal.

Morphology
The study of language has emerged since the Greek and Roman Civilization in the 5th Century. The study of morphology emerged as one of the major fields of Structural Linguistics in the early of 20th Century and after the very end of Comparative and Historical Linguistics.

Morphology
The smallest elements or units in a language refers to the distinctive sounds or a phoneme of a language. The biggest units in a language refers to the systems of how the smallest elements or units are put together to form meaningful and grammatical sentences in a language.

Morpheme
Before we will discuss about a morpheme, we should address the two important terms which are morph and allomorph. In order to constitute a morpheme, a linguist will seek for the basic elements in the system of language. He will start at the smallest meaningful units in a language which here are the morphs.

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Morphs and allomorphs

Morphs are the smallest meaningful elements gained from the investigation of the level of sound system. Now consider some examples of English as an unknown language.

SET A /kQt/ /dog/ /tSaIld/ /ship/ SET B /kQts/ /dogz/ /tSIldrn/ /ship/

cat dog child sheep more than one cat more than one dog more than one child more than one sheep

All members of the information in the set A are morphs. Each member is the smallest meaningful element of English. It can not be broken into any smaller part with meaning. Therefore, they are morphs.

In the set B, a linguist sees that something has been added to mean the plurality or more than one. Now we have five morphs. They are /kQt/ cat /dog/ dog /tSaIld/ child /ship/ sheep Plural morph

Now consider the SET B, /kQts/ more than one cat /dogz/ more than one dog /tSIldrn/ more than one child /ship/ more than one sheep

The morphs that show plurality are /s/, /z/, /irregular/, and /O/. They are conditioned. SET B /kQts/ /s/ after voiceless sound /dogz/ /z/ after voiced sound /tSIldrn/ irregular form, elsewhere /ship/ /O/, elsewhere

The plural morphs must be conditioned.

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Morphs that change according to their conditions are referred as allomorphs (allomeans differ) Therefore, allomorphs are the variants of a unique morph according to their phonological distribution.

When a morph is unique and it can not be divided into any smaller element or unit, it is called morpheme. To indicate a morpheme, a linguist will put a bracket { x } outside the morpheme.

Morpheme
What is morpheme? A morpheme is the smallest meaningful element in a language. It can not be divided into any part.

farmers can be divided into farm+er+s but far+m+er+s. Farm is an action to engage in raising corps or livestock. er is someone who does an action. s shows the plurality. far means distant. m ?????

Word and morpheme

Some morphemes can be words such as {tree}, {cat}, or {book}. Some morphemes can not be words such as {plural} (/s/,/z/, and so on) or {-er}. Some morphemes are not a syllable such as {plural} in cats or dogs.

Types of Morphemes
Lexical morphemes and grammatical morphemes Free morphemes and bound morphemes Roots and bases

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Lexical Morphemes
Lexical morphemes have a meaning by themselves. They refer to things, ideas, qualities, actions, states and so forth in the world. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs are typical of lexical morphemes. Book, table, fish, tennis, good, slow, run, die, eat, etc.

Grammatical Morphemes
Grammatical morphemes do not really have a meaning by themselves, instead, they express a relationship between lexical morphemes. Preposition, articles and conjunctions are typical of grammatical morphemes. Under, in, on, but, if , since, the, a, an, etc.

Example
the book on the table in the water a boy the man

Free Morphemes
Free morphemes are morphemes that can stand alone as words. They may be lexical morphemes such as boy, day, chair, nice, young, etc. They may be grammatical morpheme such as for, the , at, and, if, etc.

Bound Morphemes
Bound morphemes are morphemes that can not stand alone as a word They may be lexical morphemes such as -clude as in exclude, include, preclude.
vis-vert as in visual, vision as in pervert, invert, subvert

Bound Morphemes
They may be grammatical morphemes such as the plural morphemes as in boys, girls, cats, dogs etc. To indicate bound morphemes, we have to put a hyphen (-) to indicate the distribution of the morpheme. {vis-} a hyphen is after {-vert} a hyphen comes before

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Roots or bases
Root or base is the morpheme which carries the basic meaning of a word. Swiftly has swift as its base INVERT has -vert as its base. A root or base can be a free or bound morpheme.

Exercise 1
Identify the number of morphemes for each word. Then, give the morpheme type for each. books There is/are . morpheme(s) in the word. They are {book} and {-s} which are free + bound.

Affixes
glasses incomplete singer lens actors speakers walked spoonful decided childhood witches colder colorful slept heater mother tables girlfriend silver running oldest
Affixes are bound grammatical morphemes. They can be divided into prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. As in depress, {de-} is the prefix and {press} is the base. As in sinful, {sin} is the base and {-ful} is the suffixes.

Affixes
Prefixes are morphemes that are attached to the beginning of the lexical morpheme as in depress, {de-} is the prefix and {press} is the base. Suffixes are morphemes that are attached to the end of the lexical morphemes as in sinful, {sin} is the base and {-ful} is the suffixes.

Affixes
Bound grammatical morphemes or affixes are divided into two categories depending on their functions: inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes inflectional morphemes derivational morphemes

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(inflectional) (derivation) Inflection Derivation

Affixiation

Inflectional Morphemes
English has only eight inflectional morphemes. They are all suffixes.
Inflectional Affixes {PLU} = plural {POSS} = possessive {COMP} = comparative {SUP} = superlative {PRES} = present tense {PAST} = past tense {PAST PART} = past participle {PRES PART} = present participle Base Noun Noun Adjective Adjective Verb Verb Verb Verb Example boys = {boy} + {PLU} boys = {boy} + {POSS} older = {old} + {COMP} oldest = {old} + {SUP} walks = {walk} + {PRES} walked = {walk} + {PAST} Driven = {drive} + {PAST PART} Driving = {drive} + {PRES PART}

Exercise 2
Identify the root and its inflectional morphemes. boys men ladies oxen mans Besss Donalds Lauras happier better best worst does helps cries weeps drove was went flew begun driven been blown raining typing coming sitting