Rovuma University

English Teaching Course Branch Nampula - year 2

Subject: Morphology/semester II
Name: Elias Daniel Passangeze
Essay about introduction of Morphology and word

Introduction

Linguistic is a scientific study of language used by the human being to communicate,

which can be by the usage of signal, symbols or speech through voice. This is the first
assignment belongs to morphology and in this piece of paper, will unveiled essential
information related to the introduction of this work.

As learned at the last semester about phonology and phonetic, morphology is one of
subdiscipline of linguistic as a science. This assignment is typed about the topic
introduction of morphology and word that is, through this field word we going to
describe and provide coherent information following the objectives mentioned bellow:

 To define morphology and word as a part of linguistics;

 To mention objectives of study of morphology and his object of study;
 To explain the importance of morphology and process of word formation.

Expectation is to bring truth information about the theme given early, because we
understand that this is an important topic to all language learners. Will be used all
necessary sources, since they discuss they provide correct information about the topic.

Related to the organization, the present assignment will be organized into introduction,
development which will be subdivided into two chapters, conclusion and bibliographic
references to prove that the sources used are true.
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION AND OBJECT OF STUDY OF
MORPHOLOGY

1. Definition of morphology

The term morphology has been used in the English language since a long time ago
especially in biology. The term morphology is a Greek-based parallel to the German
Formenlehre that literally means the study of forms. The word morphology itself is
derived from the Greek word “morphē” means “form”. Morph -> the smallest unit of
language. Has meaning in sound or writing. Logy -> as a particular branch or field or
learning.

 Morphology

The word morphology is derived from two Greek words “morph “meaning ‘shape”
or ‘form” and “ology” meaning “study of something.” In linguistics, morphology is
the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words of
the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as
stems, root words, prefixes and suffixes.

Morphology is the study of form and structure. In linguistics, it generally refers to

the study of form and structure of words. The term Morphology can refer to three
different things such as:

a) Description of the behaviour of morphemes and how they are combined.

b) Derivational, inflectional and compositional processes of word formation occurring
in a specific language. e.g. “German has a richer morphology than English”.
c) Description of such word formation processes.

The linguistic itself is a hierarchical study of language which begins from the basic
notion or we call it the simple notion that is sound.

Godby et. Al. (1982, p. 2.1), defines morphology as the study of the way in which
words are constructed out of smaller meaningful units; whereas, Nida (1957, p. 1)
asserts that morphology is the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming
words.
 Morphology is a sub field of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words
and the interrelationships among words (Akmajian et. al: 1984, p. 55). Furthermore,
Matthew (1974, p. 3) states that morphology is simply a term for that branch of
linguistics that is concerned with the forms of words in different uses and
constructions.

Morphology is concerned with: the forms of words or how words are constructed or
arranged out of smaller meaningful units called morphemes.

1.1. Definition of morphology according to experts

a) According to Zaenal Arifin and Juaiyah, give the understanding that
morphology is the science of language about the intricacies of word structure.
b) According to J. W. M. Verhaar gives the understanding that morphology is one
of the branches of linguistics that identifies the basic units of language as
grammatical units of writing.
c) According to Ramlan gave an understanding that morphology is a part of
linguistics that specifically discusses word structure and the effect of changes in
word structure on the meaning of words.
d) According to Nida (in Syahwin Niclass; 1993), states that morphology is the
study of morphemes and the arrangement of morphemes in word formation.
e) According to Crystal, morphology is a branch of grammar that discusses the
structure and form of words, especially the structure and form of the word
through the use of morphemes.
f) According to Bauer, defines morphology as the internal structure of word
forms.
g) According to Rusmaji said that morphology is a discussion of words, their
parts, and the process of word formation.
h) According to O'Grady and Dobrovolsky said that morphology is a component
of transformational generative language (TGT) that specifically discusses the
internal structure of words, especially words that are complex.
i) According to Anderson (2016), morphology is the study of words, how they are
formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language.
j) According to Crystal (1980: 232-233), morphology is the branch of grammar
that examines the structure or form of words, mainly through the use of
morpheme.
k) According to Bauer (2012:7), “Morphology is about the structure of words, how
word such as dislike is made up of smaller meaningful elements such as dis and
like”. As can be seen in this definition by Baeur, this branch of linguistics is
studying about the structure of words. Besides defining about structure of
words, morphology also studies about an element that makes meaning in certain
words.
l) According to Lieber (2009:2), “Morphology is the study of word formation,
including the ways new words are coined in the language of the world, and the
way forms of words are varied depending on how the are used in sentences”. It
means that Morphology is the science that studies about the word, a word that
has innovation when used in sentences.
m) According to Hasplemath (2002:2), “Morphology is the study of systematic
covariation in the form and meaning of words”. By this meaning, it can be
inferred that words have a system. This system is connected to another system,
or in the other words, each words is connected to other word. The words are
connected to another words and Morphology studies these connection.
n) According to Mulyana (2007: 5), the term morphology "is derived from the
English language morphology, meaning that the branch of linguistics that
studies on the structure or parts of words grammatically.
o) According to Verhaar (1996: 97), morphology is the branch of linguistics that
identifies the basic units of language as grammatical units.
p) According Samsuri (1988: 15), defining morphology as a branch of linguistics
that studies the structure and forms of words.
q) According to Ramlan (1978: 2), morphology is part of the science of language
to talk about or to learn the ins and outs of the structure of words as well as the
effect of changes in the structure of the class of words and meaning of the word.
r) According to Nida (1949: 1), morphology is a study of morphemes and
morpheme preparation for the creation of the word.
 s) According to O'Grady and Dobrovolsky (1989: 89-90), morphology is a
component of transformational-generative word (TGT) which talks about the
internal structure of words, especially the word complex.
t) Kridalaksana said that morphology is a linguistic field that studies morphemes
and all their combinations of language structures.

2. The Scope of morphology in linguistics

The scope of morphology is large than we can imagine. Morphology is not only
focused in study of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, like what we learn in
grammar. Below are main scopes of morphology.

1. Morpheme

Morphemes are minimal meaning-bearing units: e.g. talked contains two morphemes:
talk and -ed (past). Form-function pairs (sound/sign-meaning) Basic units of
morphology Morphemes are the “building stones” of phrases. A morpheme is not
identical with a syllable. The morpheme/streynj/ strange, for instance, happens to be a
syllable, and so are many other English words consisting a single morpheme, such as
wall, girl, floor, and bill.

1.1. Feature Types: Sound and Meaning

a. Phonological Features: Features from the universal inventory of phonological

features; e.g. [±voice], [±labial], etc.

b. Synsem Features: Features from the universal inventory of syntacticosemantic

features; e.g. [past] (‘past’), [def] (‘definite’), [pl] (‘plural’), etc Depending on further
hypotheses, it could very well be the case that (certain) synsem features are binary,
like the phonological features referred to in (2a), so that (2b) would have [±past] and
[±def]. Some questions along these lines are addressed in subsequent chapters. I will
employ binary synsem features by default in the pages to come, with further
complications to this picture introduced only when necessary.
 1.2. Free Morphemes

Most free morphemes can be modified by affixes to form complex words. Combining
two free morphemes creates a compound word (like “mailbox”), while free
morphemes modified by affixes are complex words (like “runner”). There are two
kinds of free morphemes based on what they do in a sentence: content words and
function words.

 Content Words: Free morphemes that make up the main meaning of a

sentence are content words. Their parts of speech include nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Here are some examples of content words from everyday speech.
 Nouns: girl, hat, house, fire
 Verbs: walk, sleep, say, eat
 Adjectives: quick, nice, fun, big these words are the most important parts of a
sentence.

The meaning of content words might change when combined with other morphemes,
but their free morphemes will still make up the sentences content.

 Function Words: Free morphemes also include function words. These words
consist of articles, demonstratives, auxiliaries, quantifiers, prepositions, pronouns, and
conjunctions. Here are some examples of free morphemes as function words.
 Articles: the, a, an
 Demonstratives: this, that, those, these
 Auxiliary Verbs: will, is, must, does
 Quantifiers: some, many, few
 Prepositions: under, over, to, by
 Pronouns: he, she, his, her
 Conjunctions: for, and, but, or

Function words serve as a grammatical connection between content words. They are
not typically combined with affixes that change their meaning.

1.3. Bound Morphemes

Bound morphemes have no linguistic meaning unless they are connected to a root or
base word, or in some cases, another bound morpheme. Prefixes and suffixes are two
types of bound morphemes. Depending on how they modify a root word, bound
morphemes can be grouped into two categories: inflectional morphemes and
derivational morphemes.

1.4. Inflectional Morphemes

This type of morpheme alters the grammatical function of a word, whether it be the
verb tense, number, mood, or another language inflection. The eight inflectional
morphemes are organized by which part of speech they modify:

 Modify a Noun: -s (or -es), -'s (or s')

 Modify an Adjective: -er, -est
 Modify a Verb: -ed, -ing, -en

These morphemes are suffixes that change a word’s condition, but not its meaning.
When they modify a base word, the rest of the sentence may need to change for proper
subject-verb agreement. Some examples of these changes are:

 Girl to girls
 Large to larger
 Smart to smarts
 Walk to walking
 Eat to eaten

1.5. Derivational Morphemes

A morpheme is derivational when it changes the semantic meaning of a word.

Most derivational morphemes have roots in Greek or Latin. Unlike inflectional
morphemes, derivational morphemes can change a word’s part of speech.

Prefixes:

 pre-
 un-
 non-
  anti-
 dis-

Suffixes:
 -ize
 -ine
 -ary
 -ate
 -ion

How you use morphemes also depends on the sentence context. Inflectional
morphemes can be used in derivational contexts (e.g., using -er to create teach-er),
which could change their classification. Here are some examples of the ways
derivational morphemes can modify base words.

 re- + start = restart (to start again)

 un- + happy = unhappy (not happy)
 register + -ion = registration (the act of registering)
 kind + ness = kindness (the condition of being kind)

2. Morphs

A morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a

recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes). Morph is a
phonetic form of morpheme which studies the units of form, sound, and phonetic
symbols. Morph is divided into two, namely, lexical and grammatical.

Lexical morph is a morph that shows directly the real object of action. For example:
table, dog, walk, look, follow, etc.
Grammatical morph is a morph that has modified its lexical meaning by adding
certain elements. Example: un-, -able, re-, -d, in-, -ent, -ly, -al, -ize, -a-, -tion, anti-,
dis-, -ment, -ari-, - an, -ism

3. Allomorphs
If different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are grouped together and they
are called allomorphs of that morpheme. tu- and tw- are allomorphs of the 'first person
plural' morpheme. (For simplicity's sake, for our present purposes, we are regarding
'first person plural' as a single unanalyzable concept.) On the same grounds, lId!, Idl
and It! are grouped together as allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English.

Different forms of a morpheme are called allomorphs or can also be called various
forms of variants of morpheme about sounds and phonetic symbols, but do not change
the meaning.

Allomorph formed from article: an (before vowels, ex: an elephant) and a (before
consonant, ex: a dog) both have one meaning, namely singular.

3.1. Allomorph formed from morpheme past tense

 /id/ after d,t: hated
 /t/ after all other voiceless sounds: picked
 /d/ after all other voiced sounds: wedged
 /im/ before bilabial sounds: impossible
 /il/ before consonant /l/: illegal
 /in/ elsewhere: independent some allomorphs of the negative prefix inthe
choice of allomorphs is determined by certain morphemes, not only by their
pronunciation, ex: morpheme –sume replaced –sumpt- on (consume = consumption)

3. Lexical allomorph

The choice of allomorph is unpredictable, so it must memorize the word based on

the word, ex: ox –plural- oxen, sheep-plural- sheep.

Example:

 Three different allomorphs · Cats /s/ · Dogs/z/ · Boxes/iz/

 One allomorph · Disagreement /dis/ · Discounts /dis/ · Disbelieve /dis/
 Two different allomorphs · Voiced /d/ · Walked /t/ · Stopped /t/ · Kicked /t/ So,
allomorph is a variant form of morpheme about sound and phonetic symbols but it
does not change the meaning.
Allomorphs differ in pronunciation and spelling according to their condition. This
means that the allomorph will have a different sound, pronunciation or spelling under
different conditions.

4. The purposes of studying morphology

The internal structure of words and the segmentation into different kinds of
morphemes is essential to the two basic purposes or morphology: the creation of new

word Identification of morphemes

 Study meaning of morphemes

 Assign meaning to parts of words and.

 The modification of existing words.

5. Importance of morphology to language learner

Morphology plays a vital role in linguistics and it has several important functions that
are used for better understanding of a language. Functions of morphology are
discussed below:

a) Productivity of Language

Morphology serves as a major tool in the productivity of language. In other words,

it is a good means to find out more about the strategies speakers use in order to
increase their lexical capacity. It is not unusual that in some circumstances of our daily
lives, as speakers, we have to coin new lexemes and word-forms to express our
thoughts.

It is not unusual that in some circumstances of our daily lives, as speakers, we have
to coin new lexemes and word-forms to express our thoughts. Word formation ‘ex
nihilo’ is a highly probable phenomenon though, nonetheless, merely episodic in
language. However, the formation of new lexical units using the resources of
language; its morphology, is a continuous process.

For instance, through such word-formation processes as compounding and

derivation, different morphemes are combined to form new lexemes as seen in the
cases of the word-pair ‘black+list’ and ‘train+er’ respectively. Thus, with morphology,
we try to capture the underlying knowledge which allows native speakers to form new
lexical units by using language devices as derivation and composition.

Through word-formation processes, morphology provides the means for extending

the set of lexemes of a language systematically. This mirrors the intuition we have on
formation, interpretation, and recognition of lexical components in a language.

That explains why a native English speaker knows that ‘unprecedented’ is a word
of a language but ‘precedenunted*’ is not. Therefore, morphology contains the rules
which allow the speaker to increase their linguistic competence through their
application and as well help coin new words when the need presents itself.

b) Comprehension

This striking function of morphology enables us identify individual morphemes

which may be words, phrase or a part of words and analyze their meaning and lexical
function. Thus, equipped with morphological rules and analyses, one can by mere
inspection of a word’s structure, tell the meaning of the word and its grammatical
function.
c) Spelling

Also, morphology helps in spelling out the appropriate forms of lexeme in a

particular syntactic context.

This only means that we come to be aware of the correct ordering of words in a
language, paying attention to morphological rules. These rules indicate hownew
lexemes and word forms are made, thereby functioning as are dundancy rules with
respect to established complex words of a language. Thus, conscious of these rules, we
are able identify the correct forms of lexeme to employ in a particular syntactic
context.

For example, in the word “trainer”, the morphemes “train” means ‘to teach skills
for a particular job or activity’ and “ -er” denote the noun form ‘one who’, giving us
the gross meaning ‘one who teaches skills in particular job or activity”. This
knowledge helps us to determine its correctness in the sentence ‘the trainer is
good’ but not ‘*the train is good’ in this sense. Such rules as this, establish redundancy
rules with which we can easily form similar lexemes as painter, teacher, lecturer etc
from their base forms.

d) Etymology

Again, morphology aids us to identify and extract the root comparison content of a
word to help modify old words and or even create various forms of the word. With
that, we can effect changes in its grammatical function; gender, aspect and tense. For
instance, we can extract and modify the root of the lexeme “trainer” to get other forms
of lexemes different only in grammatical function, aspect and tense: trainee, training,
trained trains etc.

e) Text Cohesion

With morphology, we are able to style up language and yet achieve cohesion
needed in text with different syntactic categories. For example the following text “I
like to play football. Playing football can be very entertaining. I played with only my
left leg until I learned to use the right as well” looks more stylistic and appealing than
the text “I play football. I play for entertainment. I play with my left leg. I play with
my right leg too”. Not only is the latter so abrupt and monotonous, but also lacks text
cohesion. This is what morphology helps us to avoid

f) Vocabulary

When we understand the formation of words through segmentation of affixes and

root words we can develop better comprehension of meaning of words which will
helps us in increasing our vocabulary.

g) Decoding

Morphology helps us in identification of structure of words by analyzing

morphemes. By understanding the structure and form of morphemes we can better
learn and identify words.
CHAPTER TWO: INTRODUCTION OF WORD FORM

1. Definition of word

Word is difficult to define in a clear cut manner which can differentiate the
definition of a word with other notions similar to it. Part of the difficulty is that, as an
element of the English language, the word word can be used to denote things which
are conceptually very different from each other, and that we need a better
classification and more precise terminology is widely accepted, although there are
some terms which have varying usages in a different theoretical framework.

In traditional grammar, words are the basic units of analysis. Grammarians classify
words according to their parts of speech and identify and list the forms that words can
show up in.

Defining the “word” itself is not that simple, we need to take into account every
characteristics showed by a “word”. Word form is a form of word which is influenced
by grammatical function.

According to Bauer (2019) argued that the word could be defined in four other
ways: in terms of sound structure (i.e. phonologically), in terms of its internal
integrity, in terms of meaning (i.e. semantically), or in terms of sentence structure (i.e.
syntactically).

According to Carstairs-McCarthy (2002) said that words are units of language

which are basic in two senses, both: (1) they have unpredictable meaning so must be
listed in dictionaries. (2) They are building blocks out of which phrases and sentences
are formed.

Word-form, word token, and lexeme

The term ‘word’ is very familiar for us not only for linguists. However, mainstream
people define ‘word’ slightly broader than what linguists define. For linguists
themselves, there are other terms related to word such word token, word form and
lexeme.

a) Lexeme is an abstraction over one or more word types that convey the same
lexical meaning.
b) Lexical Item is units of language which have unpredictable meaning so must
be listed in dictionaries.

Several lexical terms can be found in ordinary printed dictionaries, not because their
meaning is com89pletely unknown, but rather because they are the way the concept is
expressed in the English language. The objects in question could be dictionary entries,
and as such, they are likely to be represented in the speaker's mental lexicon.

English has four major word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. They
have many thousands of members, and new nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are
often created. Nouns are the most common type of word, followed by verbs.
 Conclusion

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words. It is concerned with the
forms of lexemes (inflection) and the processes by which lexemes are generated
(word-formation).

Morphology contributes to the expansion of a language's lexicon or the collection of

established words, but it is not the only source of lexical units, nor is it the source of
all complex words, which also emerge through borrowing, univerbation, and word
formation.

One of the main properties of language is the sound/meaning pairs when analyzing
language (or learning a foreign language), we can’t simply list all expressions: there
are an infinite number of them. So we compose expressions into smaller units: usually
into phrases and words (syntax).

Language is scientific system of communication used by human being through signal

or speech. Its importance to the language learner understands the process of words
formation, that’s the process of organization of words in a sentence to bring mean.
There are many reasons of why morphology is important to the language learner.

The first reason is that it is the responsibility of linguists to describe and analyze the
world's languages as correctly and insightfully as possible. As a result, they must deal
with morphological phenomena of a language and, require a set of description tools.
Morphology provides such tools in the form of a set of analytic ideas.

Second purpose is to create a typology of languages: what are the dimensions along
which languages differ, and how are these dimensions of variation related and
restricted? Do all languages have morphology, and if so, what sorts of morphology do
 Reference

Akmajian, Adrian, Richard A. Demers and Robert M. Harnish. Linguistics: An

Introduction to Language and Communication. London: The MIT Press. 1984.

David, E. The Morpheme A Theoretical Introduction. Bastion/Berlin. 2015.

Fasold, R. and Connor-Linton, J., (2006). An Introduction to Language and

Linguistics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Matthew, P. H. Morphology: An Introduction to the Theory of Word

Structure. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1978.