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CHAPTER Morphology

LEARNING OUTCOME

Upon completion of this chapter, you should be able to:

1. distinguish between morphemes and allomorphs;

2. distinguish between free and bound morphemes as well as

inflectional and derivational morphemes; and

3. describe how morphemes are formed ;

ELL322 LINGUISTICS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHER

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INTRODUCTION

Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. Morphology is the

study of morphemes and the way in which they are joined together to make words. As we all
know, words can be related to other words by rules. For example, any English speaker can
see that the words book, books, book store are closely related. In this chapter, you will learn
about morphology. The chapter will focus on morphemes, types of morphemes and how
they are formed.

4.1 MORPHOLOGY

Phonology has been described as the study of speech sounds and their patterns. It is a study
based on the 'phoneme' or smallest significant unit of speech. Morphology is the study of
morphemes, which are the smallest significant units of grammar. His definition becomes
more comprehensible if you look at some examples. If you examine such patterns as:

(a) cat cats

mat mats

bat bats

or:

(b) cook cooked

look looked
book booked
you will see that in (a) plurality is indicated by adding +s to the singular noun thus:
Singular Plural

cat cat+s
mat mat+s
bat bat+s
In each example, there are two morphemes, the morpheme 'cat' (or the morpheme 'mat' or
'bat') and the morpheme ‘s’ which in many English words marks the difference between
singular and plural. In (b) there is the following pattern:

Present Past

cook cook+ed

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look look+ed

book book+ed

where the 'ed' morpheme indicates the past tense for many English verbs..

4.2 FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES

If you look at a number of other examples you can establish different categories of morpheme.
The words:

unmanly

meaningless

can be split up into:

un+man+ly and:

mean+ing+less

In both these examples, the words are composed of three morphemes, only one of which can
occur in isolation:

 That man is very tired. What do you meant

Morphemes which can occur freely on their own are called ‘free’ morphemes. Morphemes
which can only occur as affixes are described as 'bound" morphemes. Bound morphemes (or
affixes) are divided into two types: those like 'dis-' and ‘un-’ which precede words (that is, free
morphemes) and which are called prefixes and those like ‘ly’ and ‘-ness’ which follow free
morphemes and which are called suffixes.

Aflomorphs
Often, morphemes which fulfil the same function have slightly different forms. If you look
at the following three words:
slammed
slipped
stilted

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you will notice that, in the written form, they all have the ‘-ed’ morpheme indicating the
past tense. When you pronounce these words, however, you become aware that the ‘-ed’
morpheme has three different forms:
/slaemd/
/slipt/
/stiltid/

/d/ in 'slammed', /t/ in 'slipped' and /id/ in 'stilted'. When a morpheme has
alternative forms the various forms are known as ‘allomorphs. Take another example. Some
English adjectives form their opposites by prefixing the bound morpheme 'in-‘:
capable incapable
tolerant intolerant

Often, however, the negative morpheme changes ‘n’ to the consonant of the word it prefixes:
legal illegal
mobile immobile
regular irregular
‘il-’, ‘im-’, ‘in-’ and ‘ir-’ can thus be called allomorphs.

4.3 DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY

Morphology fulfils two main functions in English. Morphemes can be used to form new words:
beauty + ful > beautiful
danger + ous > dangerous
or to inflect verbs and nouns:
look, look+s, look+ing, look+ed
tree, tree+s
The first category is known as derivational morphology and it involves
prefixation:
re + turn > return
un + true > untrue

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suffixation:
man + ly > manly
wicked + ness > wickedness
or affixation involving both prefixation and suffixation:
un + speak + able > unspeakable
sub + conscious + ly > subconsciously
Commonly occurring prefixes are ‘be-‘, ‘de-’, ‘en-’, ‘ex-’, ‘hyper-’, ‘pre-’, ‘pro-’, ‘re-’, ‘sub-’,
‘super-’ and ‘trans-’. Prefixes alter meaning but do

not always change the function of the word to which they are prefixed:

Prefix Free Morpheme (Class) Result (Class)

be witch (n.) bewitch (v.)
de limit (v.) delimit (v.)
en rich (adj.) enrich (v.)
ex terminate (v.) exterminate (v.)
hyper market (n.) hypermarket (n.)

Commonly occurring suffixes always change the class of the word to which they are attached:
beauty (n.) + ful beautiful {adj.)
determine (v.) + ation determination {«.)
Words ending in the morphemes ‘-acy’, ‘-ation’, ‘-er/-or’, ‘-ess’, '-ity', '-ment’, ‘-ness’ and ‘-
ship’ tend to be nouns:
democracy actor bewilderment
adoration mistress weakness
painter solemnity horsemanship

Words ending in ‘-ise/ize’ tend to be verbs:

epitomise
hospitalise

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Words ending in ‘-able’, ‘-ed’, ‘-ful’, ‘-ical’, ‘-ive’, ‘-less’, ‘-like’, ‘-ous’ and ‘-y’ tend to be
adjectives:
an enjoyable film
a polished performance
a comical episode
a diminutive person
a helpless individual
an industrious group
a pretty girl

And words which end in ‘-ly’ tend to be adverbs:

He ran home quickly.
She locked the doors securely.

Although the above suffixes tend to be associated with particular word classes, it is always
worth remembering that, in English, it is only safe to judge the class of an item when it has
been seen in context. Thus, although ‘lovely’ and ‘friendly’ end in ‘-ly’ they function as
adjectives and not as adverbs:
a lovely girl
a friendly welcome

4.4 INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY

Whereas derivational affixes often involve a change of class - such as the verb 'attract'
becoming the adjective 'attractive'- inflectional suffixes never involve a change of class.
Inflectional morphology occurs with nouns, pronouns and verbs. In nouns, inflection
marks plurality in regular nouns:
book books
chair chairs
and the possessive of all nouns:
John John's book/books
the man the man's book/books
the men the men's book/books
the builders the builders' material/materials

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Irregular nouns often form their plurals by a vowel change:

foot feet
man men
mouse/maus/ mice/mais/

but they form the possessive in exactly the same way as regular nouns:
the dog the dog's tail
the mouse the mouse's nose

There is no difference in sound between a regular noun's plural form and its possessive:
the doctor
the doctor's patients
the doctors
the doctors' patients

In the written medium, however, the apostrophe indicates whether or not we are dealing with a
possessive and whether or not the possessive is singular or plural.

With regard to verbs in English, inflectional suffixes are used to indicate present tense
agreement:

I
You
we look/sing
they

but:
he/she/it look+s/sing+s

and the present participle:

look+ing/sing+ing

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For regular verbs the past tense and the past participle are formed by the suffix ‘-ed’:
I look+ed/I have look+ed

whereas, with irregular verbs, the past tense and the past participle are often signalled by a
vowel change or a vowel change plus a suffix:

sing sang sung

take took taken
write wrote written

Identify the morphemes in the following words, indicating where a

spelling change may be necessary when one breaks the word down
into its constituents.

(a) equalisers
(b) inclination
(c) befriending
(d) transportation
(e) endearment
(f) predetermination
(g) dangerously
(h) unbelievable
(i) protection
(j) dehumanise

SUMMARY

In general, this chapter deals with morphology. You now know the basics of word
formation. By now, you should be able to identify the stem of a word as well as classify
the affixes attached to a particular word. You have also learned to form new words
through affixes.