Morphology 67

Yule, G. (2010). The study of language (4th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Morphology

In many languages, what appear to be single forms actually turn out to contain a
large number of “word-like” elements. For example, in Swahili (spoken throughout
East Africa), the form nitakupenda conveys what, in English, would have to be
represented as something like I will love you. Now, is the Swahili form a single
word? If it is a “word,” then it seems to consist of a number of elements which, in
English, turn up as separate “words.” A rough correspondence can be presented in the
following way:

ni- ta- ku- penda

“I will you love”

It would seem that this Swahili “word” is rather different from what we think of as an
English “word.” Yet, there clearly is some similarity between the languages, in that
similar elements of the whole message can be found in both. Perhaps a better way of
looking at linguistic forms in different languages would be to use this notion of
“elements” in the message, rather than depend on identifying only “words.”
The type of exercise we have just performed is an example of investigating basic forms
in language, generally known as morphology. This term, which literally means “the
study of forms,” was originally used in biology, but, since the middle of the nineteenth
century, has also been used to describe the type of investigation that analyzes all those
basic “elements” used in a language. What we have been describing as “elements” in the
form of a linguistic message are technically known as “morphemes.”

Morphemes

We do not actually have to go to other languages such as Swahili to discover that “word
forms” may consist of a number of elements. We can recognize that English word
forms such as talks, talker, talked and talking must consist of one element talk, and a
number of other elements such as -s, -er, -ed and -ing. All these elements are described
as morphemes. The definition of a morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or
grammatical function.” Units of grammatical function include forms used to indicate
past tense or plural, for example.
In the sentence The police reopened the investigation, the word reopened consists of
three morphemes. One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of
meaning is re- (meaning “again”) and a minimal unit of grammatical function is -ed
(indicating past tense). The word tourists also contains three morphemes. There is one
68 The Study of Language

minimal unit of meaning tour, another minimal unit of meaning -ist (marking “person
who does something”), and a minimal unit of grammatical function -s (indicating
plural).

Free and bound morphemes

From these examples, we can make a broad distinction between two types of mor-
phemes. There are free morphemes, that is, morphemes that can stand by themselves as
single words, for example, open and tour. There are also bound morphemes, which are
those forms that cannot normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form,
exemplified as re-, -ist, -ed, -s. These forms were described in Chapter 5 as affixes. So, we
can say that all affixes (prefixes and suffixes) in English are bound morphemes. The free
morphemes can generally be identified as the set of separate English word forms such as
basic nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. When they are used with bound morphemes
attached, the basic word forms are technically known as stems. For example:

undressed carelessness
un- dress -ed care -less -ness
prefix stem suffix stem suffix suffix
(bound) (free) (bound) (free) (bound) (bound)

We should note that this type of description is a partial simplification of the morpho-
logical facts of English. There are a number of English words in which the element
treated as the stem is not, in fact, a free morpheme. In words such as receive, reduce and
repeat, we can identify the bound morpheme re- at the beginning, but the elements
-ceive, -duce and -peat are not separate word forms and hence cannot be free mor-
phemes. These types of forms are sometimes described as “bound stems” to keep them
distinct from “free stems” such as dress and care.

Lexical and functional morphemes

What we have described as free morphemes fall into two categories. The first category
is that set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that we think of as the words that
carry the “content” of the messages we convey. These free morphemes are called
lexical morphemes and some examples are: girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow,
sincere, open, look, follow, break. We can add new lexical morphemes to the language
rather easily, so they are treated as an “open” class of words.
Morphology 69

Other types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes. Examples are
and, but, when, because, on, near, above, in, the, that, it, them. This set consists largely
of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and
pronouns. Because we almost never add new functional morphemes to the language,
they are described as a “closed” class of words.

Derivational and inflectional morphemes

The set of affixes that make up the category of bound morphemes can also be divided
into two types. One type is described in Chapter 5 in terms of the derivation of words.
These are the derivational morphemes. We use these bound morphemes to make
new words or to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem. For
example, the addition of the derivational morpheme -ness changes the adjective good
to the noun goodness. The noun care can become the adjectives careful or careless
by the addition of the derivational morphemes -ful or -less. A list of derivational
morphemes will include suffixes such as the -ish in foolish, -ly in quickly, and the
-ment in payment. The list will also include prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un-
and many more.
The second set of bound morphemes contains what are called inflectional mor-
phemes. These are not used to produce new words in the language, but rather to
indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. Inflectional morphemes are
used to show if a word is plural or singular, if it is past tense or not, and if it is a
comparative or possessive form.
English has only eight inflectional morphemes (or “inflections”), illustrated in the
following sentences.

Jim’s two sisters are really different.

One likes to have fun and is always laughing.
The other liked to read as a child and has always taken things seriously.
One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quieter than a mouse.

In the first sentence, both inflections (-’s, -s) are attached to nouns, one marking
possessive and the other marking plural. Note that -’s here is a possessive inflection
and different from the -’s used as an abbreviation for is or has (e.g. she’s singing, it’s
happened again). There are four inflections attached to verbs: -s (3rd person singular),
-ing (present participle), -ed (past tense) and -en (past participle). There are two
inflections attached to adjectives: -er (comparative) and -est (superlative). In English,
all the inflectional morphemes are suffixes.
70 The Study of Language

Noun + -’s, -s
Verb + -s, -ing, -ed, -en
Adjective + -er, -est

There is some variation in the form of these inflectional morphemes. For example, the
possessive sometimes appears as -s’ (those boys’ bags) and the past participle as -ed
(they have finished).

Morphological description

The difference between derivational and inflectional morphemes is worth emphasiz-

ing. An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word. For
example, both old and older are adjectives. The -er inflection here (from Old English
-ra) simply creates a different version of the adjective. However, a derivational mor-
pheme can change the grammatical category of a word. The verb teach becomes the
noun teacher if we add the derivational morpheme -er (from Old English -ere). So, the
suffix -er in Modern English can be an inflectional morpheme as part of an adjective
and also a distinct derivational morpheme as part of a noun. Just because they look the
same (-er) doesn’t mean they do the same kind of work.
Whenever there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix attached to the
same word, they always appear in that order. First the derivational (-er) is attached to
teach, then the inflectional (-s) is added to produce teachers.
Armed with all these terms for different types of morphemes, we can now take most
sentences of English apart and list all the “elements.” For example, in the sentence The
child’s wildness shocked the teachers, we can identify eleven morphemes.

The child -’s wild -ness shock

functional lexical inflectional lexical derivational lexical
-ed the teach -er -s
inflectional functional lexical derivational inflectional

A useful way to remember all these different types of morphemes is in the following chart.

lexical (child, teach)

free
functional (and, the)
morphemes
derivational (re-, -ness)
bound
inflectional (-’s, -ed)
Figure 6.1