CHAPTER II MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF

ENGLISH WORDS1. Morphemes1.1 What is a morpheme? The morpheme is the smallest

meaningful linguistic unit of language, not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms.

• Words are formed by morphemes, a word may be composed of one or more morphemes

• One morpheme-----------fruit• Two morpheme-----------fruit+ful• Three morpheme-----------un+fruit+ful• Four morpheme-----------un+fruit+ful+ne

ss• More than 4 morphemes------un+gentle+

man+li+ness

1.2 Morphemes, phonemes and syllablesA morpheme is different from a phon

eme, for the former possesses both sound and meaning, whereas the later only implies sound.

• A morpheme is not identical to a syllable, either, since the latter has nothing to do with meaning. ( dis·a·gree·a·ble, there are five syllables as against three morphemes dis+agree+able)

• 1.3 Allomorphs• An allomorph is any of the variant f

orms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.

• Morpheme-s books -s• pigs -z• horse -iz• Allomorphs-ion/-tion/-sion/-ation• Allomorphs-im/-in/-il/-ir

2. Classification of morphemes2.1 Free morphemes and bound

morphemes

• A free morpheme is one that can be uttered alone with meaning.

• A bound morpheme can not stand by itself as a complete utterance; it must appear with at least one other morpheme.

2.2 Roots and affixes• A root is the basic unchangeable p

art of a word which conveys the fundamental meaning of the word.( free roots and bound roots)

• Free roots: Morphemes are said to be free if they can stand alone as words, such as black in black, blackbird, blackboard.

• In English, many roots are free roots

• Bound roots: They are so called because they are always bound to something else. They cannot exist on their own, e.g. ceive in receive, perceive, conceive, deceive.

• Affix is a collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to anther morpheme. (inflectional and derivational)

• Inflectional affixes: does not form a new meaning when it is added to another word. Nor does it change the part of the word to which it is affixed.

• Derivational affixes: when they are added to another morpheme, they derive a new word.

• Many have a specific lexical meaning

• Quite a number of them have more than one meaning

• They have affective meaning

• Derivational Affixes are subdivided into prefixes and suffixes

• (1) Their linguistic origin: Native/foreign affixes

• A hybrid is a word made up of elements from two or more different languages.

1. English words with foreign affixes: re write (L) (E)2. Foreign words with English affixes: state ly (L) (E)3. Foreign words with foreign affixes: mal treat (F) (L)4. Words of more than two origins: com ic al ly (GK)(GK)(L)(E)

• (2) Their productivity:• Productive affixes re-, un-, -able, -iz

e• Dead affixes for-, with-, -ant/-ent

2.3 Relations between the two classifications

• Morphemes may be classified as free and bound. They can also be classified into roots affixes. The relationship between the two classifications of morphemes discussed above may be graphically shown in the following diagram:

• free free rootMorpheme bound root• bound inflectional affixes• prefix

es• derivational affixes{ • suffix

es

conclusion A word is a minimum free form. Book is a

word ,whereas book can not be broken down into smaller units. Such word forms as books, bookcase, tolerable can be divided in to two grammatically significant elements. These grammatical units which can be treated as the minimal meaningful unit are called morphemes.

• Free and bound morpheme• Roots and affixes• Affixes are classified into inflectional

and derivational affixes• derivational affixes are subdivided into

prefixes and suffixes

• What is a morpheme?• What is an allomorph?• How are free and bound morphemes de

fined?• What is a hybrid?

Thank you