Lesson 2

i. PREAMBLE (PAST LESSON BRIEF)

Every sentence spoken in every language is built from grammatical atoms called morphemes. A
morpheme is the "smallest meaningful unit" you can find when you break phrases and words
apart. Morphemes can be long like annihilate or very short like the "past tense" -(e)d tacked onto
annihilated.
ii. LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the lesson students will be able to:

 explain free morphemes: roots and stems

 analyze bound morphemes: affixes: prefixes, suffixes, infixes, interfixes, circumfixes
 demonstrate morphological productivity: productivity of affixes, prefixes, suffixes,
infixes

iii. ARE YOU READY?

 How many types of morphemes are there?
 What are free and bound morphemes?

iv. TOPIC: TYPES OF MORPHEMES

Types of Morphemes: Free and Bound Morphemes

Free and Bound identifies and examines the two major morpheme types that we have in English.
There are basically two of them and they also have their subdivisions. They are:

FREE MORPHEMES

A free morpheme is one that can stand by itself as a single word. In other words, it can exist
independently without any obligatory association with other morphemes. Examples include:
open, boy, door, team, dance, teach, house, look, break, sad, come, when, if, to, for, teach, say,
me, you, girl, car, native, name, cook, etc. Another name for free morphemes is the base word or
stem word or root word. We can further subdivide Free Morphemes into two segments. Let
consider this as we break down the concept of morpheme into comprehensible bits of
knowledge.

Categories of Free Morphemes

There are two categories. These are Lexical morphemes and Functional morphemes.

Lexical Morphemes

These morphemes carry ‘content’ of messages we convey. In other words, lexical morphemes
are content words. A content word is a word that is semantically meaningful; a word that has
dictionary meaning. Examples of these words are nouns, adjectives verbs and adverbs. They are
words that belong to the Open Class of the Parts of Speech or Word Classes in English.

Functional Morphemes

These morphemes consist mainly of the functional words in the English language and they
include words that belong to the Closed Class of the Parts of Speech or Word Classes in English.
Examples are conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns and articles. Functional words or
grammatical words do not contain meanings on their own except when used alongside content or
lexical words. They have no dictionary meaning and only perform a grammatical function.

BOUND MORPHEMES

Bound Morphemes are the opposites of Free Morphemes. They are morphemes that cannot stand
alone, that is, they cannot exist independently without being joined or added to another
morpheme. Examples include: -ish, -ness, -ation, -tion, -ism, -al, -er, -s, -en, -ed, etc. When you
look at the following words, they are combinations of both free and bound morphemes:
foolishness, bookish, naturalisation, farmer, does, bags, taken, expected, etc.

Bound Morphemes are called Affixes in English. Affixes are also Bound Morphemes. The word
‘undressed’ has two affixes, ‘un’ and ‘ed’ joined to the free morpheme ‘dress’. The same thing
goes for the word ‘carelessness’ which has two affixes, ‘less’ and ‘ness’ attached to the base or
root word ‘care’.

Categories of bound morphemes

Derivational morphemes

Morphemes that transform words into different grammatical categories from the root word (a
free morpheme). These morphemes transform words into different parts of speech. In order to
identify a derivational morpheme, ask yourself this question: “If this morpheme was added,
would it change the part of speech of this word?” If the answer is yes, then you have a
derivational morpheme.

Examples of derivational morphemes: -ful, -ness, -less, -ly, -y, -ish, -ment

care = noun

care + ful = adjective

Kind = adjective

kind + ness = noun

Inflectional morphemes

Morphemes that indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word, such as changing a word
into a plural or possessive form. In order to identify an inflectional morpheme, ask yourself this:
“By adding this bound morpheme, does it keep the word in the same grammatical category, but
change some aspect of it?” If the answer is yes, then you have an inflectional morpheme. English
only has 8 inflectional morphemes.

Examples of inflectional morphemes:

Nouns: -‘s, ‘s

Verbs: -s, -ing, -ed, -en

Adjectives: -er, -est

Types of Affixes in English

There are two types of affixes in the English Language specifically. They are the Prefix and the
Suffix or Postfix. Prefixes are affixes that come before the base word; they are attached to the
frontal position of the root words while suffixes are attached at the final position of the root
words. Infixes are attached in between the root words, but they do not exist in English. Other
languages like Yoruba have Infixes or Interfixes. E. g.

Omokomo – omo-ki-omo (bad child)

Isekuse – ise-ku-ise (lewd conduct)

Iwakiwa – iwa-ki-iwa (bad behaviour)

Ayeraye – aye-re-aye (everlasting)

Ilenle – ile-ni-ile (bare floor)

alakala – ala-ki-ala (nightmarish dream)

However, some scholars consider words like therm-o-dynamics, therm-o-meter, bar-o-meter, etc.
in English as containing the infix ‘o’, but like we said, it is not an established phenomenon in
English.

i. INTERACTIVE SESSION

Free morphemes:
o constitute words by themselves – boy, car, desire, gentle, man
o can stand alone

Bound morphemes:
o can’t stand alone – always parts of words - occur attached to free
morphemes

cats: cat  free morpheme

-s  bound morpheme
undesirable: desire  free morpheme
-un, -able  bound morphemes
o affixes
o prefixes – occur before other morphemes
 unhappy, discontinue, rewrite, bicycle, bipolar

o suffixes – following other morphemes

 sleeping, excited, desirable

o infixes – inserted into other morphemes

  Bontoc, a language in the Philipines –
fikas ‘strong’ fumicas ‘to be strong’
kilad ‘red’ kumilad ‘to be red’

 English
full word obscenities into another word –
in+fuggin+credible
also+bloomin+lately
o circumfixes – attached to another morpheme both initially and
finally
 German
Past participle of irregular verbs – ge+lieb+t
Roots and Stems
o morphologically complex words consist of
a root + one or more morpheme(s)

o root
 a lexical content morpheme that
 cannot be analyzed into smaller
 painter , reread, conceive
 may or may not stand alone as a word
 read, -ceive
o stem
 a root morpheme + affix
 may or may not be a word
 painter  both a words and a stem
 -ceive+er  only a stem
 as we add an affix to a stem, a new stem and a new word are
formed
root: believe
stem: believe + able
word: un + believe + able
root: system
stem: system + atic
stem: un+ system + atic
stem: un+ system + atic + al
word: un+ system + atic + al + ly
Morphemes and syllables
The terms morpheme and syllable should not be confused:
 many morphemes are syllabic (i.e., contain at least one vowel) - cat
 many others are non-syllabic (contain no vowels): -s  'more than one'

ii. SOLVED EXAMPLES

Are you ready to identify these different sub-categories of morphemes? See if you can test your
knowledge by reading the sentence below and labeling the morphemes into these 4 sub-
categories.

The teacher’s frankness shocked the boy’s parents. 

Now, see if you can determine what type of morphemes are in the sentence. There are 13 total
morphemes. When you’re ready to check your answer, read the correct response below. 

Answer
The – functional
teach – lexical
-er – derivational
‘s – inflectional
frank – lexical
-ness – derivational
shock – lexical
-ed – inflectional
the – functional
boy – lexical
‘s – inflectional
parent – lexical
-s – inflectional
 iii. CHALLENGING EXERCISE

Divide the following words into the smallest meaningful units and describe how the words are
formed, i.e. describe the morphological processes (derivation, inflection) involved.

Example: unhappiness

The root is "happy". By adding the prefix "un–" to the root "happy" we derive "unhappy". The
morphological process involved is called derivation. By adding the suffix "–ness" to "unhappy"
we derive the word "unhappiness". The morphological process involved is called derivation.

(1) a. kingdoms

b. discourages

c. forgetful

d. submitted

The examples in (2), (3) and (4) below show possible word forms and impossible ones, which
are preceded by an asterisk (*). Divide the words into morphemes, and say which morphological
processes are involved:

(2) a. right – rightist – rightists

b. right – rights – *rightsist

(3) a. foot – football – footballs

b. foot – feet – *feetball

(4) a. sleepwalk – sleepwalked

b. sleepwalk – *sleptwalk

Based on your analysis, what can you conclude about the order of application of morphological
rules?

iv. WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

 How free & bound morphemes are formed?
 What is root & stem of a word?
v. HOME ASSIGNMENT
 Find more examples of derivational, Lexical and inflectional morphemes

vi. NEXT LESSON PREVIEW

Morphological Productivity