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