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Types of Morpheme

There are two types of morphemes: free morphemes, which can stand alone as words, and bound morphemes, which must be attached to other morphemes. Bound morphemes include inflectional morphemes, which change word functions, and derivational morphemes, which change word meanings and functions. Morphemes can have multiple phonological variants called allomorphs that are conditioned by adjacent sounds.

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4K views10 pages

Types of Morpheme

There are two types of morphemes: free morphemes, which can stand alone as words, and bound morphemes, which must be attached to other morphemes. Bound morphemes include inflectional morphemes, which change word functions, and derivational morphemes, which change word meanings and functions. Morphemes can have multiple phonological variants called allomorphs that are conditioned by adjacent sounds.

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Febriana Indra
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Types of Morpheme

• Free morphemes are morphemes which can


occur by themselves as a whole words, such as
albatross, chant, lullaby,etc
• Bound morpheme are morphemes which
must be attached to another, such as anti-, -ed,
-ly, etc.
• Bound morphemes are of two types which
include: Inflectional Morpheme and
Derivational Morphem.
• 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 Morpheme are morphemes which must be
attached to another, such as anti-, -ed, -ly, etc. Bound
morphemes are of two types which include: Inflectional
Morpheme and Derivational Morphem.
• Inflectional Morpheme
• This type of morpheme is only a suffix. -ly as a suffix to
the base of the noun, such as in “friend,” which becomes
“friendly.” Now it contains two It transforms the
function of words by adding morphemes “friend” and “-
ly.” Here, “-ly” is an inflectional morpheme, as it has
changed the noun “friend” into an adjective “friendly.”
• Derivational Morpheme
• This type of morpheme uses both prefix as
well as suffix, and has the ability to change
function as well as meaning of words. For
instance, adding the suffix “-less” to the noun
“meaning” makes the meaning of this word
entirely different.
Allomorphs
• Allomorphs is a morpheme that has only one phonological
form, but frequently it has a number variants.
• Allomorphs may vary considerably. Totaly dissimilar forms
may be allomorphs of the same morpheme. Cats, dogs, horses,
sheep, oxen, geese all contain the English plural morpheme.
• An allomorph is said to be phonologically conditioned when
its form is dependent on the adjacent phonemes.
• An allomorph is said to be lexically conditioned when its
form seems to be a purely accidental one, linked to a
particular vocabulary item.
Phonological conditioning
• /-z/ /-s/ /-iz/ are all phonologically conditioned allomorphs of the English
plural morpheme. That is, each allomorph occures in a predictable set of
environments. 
• /-z/ occurs after most voiced phonemes as in dogs, lambs, bees. (A voiced
phoneme is one of which the vocal cords vibrate, as in /b/, /d/, /g/./v/, and
vowels.)
• /-s/ occurs after most voiceless phonemes, as in cats, giraffes, shunks. (A
voiceless phoneme is one in which the vocal cords do not vibrate.)
• /-z/ occurs after sibilants (hissing and hushing sound), as in horses,
cheeses, dishes.
• If we take /z/ as basic, then we can say first, that /-z/ turns into /iz/ after
sibilants (Figure 6.5), and second, into /-s/ after voiceless sounds (Figure
6.6)
Lexical conditioning
 
• Words such as oxen, sheep, geese present a
problem. Although they function as plurals in the
same way as cats, dogs, they are not marked as
plurals in the same way. Such lexically
conditioned plurals do not follow any specific
rule. Each one have to be learnt separately.

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