Bold and italicize words

MORPHOLOGY

- is the study of the basic elements in a language. These basic elements are called morphemes

MORPHEMES

- The definition of a morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function”. Tourists for
example is a word that consists of three morphemes; tour (minimal unit), -ist (minimal unit: someone
who does something), and -s (minimal unit of grammatical function: indication of plurality).

FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES

- One can identify here that not all morphemes are born equal. While tour can stand alone, -ist and -s
need to be attached to another morpheme to have meaning. Hereby one distinguishes between free
morphemes (basic nouns, verbs, adj.) (tour) which can stand alone, and bound morphemes (-ist, -s,
re-, -ness) which need to be attached to a free morpheme to exist. Bound morphemes are usually
affixes.

- When a free morpheme is combined with a bound one, one refers to it as a stem. Tour, in on itself,
is a free morpheme. However, in the word tourists, it is a stem with the bound morphemes -ist and -s
hanging off of it.

- There is also a distinction to be made between free and bound stems. The stems of words such as
receive and repeat, after removing the bound morpheme re-, cannot exist on their own. Ceive and
peat are not words. Therefore, they are bound stems.

Undressed

Un- dress -ed

Prefix stem suffix

Bound free bound

LEXICAL AND FUNCTIONAL MORPHEMES

- Free morphemes are further divided into two categories.

1. Lexical morphemes (ordinary nouns, verbs and adjectives) such as girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long,
yellow, sincere, open, look, follow, break. We can add to lexical morphemes fairly easily. They are
treated as an ‘open’ category of words. Lexical morphemes are the putty that is infused into a
structure to make it meaningful.

2. functional morphemes (conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns). And, but, when,
because, on, near, above, in, the, that, it, them. These are the words that make a language functional
and provide it structure. They are not often added to and are therefore a ‘closed’ category of words.

DERIVATIONAL AND INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

- Bound morphemes can also be divided into two types.

1. Derivational morphemes, which are used to make new words or to make a new grammatical
category of word from the stem. For example, the additional derivational morpheme -ness, changes
good (adj.) into goodness (noun). Care (verb) can be turned to careless(adj.) or careful.

2. Inflectional morphemes, which indicate aspects of a grammatical function of a word.

Plural/singular, past-tense or no, if it as a comparative or a possessive form. There are only eight
inflectional morphemes in English. They are: -‘s (possessive), -s (plural), attached to nouns; -s (3rd
person singular), -ing (present participle), -ed (past tense), -en (past participle), which are attached to
verbs); -est (superlative) and -er(comparative) are attached to adjectives.

PROBLEMS IN MORPHOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION

- There are naturally exceptions to everything. In English these exceptions are based on historical
influences on the language, such as law coming from a Scandinavian tongue, and legal coming from
Latin. Due to the non-derivational relationship of the two words, one naturally cannot derive one
from the other via the method of derivational morphemes. Taking the -al, off of legal, does not make
sense, one only gets leg. An example using inflectional morphemes would be the fact that sheep is a
noun which is without change both singular and plural. What is the inflectional morpheme when
going from man, to men?

MORPHS AND ALLOMORPHS

-To solve this issue, we can propose morphs as the actual forms used to realize morphemes. For
example, the word cars consists of two morphs (car + -s), realizing a lexical and an inflectional
morpheme. The word buses also consists of two morphs (bus + -es), realizing also a lexical and an
inflectional morpheme. Here we have two different morphs (-s and -es) to conceptualize the plurality
of two different words. These are hereby decreed to be allomorphs of a particular morpheme, in this
case the inflectional morpheme responsible for plurality. (allo = one of a closely related set)

- Take the morpheme plural and apply it to the lexical morphemes cat + plural (+ -s), sheep + plural (+
0), man + plural (a becomes e), bus + plural (+ -es). 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
same morpheme. This naturally also applies to other cases, such as morpheme past tense; walk +
past tense is walked, and go + past tense is went.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1. WHEN HE arrived, THE old man had AN umbrella AND A large plastic bag FULL OF books. (The
words written in upper case are functional morphemes)

2. The following upper cases are bound morphemes; fearLESSLY, MISleadS, PREviewER, shortENED,
UNhappIER

3. The upper cases are inflectional morphemes; It’s rainING, the cow jumpED over the moon; the
newEST style; the singer’S new songS
4: The upper cases are the allomorphs of the morpheme plural: CRITERIA, dogS, OXEN, DEER, judgeS,
STIMULI

RESEARCH TASKS

A: Suppletion is fucking complicated. Basically, I understand it to be the replacement of one stem

with another, which has no phonological similarity to the other allomorphs of the morpheme in
question. Like for example, ox turning into oxen when applying the plural morpheme. Other
examples are: be: am, are, was, were, been; good, better, best; one: first, two: second

B: Vowel mutation is when a vowel sound changes its quality to indicate grammatical change. E.g. A
vowel sound modified by an Umlaut