Morphology

Introduction
Morphemes

By: Nur Azlan Manaf, Muhamad Zulfadhli Zakaria, Ahmad Najibullah Che Mohd, Riza Azif Azhari

Key points
1. the definition of morphology 2. the definition of morpheme 3. the classification of morphemes

Difficult points
1. Free morphemes 2. Bound morphemes

Morphology
Morphology is the study of the internal structure,

forms and classes of words.

Morphemes
A morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or

grammatical function. Ex. Tourists: -tour (one minimal unit) -ist (meaning person who does something) -s (a third unit of grammatical function indicating plurality)

Free morphemes
The morphemes that can stand alone as words are

called free morphemes.

Root and stem

A word must contain an element that can stand by

itself, that is, a free morpheme, such as talk. Such an element is called a root. When they are used with bound morphemes, the basic word-form involved is technically known as the stem.

Lexical and functional morphemes

Lexical morphemes refer to ordinary nouns, verbs and

adjectives. Functional morphemes refer to conjunctions, articles, prepositions and pronouns.

Open and closed class of words

lexical morphemes are called an open class of words

because we can create new lexical morphemes. functional morphemes are called a closed class of words because no new fellow members can be added.

Bound morphemes
Bound morphemes are those that can not be used

independently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word.

Occurrence position:
Prefixes
Suffixes infixes

Function:
Derivational morphemes Inflectional morphemes

Eight English inflectional morphemes:

(i) s (possessive) (ii) s (plural) (iii) s (3rd person present singular) (iv) ing (present participle) (v) ed (past tense) (vi) ed (past participle) (vii) en (past participle) (viii) est and er (superlative and comparative degree)

The chart of the different categories of morphemes

Lexical morphemes (work, house, kind)

Free morphemes Morphemes Functional morphemes (and, if, or, but) Derivational morphemes (-er, -ness, -ly) Bound morphemes Inflectioanal morphemes (-ed, -er, -est)

Lexical morphemes Free morphemes Functional morphemes Morphemes Derivational morphemes Bound morphemes Inflectional morphemes

Assignments
1. Define the following terms: (1)morphology (2) free morpheme (3) morpheme (4) stem 2. Identify the structure of the following words: wording person existentialism international statesman spokesman walkman bicyclist assignment