MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

“MORPHEME”

Oleh :
GROUP 4
AFNI AJENG A.P
NIM : 20400118012
NURAYINUN FAUZIL FITRI
NIM : 20400118024
NURFADIA
NIM : 20400118029

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTEMENT

THE FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TECHING
ALAUDDIN ISLAMIC STATE UNIVERSITY OF MAKASSAR
2019
 MORPHEME

A. Definition of Morpheme
Morphology is a branch of linguistics which indentifies words and their anatomy. The
anatomy of words consist smaller units called morpheme.
Based on Expert, they definite morpheme as:
- According to stageberg (1965:85) a morpheme is a short segment of language that
meets three criteria :
1. It is a word or a part of a word that has a meaning
2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of its
meaning or without meaningless remainder.
3. It recurs in different verbal environments with a relatively stable meaning
- According to O’Grady and Guzman (2005:113), Richards ET. Al (1987:183) and
Brinton (2000: 75) morphemes are the smallest units of language that carries
information about meaning or function.
To get a further understanding about the definition of morpheme, we need to
understand that:
- Morphologists assume that words not only physically made up of sounds but also
of smallest meaning bearing units. (Becker and Biaswanger, 2006). In the other
book it is called word’s internal structures as well as the elements of words. This
internal structure can be analyzed into smaller components which constructing the
words. For Example words Singers can be divided into three morphemes. They
are Sing, -er and –s
- The smaller component can be influences the meaning of the words. For instance,
adding -er to sing can cause a change in the meaning of the word. Sing means
making musical sounds with the voice in the form of a song or tune, in other hand
singer means someone who sings or someone who makes the musical sounds.
- The smaller component can be influences the grammatical structure. As an
example adding s to singer can impact the grammatical structure of the word,
from singular to plural.

As the conclusion, we can say that morpheme is the smaller component of

language or a minimal unit of words which can influence the grammatical structures
as well as the meaning of the words.

A word may consist one morpheme, two morphemes, three morpheme or more
depend on its complexity. For example
One morpheme : act
Two morphemes : act-ive
Three morphemes : act-iv-ate
Four morphemes : act-iv-at-or
More than four morphemes : act-iv-at-or-s

B. Classification of Morphemes
 Morpheme is divided into free morpheme and bound morpheme. Free morpheme is
a morpheme that can stand alone as a word and has meaning. In other hand, bound
morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word and has no meaning.
1. Free morpheme
According to stage berg (1965: 87) defines a free morpheme as one that can be
uttered alone with its meaning. free morpheme is morpheme that can stand alone by
themselves as a single word and has their own meaning which can be fully understood.
These morphemes can stand alone without any attachment of affixes.
Some example of free morpheme are teach, walk,watch, tea, coffe, pen, big, tall,
heavy, on, at, behind etc.Free morpheme can be classified into open class and closed
class.
a. Open class
Open class is also known as the lexical morpheme or content words.
These morpheme can be freely added with affixes and Morphemes that carry
the content of the things that we want to convey or talk about. The affixes
that can be added to free morpheme is prefix (un-, dis-, re-, mis-, in, etc) and
suffixes (-ly, -able, -less, -ing, -ment, etc). This lexical morpheme includes
the ordinary nouns, verbs, adjective and adverb.
Example
 Nouns
Example :book, pen, dress.
books, pens, dresses
 Adjectives
Example : big, cheap,clean
Bigger, cheapest, cleaned
 Verb
Example : act, communicate, cook
Actor, communication, cooking.
 Adverb
b. Closed Class
Closed class is also known as funcitional morpheme or funcition words.
They are known as closed class because they cannot be attached with any
component of languange or affixes. This fucitional morpheme includes
prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, modal verbs and auxiliary
verbs .
Example :
 Preposition : of, at, in
 Pronouns : hey, they, anybody
 Determiner : the, at, more
 Conjunction : and, that, while
 Modal verbs : Can, must, will
 Auxiliary : be, have, got

2. Bound Morpheme
 Bound morphem placed in the opposite place of free morpheme. According
O’Grady and Guzman (2005: 113) Bound morphemes defined as a morpheme that
must be attached to another element. Jackson (1980: 53) and Briton ( 2000: 76) also
defined that bound morpheme may occur only if they are combined with another
morpheme. In conclusion, bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand alone
and must be attached with another morpheme or must be attached to free morpheme.
Bound morpheme includes prefixes (un-, dis-, re-, mis-, in, etc) and suffixes (-ly,
-able, -less, -ing, -ment, etc).Bound morpheme is classified into two. They are
inflectional morpheme and Derivational morpheme.
a. Inflectional morpheme
Inflectional morpheme is a bound morpheme that used to indicate the
grammatical aspects but cannot be used to produce a new word and change
part of speech. There are only eight inflectional morpheme which are all
suffixes.they are –‘s, -ed, -en, -er, -est, -s, -es, -ing.
The grammatical roles of inflectional morpheme are generally divided
into three funcition, they are :
 Sign of plurality ( Noun + -s or -es)
Nouns are classified into singular and plural. By adding the suffix
-s or –es the nouns come from singular to plural.
Example : a pen > two pens
 Sign of tense ( verb + -s, -ing, -ed, -en)
As the sign of tense suffix –s indicate the third person singular of
simple present tense, suffix –ing to indicate continuous tense and
suffix –ed and –en indicate past tense.
Example : I cook > I am Cooking
 Sign of comparison (adjective + -er, -est)
There are two comparison they are comparative ( compare two
people) and superlative (compare among more than two people).
Inflectional morpheme –er is indicating comparative and
inflectionlal moropheme –est is indicating superlative.
Example : you are tall > You are taller than me
There is a variation in the form of these inflectional morpheme.
For example, used to marking possesive.
b. Derivational morpheme
Dervational bound morpheme is used to make new words by changing e
grammatical categoriories or the part of speech of the words. Prefix (un-, pre,
and re-, etc) and suffix (-ly, -ate,- full, -ness,-ment, etc) is include in
derivational bound morpheme.
Example :
Happy (adj) > Happy + ness = Happyness (noun)
The word happy is adjective, but when it attach with suffix –ness it will
become a noun
C. Analyzing Morphemes
1. Analyzing Morpheme using hypen (-)
By using hypen, the analysis directly separate every single morpheme which form
the words. Example :
a. actively : act-ive-ly
b. untouchable : un-touch-able
c. teachers : teach-er-s
d. dislike : dis-like
2. Analyzing Morpheme using a word-structure tree
By using word-structure tree, we draw which points out the morpheme building
the word. Example
a. Untouchable consist of three morpheme
Untouchable
Adjective

prefix adjective

verb suffix

un touch able
 Un is only attached to an adjective not a verb
 By using word tree, we could understand that before attaching un to
verb we must change the verb into an adjective.
b. Teacher consist of two morpheme
Teachers
noun

noun suffix

verb suffix

teach er s
 Suffix ‘s’ to show the sign of plurality could only attached by noun
 before attaching verb into suffix ‘s’ (pulral) we must change the verb
into noun.
D. Allomorphs
1. Defenition
In morphology, morph is the actual realization of morpheme. And there are variants
of morpheme, it is called allomorphs. For instance, the forms cats (cat + -s) consist of
two morphs they are cat, as the lexical mopheme (open class) and –s, as the inflectional
morpheme and sign for plurality in the other hand, the form buses (bus+es) which is also
consist of two morph they are bus, as the lexical morpheme (open class) and es as the
inflectional morpheme and sign for plurality.
From the two example, we can recognize that in term to show the plurality, there at
least two different morph. so we realize that plural is an allomorph, because there are
alternatives. And in reality, plural in English made with three different morphs: /s/, /z/,
and [əz], as in kicks, cats, and sizes.
Take the morpheme 'plural.' Note that it can be attached to a number of lexical
morphemes to produce structures like 'cat + plural,' 'bus + plural,' 'sheep + plural,' and
'man + plural.' In each of these examples, the actual forms of the morphs that result from
the morpheme 'plural' are different. Yet they are all allomorphs of the one morpheme. So,
in addition to /s/ and /əz/, another allomorph of 'plural' in English seems to be a zero-
morph because the plural form of sheep is actually 'sheep + ∅.' When we look at 'man +
plural,' we have a vowel change in the word...as the morph that produces the 'irregular'
plural form men." (George Yule, "The Study of Language," 4th ed. Cambridge
University Press, 2010)
2. Conditioning of allomorphs
a. Lexical conditioning
Lexical conditioning occurs when the choice of allomorph to forms a plural for
nouns is unpredictable and must be memorized on a word-by-word basis.
unpredictable.
Example : Lexical conditioning in plurals
a. Children = (child) + plural = (child) + (children)
b. Man = (man) + plural = (man) + (men)
c. Foot = (foot) + Plural = (feet)
d. Fish = (Fish) + plural = (fish) + Zero allomorph
b. Phonological conditioning
Phonological conditioning occurs when the choice of the allomorph is
predictable based in the pronounciation or the sound structure. The
phonologically conditioned allomorph regarded as regular. this is a Sound-based
allomorphs which includes indefinite articles and additive allomorphs. Whether a
or an is the allomorph chosen depends on how an adjacent morpheme is
pronounced.
 Allomorph of idenfinite article : . Whether a or an is the allomorph
chosen depends on how an adjacent morpheme is pronounced. an (before
vowel) and a (before consonant)
 Allomorph of the regular past tens morpheme
1. /id/ after d,t : hated
2. /t/ after all other voiceless sounds : picked
3. /d/ after all other voiced sounds : wedged
 Some allomorph of the negative prefix
1. /im/ before the billabial sound : impossible
2. /il/ before consonant /l/ : illegal
3. /in/ for the elsewhere : independent
 Basic Word Ending Sounds
Morpheme Allomorph Sounds Like…
Awesome -zm
Boxes -zz
Busses -iz
Cats -s
Dogs
-z
Judges
Fished
-t
Talked
Grabbed -d
Hats -s
Wanted -əd

c. Morphological conditioning
Morphological conditioning occurs when choice of allomorph is determined
by morphological context, not just by their pronounciation, Structure-based
allomorphs. This is typical of English in that there is no one-size-fits-all rule.
Example :

assume assumption assumptive assumable

consume consumption consumptive consumable
presume presumption presumptuous presumable
resume resumption resumptive resumable
subsume subsumption subsumptive subsumable
-ally an-throp-olog-ic-ally
lin-guist-ic-ally
lit-er-ally
phys-ic-ally
-ly ac-cid-ent-ly

/
 REFFERENCES

Sukirman. English Morphology. Gowa : Alauddin University Press; 2013

Yale G. The Study of Languange.Fourth edition. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press;

2010

Fromkin V, Rodman R, Hyams N. An Introduction to Languange. Boston : Thomas

Wadsworth. 2007

Becker A, Bieswanger M. Introduction to English Linguistics. Tübingen: Narr Francke

Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG;.2006

https://www.linguistikid.com/2017/01/free-morpheme-bound-morpheme.html?m=1

https://kddidit.com/2015/07/04/grammar-morpheme/#allomorphMorph

https://www.fabelia.com/arti-morpheme-pembagian-jenis-contoh/

http://bacaan-seru.blogspot.com/2011/11/academic-word-kata-yang-sering-di.html?m=1

http://www.sfu.ca/person/dearmond/323/323%20/323.morph.htm

https://www.thoughtco.com/allomorph-word-forms-and-sounds-1688980