Multiple Choice Questions / True False Question

1) Morphemes are minimal linguistic signs in the sense that they can't be divided into
further signs.

A) True

B) False

2) A word can't be a morpheme.

A) True

B) False

3) Bound morphemes are called affixes.

A) True

B) False

4) What is morphology?

A) The study of the rules governing the sounds that form words

B) The study of the rules governing sentence formation

C) The study of the rules governing word formation

5) Inflectional affixes are generally more productive than derivational affixes。

A) True

B) False

6) A word that comes from someone's name (e.g. Mackintosh)

A) Borrowing

B) Acronyms

C) Coinage

D) Eponyms

7) A process that removes a segment from certain phonetic contexts

A) Blend

B) Deletion

C) acronyms
D) Eponyms

8) Which sentence describes inflectional morphology?

A. Adding a morpheme to produce a new word but the same lexeme.

B. Adding a morpheme to produce a new word and different lexeme.

C. Adding a morpheme to produce the same word but different lexeme.

Answer

1. B

2. A

3. B

4. C

5. B

6. D

7. B

8. A

Structure Question

1. Compare and contrast the inflectional morpheme and derivational morpheme.

(5m)

2. Classify the underlined bound morphemes of the following words: (5m)

No. Words Types of bound morpheme

I Worked
Ii nonsense
Iii modernise
Iv John’s
 v overexcited

1. Compare and contrast the functional morpheme and lexical morpheme. (5m)

2. Classify the following free morphemes: (5m)

No. Words Types of free morpheme

I Cat
Ii The
Iii Which
Iv Radio
v She

3. Split the words below into morphemes divided by “-”, e.g. Unhappiness: Un-happi-
ness.
Use a capital letter at the start of each word. (5m)

No. Words Morphemes

I Disreputable
Ii Tenderheartedness:
Iii Darkening
Iv Civilization
v Practicality
Answer:

1. Compare and contrast the inflectional morpheme and derivational morpheme.

(5m)
 Inflectional morpheme is a suffix that's added to a word to assign a
particular grammatical property to that word.
 Inflectional morphemes serve as grammatical markers that indicate tense,
number, possession, or comparison.
 Inflectional morphemes do not change the grammar category of the
words they’re attached to
 For example: Cat Cats
 Inflectional morphemes in English include the bound morphemes -s (or
-es); 's (or s'); -ed; -en; -er; -est; and -ing.
 Derivational morphemes can change the grammatical category (or part of
speech) of a word
 Derivational morphemes create or derive new words by changing the
meaning or by changing the word class
 For example: happy unhappy (both words are adjectives but the
meaning chnages

No. Words Types of bound morpheme

I Worked Inflectional morpheme
Ii nonsense Derivational morpheme
Iii modernise Derivational morpheme
Iv John’s Inflectional morpheme
v overexcited Derivational morpheme

1. Compare and contrast the functional morpheme and lexical morpheme. (5m)
 A functional morpheme (as opposed to a content morpheme) is a
morpheme which simply modifies the meaning of the word, rather
than supplying the root meaning of the word.
 Functional morpheme functions but does not mean in and of itself, but
rather encodes grammatical meaning.
 Functional morphemes are generally closed class, that is new
functional morphemes cannot normally be coined.
 Functional morphemes can be bound, such as verbal inflectional
morphology (e.g., progressive -ing, past tense -ed), or nominal
inflectional morphology (e.g., plural -s), or free, such as conjunctions
(e.g., and, or), prepositions (e.g., of, by, for, on), articles (e.g., a, the),
and pronouns (e.g., she, him, it, you, mine).
 Lexical morphemes are those that having meaning by themselves
(moreaccurately, they have sense)
  Nouns, verbs, adjectives ({boy}, {buy}, {big}) are typical lexical
morphemes
 Lexical morphemes that carry the content or meaning of the
messages that we are conveying.
 Examples of lexical morphemes: follow, type, look, yellow, act, pick,
strange

No. Words Types of free morpheme

I Cat Lexical morpheme
Ii The Functional morpheme
Iii Which Functional morpheme
Iv Radio Lexical morpheme
v She Functional morpheme

No. Words Morphemes

I Disreputable Dis-reput-able
Ii Tenderheartedness Tender-heart-ed-ness
Iii Darkening Dark-en-ing
Iv Civilization Civil-iz-ation
v Practicality Practic-al-ity

Essay Questions

“In the past decade there has been a surge of research interest in morphological
awareness (MA), which refers to an individual's ability to decode the morphemic
structure of words and further analyze them. Recent research into MA suggests that
there is a significant rate of achievement among students who are exposed to strategies
for not only understanding the meanings of words but also recognizing different
morphological forms of the same word in reading texts, as opposed to students who are
not exposed to such strategies.”

In your opinion, to what extend does the awareness of morphology have impacts on
language learning?

Answer

 Morphology is the study of word structure and word formation.

 A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language that carries meaning.
 The awareness of morphology is important for English language learners.
 Morhology increases students’ vocabulary, detect the changes of word classes,
know the word origins and enhances students’ mind to think creatively.
 It helps students to understand English vocabulary and grammar better.
  it breaks down language and creates patterns of meaning for speakers.
 be able to make meaning of the sounds within words.
 It helps us see the flexibility of language.
 Morphological awareness can help language learners to familiarize with lexical
derivations and with the meaning or morphemes.
 They will be able to distinguish, for example, that the suffixes “-ment” or “-ness”
form a noun, or that the suffix “-ly” forms an adverb.
 They will be able to realize that, at some extent, the English language has a
certain morphological logic people follow to know and produce new words.
 Inflectional morphemes
o For example, once a speaker understands the morpheme (suffixes) of -s
or -ing, they will be able to apply and comprehend that construct of
language with many different words.
 Derivational morphemes
o learners can take the notion of the meaning in the word “like” and
transform it into a number of possibilities (unlike, likely, unlikely, likable,
unlikable, likeness, unlikeness) to express their message more accurately
and precisely.
 help learners to infer the meaning of some words
 deduce the meaning from the root and and pre-/suffixes
 understand the target language
 be able to communicate successfully.

Write an essay of 200 words which consists of at least five types of word formation
processes. Explain each type of the word formation processes that you have written in
the essay.

Ebola virus disease (EVD) made its first appearance in two simultaneous
outbreaks in 1976 in Nzara, South Sudan, and in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of
Congo. The latter is a village situated near the Ebola River, from which the disease
takes its name. Ebola can spread in a community through human-to-human
transmission. Infection results from contact with the blood or other bodily fluids of an
infected person. Infection may also occur through contact with environments
contaminated with such fluids. Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact
with the body of the deceased can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola. People
are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. Healthcare workers
and laboratory workers are at risk if strict precautions are not observed, as they are in
close contact with the patients and with their body fluids. It is recommended that
laboratory staff treat samples from EVD patients as an extreme bio-hazard risk and take
the necessary precautions. Severely ill patients require intensive care. As yet, no
vaccine for EVD is available. Besides, HIV, the virus that causes acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, has become one of the world’s most serious
health and development challenges since the first ever case was reported in 1981.

ANSWER

- Abbreviation EVD
- Abbreviation is a process in which a word or phrase is shortened.
- Ebola virus disease is shortened to EVD.
- The abbreviation of EVD is formed by the initial letters of the phrase Ebola virus
disease. E stands for Ebola, v stands for virus, D stands for disease.
- Abbreviation is used to avoid repetitive use of long phrase.

- Compounding  Healthcare
- Compounding is a process in which a word is formed from the combination of two
or more root morphemes.
- Root morphemes such as “heath”, and “care” are combined to become one new
word which is “healthcare”.
- The word formed, “healthcare” is called compound.

- Clipping bio-hazard
- Clipping is a process of creating new words by shortening parts of a longer word.
- Reduction of syllables in a word.
- Bio-hazard (Biology-hazard)

- Affixation bodily
- Affixation is a process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes.
- The root word, “body” is added with suffixes such as “i” and “ly” to become an
adjective “bodily”. Body + i + ly = bodily.

- Acronym  AIDS
- Acronym is the process in which new words formed from the initial letters of a set
of words.
- AIDS is an acronym for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome that is spoken as
AIDS.

How does the knowledge of morphology help you as an English language teacher in the
future teaching?

ANSWER

 Morphology is the study of words. It deals with understanding of word parts

(morphemes).
 To facilitate student’s learning and help develop their vocabulary, it can be useful
to use a morphological approach.
 This approach would allow student build on their current vocabulary by
adding prefixes and suffixes to root words.
 For instance, when the word “happy” is added with prefix “un”, the vocabulary
formed which is “unhappy” suggest different and opposite meaning from the
word “happy”.
 It is because when the prefix “un” which means not is added to an adjective, it
will bring a different meaning.
 This will develop the students’ vocabulary.
 In addition, teacher who has the knowledge of morphology should use a
graphic organizer to introduce students each new morpheme along with at
least two longer words that contained the morpheme.
 After practice combining morphemes with the organizer, students are asked
to practice the words on flash cards.
 As they learned to read more words, the flash cards were collected and used
for speed drills.
 Reading of long words will improve students’ understanding of the meanings
of the morphemes comprising the words and improve the way they spell the
words.
 When students recognize word parts they know within long words, they can
use what they already know to generate pronunciation of a long word they
have not attempted to read before.
 Using this knowledge allows poor students to approach long words
thoughtfully, even when their understanding of phonics is incomplete.
 For example, a student who can read the word “idea” might recognize “idea”
in “ideal”, “idealize”, and “idealistic”.
 Teacher should also let the students understand the meaning of prefixes,
suffixes, and roots to enhance students’ text comprehension. 
 Teacher who has the knowledge of morphology knows that prefixes such as “ir”
and “un” are used to describe negative side.
 When the students have this knowledge, they are able to interpret the meaning of
the text correctly and help them to have a better understanding about the text
even though they came through the vocabularies which are difficult for them to
understand.
 The manipulation of affixes can impact the part of speech that a word denotes. 
 Specifically, teachers should teach students the strategies to segment or
manipulate words according to their affixes and roots. 
 As a result, students may be able to recognize an unfamiliar word simply by
identifying the affixes and the remaining base word or root.
 For example, if the students do not understand the word “girlish”, teacher who
has the knowledge of morphology should teach them to separate the suffix “ish”
that attached to the root word “girl”.
 By using this method, students are able to guess the meaning of the word
“girlish” which is probably something related to a girl.
 This will help to increase understanding of the particular words that they are not
familiar with.