Morphemes

Definition

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. A morpheme is not identical to a word. The main
difference between them is that a morpheme sometimes does not stand alone, but a word, by definition, always
stands alone.

A morpheme can be defined as a minimal unit having more or less constant meaning and more of less constant
form.

For example, linguists say that the word buyers is made up of three morphemes {buy}+{er}+{s}. The evidence for
this is that each can occur in other combinations without changing its meaning. We can find {buy} in buying,
buys, and {er} in seller, fisher, as well as buyer. And {s} can be found in boys, girls, and dogs.

Classification of Morphemes

Free and Bound Morphemes

 Free morphemes can function independently as words (e.g. town, dog) and can appear
within lexemes (e.g. town hall, doghouse).

 Bound morphemes appear only as parts of words, always in conjunction with a root and sometimes with
other bound morphemes. For example, un- appears only accompanied by other morphemes to form a word.
Most bound morphemes in English are affixes, particularly prefixes and suffixes. Examples of suffixes are -
tion, -sion, -tive, -ation, -ible, and -ing. Bound morphemes that are not affixed are called cranberry
morphemes.
Categories of Free Morphemes

There are two categories. These are Lexical morphemes and Functional morphemes.

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.

Classification of Bound Morphemes

 Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root, change the semantic meaning or the part of
speech of the affected word. For example, in the word happiness, the addition of the bound morpheme -
ness to the root happy changes the word from an adjective (happy) to a noun (happiness). In the
word unkind, un- functions as a derivational morpheme since it inverts the meaning of the word formed by
the root kind. Generally, affixes used with a root word are bound morphemes.
We have many more morphemes called derivational affixes, which go at the start of words (prefixes) or the end
(suffixes) to change their meaning or word type. For example, we can add:

 "anti" before a noun adds the meaning "against" e.g. antiwar, anticlimax, antidote.
 "ante" adds the meaning "before" as in antechamber, antecedent, antenatal (but beware, sometimes the
meaning "ante" is spelt "anti" as in anticipate, antique)
 "omni" adds the meaning "all/every", as in omnivorous, omniscient, omnibus.
 "ist", "ian" or "eer" after a noun to add the meaning "one who…" e.g. pianist, dramatist, optometrist,
politician, magician, musician, mountaineer, musketeer, engineer.
 "vore" after a noun adds the meaning "eater", as in carnivore, herbivore, omnivore, locavore.
 "gate" has within my lifetime become a suffix which turns a word into a scandal, as in Watergate,
Camillagate and Wormgate (an Australian federal election debate controversy).
 "er" after a verb to add the meaning "one who…" or "that which…" e.g. dancer, swimmer, repairer, can-
opener, toaster, typewriter. However, "er" is not always a suffix when it appears at word endings – a
brother is not someone who broths, and water is not a thing that wats,
 "ity" after a verb to make it into a noun e.g. prosperity, equality, security.
 "un" before a verb to reverse its action e.g. undo, unpack, unlace, unwind, unpick.
 "ment" after a verb to turn a verb into a noun e.g. embarrassment,
 "ly" after an adjective to make it into an adverb e.g. kindly, quietly, aggressively.
 "ous" after an adjective to add the meaning "full of" or "possessing" e.g. joyous, nervous, spacious.

Inflectional Morphemes
Inflectional morphemes modify the tense, aspect, mood, person, or number of a verb, or the number, gender,
or case of a noun, adjective, or pronoun, without affecting the word's meaning or class (part of speech).
Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to form dogs, or adding -
ed to wait to form waited. An inflectional morpheme changes the form of a word.
There are a large number of derivational affixes in English. In contrast, there are only eight "inflectional affixes"
in English, and these are all suffixes. English has the following inflectional suffixes, which serve a variety of
grammatical functions when added to specific types of words. These grammatical functions are shown to the
right of each suffix.

-s noun plural
-'s noun possessive
-s verb present tense third person singular
-ing verb present participle/gerund
-ed verb simple past tense
-en verb past perfect participle
-er adjective comparative
-est adjective superlative

Two inflectional suffixes are added to the ends of nouns:

 Plurals: show there's more than one of something. The usual plural morpheme is "s" or "es" e.g. cat-cats,
dog-dogs, witch-witches. However, sometimes we form plurals in unusual ways, in words that come
from Old English, Latin or French e.g. mouse-mice, child-children, radius-radii, phenomenon-phenomena,
 genus-genera, larva-larvae, bureau-bureaux etc. Click here for more examples.
 The possessive: shows that something belongs to a noun, and is written as an apostrophe + "s" e.g. the
frog's leg, the city's skyline, the cat's pyjamas. If we are talking about two frogs having four legs, we just
add a possessive apostrophe after the plural "s" ("the frogs' legs).

Two inflectional suffixes are added to the ends of adjectives:

 The comparative: is used to make adjectives that compare things, and written "er" e.g. funkier, lazier,
redder.
 The superlative: is like the comparative, only moreso, and written "est" e.g. funkiest, laziest, reddest.

Four inflectional suffixes are added to the ends of verbs:

 Third person singular present tense: is the "s" verb agreement in "she sleeps", "he wakes" or "it lurks".
 Simple past tense: is usually "ed" as in "it lurked" but we also have many irregular forms from good old
Old English, like "she slept" and "he woke", where it is hard to say which bit of the word is the base word
and which bit is the past tense, but there are still two meanings and therefore two morphemes.
 Past participle: usually "en" as in "she has chosen" or "he had woken" or "ed" as in "they have danced" or
"we have smashed", but there are again many irregular forms e.g. "I have slept", "you had crept" etc.
There are many lists of irregular simple past and past participle verbs on the www, click here for one
from the British Council.
 Present participle: the "ing" that shows continuous action e.g. "she is carousing", "he was prancing".
Note that these "ing" words can be used as adjectives e.g. "The prancing pony", or they can be used as
nouns e.g. "Prancing has worn me out".

Differences

All affixes are bound and they are of two types: derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes.
Morphology “is concerned with two quite different phenomena: derivation and inflection. Derivation has
to do with the way morphemes get attached as affixes to existing lexical forms or stems in the process
of word formation”. While inflectional morphology “does not create new words but adapts existing
words so that they operate effectively in sentences. It is not a process of lexical innovation but of
grammatical function. The differences between them are many, yet the most important ones are as
follows:

Derivation Inflection

1. Many words contain several derivational affixes. 1. There is only one inflectional affix in each word except
e.g., unkindly. Kind is the root. While un- and -ly are for plural -s and s of possessive. e.g., cats’ cheese. Cats’ is
derivational affixes. (11) both plural and possessive in meaning.

2. They never close off the word. e.g. playful 2. They close off the word. e.g. plays

3. They can be found in dictionaries. 3. They cannot be found in dictionaries.

4. Derivational is irrelevant to syntax. 4. Inflectional is relevant to syntax.

5. It is optional. 5. It is obligatory.

6. Expresses a new concept. 6. Expresses the same concept as the base.

7. Inflectional categories express a relatively abstract

8. Derivational is semantically irregular. 8. Inflectional is semantically regular.

9. The meanings are relevant to the meaning of the 9. The meanings are less relevant to the meaning of the
base. base.

10. Derivation is expressed at the periphery of

Morphs

A morph is a phonological string (of phonemes) that cannot be broken down into smaller constituents that have
a lexicogrammatical function. In some sense it corresponds to a word-form.

A Morph is the phonological or orthographical shape of a morpheme.

A morph is a discrete unit of a morpheme, the actual form in morpheme realization.

Allomorphs

Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme that differ in pronunciation but are semantically identical. For example,
the English plural marker -(e)s of regular nouns can be pronounced /-s/ (bats), /-z/, (bugs), or /-ɪz, -əz/, (buses),
depending on the final sound of the noun's plural form.

Zero morphemes/null morphemes

Generally, these types of morphemes have no visible changes. For instance, sheep is both the singular and the
plural form. The intended meaning is thus derived from the co-occurring determiner (in this case, "some-" or "a-
").

Cranberry morpheme

In linguistic morphology a cranberry morpheme (also called unique morpheme or fossilized term) is a type of
bound morpheme that cannot be assigned an independent meaning and grammatical function, but nonetheless
serves to distinguish one word from another.[1]

Example:

cob in cobweb, from the obsolete word coppe ("spider").

"-ing" in "Dorking", "Washington" .However, the "-ing" at the end of words such as "reading", the verb, is not a
cranberry morpheme but rather an affixed morpheme.)

dew in dewlap