MORPHOLOGY

Morphology is the part of linguistic which analyzes or investigates the basic elements or grammatical function of words. It is the part of linguistics that deals with the study of words, their internal structure and partially their meanings. It is also interested in how the users of the given language, understand complex words and invent new lexical items.

Morphology is the part of linguistics that deals with the study of words, their internal structure and partially their meanings.

• Derivational morphology; is concerned with the relationships of different words, and with the ways in which vocabulary items can be built from some elements, as in un-speak-able.
• Inflectional morphology; it deals with the forms of one word that it takes up depending on its grammatical functions in a sentence.

 

Morphemes

Morphemes in morphology are the smallest units that carry meaning or fulfill some grammatical function.

• Free morpheme; a single morpheme that constitutes a word and can stand alone.
• Bound morpheme; a morpheme that must be attached to another morpheme. It cannot stand by itself as it would have no meaning.

 

For examples, in the word houses there are two morphemes house, which is free, and s whish is a bound morpheme.  

1. Free Morphemes
   • Lexical morphemes; words that have some meaning – verbs, adjectives, nouns, like for example print, house, pretty, fire, go, girl, sad, song, yellow, break.
   • Functional morphemes; a closed class of words, articles, prepositions, pronouns which do not carry any meaning on their own, but only fulfill a grammatical function. Ex: and, but, when, because, on, near, above, in, the, that, it.

2. Bound Morphemes

• Derivational morphemes; those morphemes which produce new words, or change the function of a word. It is achieved by means of prefixes or suffixes in case of English and infixes in other languages, like Arabic.

o       -ic      : Noun > Adj            ; alcohol > alcoholic

o       -ance  : Verb > Noun         ; clear > clearance

o       -ly      : Adj > Adv              ; exact > exactly

o       -ity     : Adj > Noun            ; active > activity

o       -able   : Verb > Adj            ; read > readable

o       -ship   : Noun > Noun         ; friend > friendship

o       re-      : Verb > Verb          ; cover > recover

o       in-      : Adj > Adj               ; definite > indefinite 

• Inflectional morphemes; do not create new words, but only show grammatical functions of a word.

 

Nouns

–s                     plural

–’s                   possessive

 

Verbs

 –s                    third person singular present

–ed                  past tense

–en       past participle

–ing      progressive

 

Adjectives

–er       comparative

–est      superlative 

 

Morphological Description

Ex: The girl’s wildness shocked the teachers.

The                  girl                   -‘s                    wild                 -ness                shock               -ed

(functional)   (lexical)           (inflectional)     (lexical)        (derivational)      (lexical)    (inflectional)

the                   teach               er                     s

(functional)   (lexical)     (derivational)     (inflectional)

 

 

Stem, Root, Base

Base is a form to which a morpheme is attached. This can be a single free morpheme, or a combination of morphemes. For example, the word "accept" is the base for "acceptable", while "acceptable" itself is the base for "unacceptable".

 

Stem is what an inflectional morpheme is attached to. For example, the word "house" is the stem for "houses". Remember, it means also "house"  can be called a stem.

 

Root is the form when all the affixes are removed. For example, the form "accept" is the root for "unacceptable"

 

 

Morph

A term morph is forms that represent morphemes. For instance in the word dogs, the morph s represents the morpheme ‘plural’ and in the word oxen the morph is en.

 

Allomorph

One morpheme can be realized in any form of morph. This real form of a morpheme, that can be more than one, is called allomorph. For example, the "plural" morpheme in English has such allomorphs as -es, -s, or -en. ,  . These are the example of allomorphs;

• Shoes; shoe + -s,‘s’ is allomorph
• Watches; watch + -es, ‘es’ is allomorph

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Word Formation

Compounding is a process in which two different words are joined together to denote one thing or compounding is combining of two separate words to produce a single new term.

• Homework; home + work 
• Saputangan       = sapu + tangan
• Kacamata     = kaca+mata.     
• Pickpocket   =  pick + pocket 
• Waterfall = Water + fall
• Fingerprint = Finger + print
• Scarecrow = Scare + crow
• Flower-pot = Flower + pot  
• Notebooks = Note + books  

 

Compound can be divided into 2, they are;

1. Compound noun, formed from two nouns.

Ex; - Bedroom (a place for sleeping)

    - Guestroom (a room for guest)

2. Compound adjectives, formed from two different words.  They are usually written with hyphen and the stress is usually same on both part of the compound

Ex; - Well-known (= famous)

- Well-off (= rich)               

               

The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meanings of its parts.

                    Ex     : Rose water = water made from rose

                               Handmade = something made by hand

                               Black market = market for illegal stuffs

                               Cat house = A house where a man visit prostitutes

 

Blending is very similar to compounding, but it is characterized by taking only parts of words and joining them or Blending is combining of two separate forms to produce a single new term.

• Brunch = Breakfast + lunch 
• Wi-Fi = Wireless + Fidelity 
• Smog = smoke and fog
• Motel = motor and hotel
• Spanglish = Spanish and English
• Guesstimate = guess and estimate
• Condotels = Condominium + hotels
• Digicam    = Digital + camera
• Satgas       = Satuan + petugas

Clipping is shortening or reducing long words.

• Information; info
• Advertisement; advert or ad
• Influenza; flu
• Telephone; phone
• Chemistry = chem.
• Examination = exam
• Gymnastic = gym
• Hamburger = Burger
• Gasoline = Gas

 

Eponym takes place when a name is used as a word. Whereas Coinage is the creation of totally new word. For example, many people use the word "SANYO" when they actually mean a water pump. This is because SANYO is one of the popular brands of water pump. Some well-known eponyms include: sandwich, or Hoover. They are very frequently used in science where units of measurement are named after people, like: hertz, volt, (degree) Celsius.

• Sanyo
• Sandwich
• Hoover
• Hertz
• Volt
• Celsius
• Aspirin or Xerox

 

Borrowing is taking a word from one language and incorporating it into another.

Acronym is a word formed from initial parts of a few words, and read as a phrase or a name.

• AIDS
• ABRI
• RADAR
• SUTET
• UNICEF
• UNESCO

Abbreviation is like an acronym, but the word is read by metioning the alpabeths.

• PBB
• WHO
• SMP

 

Clipping is a word which is clipped

• Facsimile; fax 
• Hamburger; burger
• Gasoline; gas
• Advertisement; ad
• Omnibus; bus

 

Backformation is a process in which a word changes its form and function. Word of one type, which is usually a noun, is reduced and used as a verb.

• Edit was back formed from editor, or typewrites from typewriter.
• Television (noun) --------> televise (verb)
• Donation (noun) --------> donate (verb)
• Emotion (noun) --------> emote (verb).     

 

Conversion is a change in function of a verb without changing its form. Nouns start to be used as verbs.

·        Bottle – to bottle, bottling: I’m bottling the compote.

·        Butter – to butter, buttered: I’ve buttered the bread..     

Also verbs can become nouns

·        Must – a must: Watching this film is a must

·        Guess – a guess: It was a lucky guess