morphological change

Morphological Change

Morphology

is the branch of linguistics that studies the structure and classification of words and the units that make up words

Morphemes

The smallest meaningful units of a language.

Morpheme & word

A morpheme and a word are not equivalent terms.

Ex.

“coat” – 1 morpheme (monomorphemic word)

“coats” – 2 morphemes

Coat is word and so is coats

-s is a morpheme, but it definitely is not a word

Two Types of Morpheme

1. Free morphemes – are

morphemes that can stand alone

ex. phone, play, run

2. Bound morphemes – are

meaningful grammatical unit that

cannot occur alone and must be

attached to another morpheme

ex. tele, -er, -ing

Free Morpheme

a free morpheme may also be a root

a root is a morpheme, usually but not always a free morpheme.

words can be built by adding morphemes to the root

These words are called affixes

Kinds of Words

1. Open classes of words (content

words)- are types words that grow in

number in a language.

Nouns, adjectives, verbs and

adverbs

2. Closed classes of words (Function

words) – are types of words the growth

of which is very limited.

Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions,

interjections

Bound morphemes

Added bound morphemes are called affixes

Types of affixes:

1. Prefix-added before a root (un-happy)

2. Infix-added inside a root (fan-damn-tastic)

3. Suffix-added after a root (happi-ness)

4. Circumfix-added surrounding the root (gi-luto-an)

Types of bound morphemes

A bound morpheme can be classified on the

basis of the function it serves

1. Derivational morphemes – are bound

morphemes that change the meaning or lexical

category (part of speech) of a word.

For example:

happy → unhappy

Both words are adjectives, but the meaning

changes.

quick → quickness

The affix changes both meaning and word class -

adjective to a noun.

Types of bound morphemes

2. Inflectional morphemes – are

bound morphemes that do not

change the essential meaning or

lexical category of a word. They

change grammatical functions.

For example:

Cat → cats (-s plural marker)

walk → walking (-ing tense

marker)

8 inflectional bound morphemes1. The plural marker (-s)

Both chairs are broken”

2. The possessive (-’s and –s’)

“The chair’s leg is broken”

3. The third person, present singular (-s)

“He waits”

4. The progressive (-ing)

“He is waiting”

8 inflectional bound morphemes5. The past tense (-ed) “He waited”

6. The past participle (-en) “I had eaten”

7. The comparative (-er) “He was faster”

8. The superlative (-est) “He was the fastest”

Types of Word-Formation Processes

Compounding-is creating a word with more than

one root

Veggie burger

Sideburns

brunch

Acronyms- are words that are formed from the

first letter or letters of more than one word

NASA

LAN

Types of Word-Formation Processes

Foreign word borrowing

French: recipe, route, menu

Arabic: sofa, magazine, alcohol

Clipping- is deleting a section of a word to

create a shortened form

Photo from photograph

Sculpt from sculpture

Types of Word-Formation Processes

Blending-is the process of taking two or more words (compounding), clipping parts off one or more of the words, and the combining them Motel (motor hotel); sitcom (situation comedy)

Using people’s names Sandwich from John Montagu, the fourth Earl of

Sandwhich (1718-1792)

Erotic from Eros (Greek god)

Trade names Aspirin

Pampers, Colgate