Morphology

What is Morphology?
• Morph = form or shape, ology = study of
Morphology is the study of word structure, the study of the basic building blocks
of meaning in language. These building blocks, called morphemes, are the smallest
units of form that bear meaning or have a grammatical function.
In other words, it is the branch of linguistics that is concerned with the relation between
meaning and form, within words and between words.

Morphology literally means ‘the study of form’ – in particular, the forms of words.
Although “form” in this context usually refers to the spoken sound or phonological form
that is associated with a particular meaning, it doesn’t necessarily have to – signed
languages also have word forms. Instead of the articulators of the vocal tract, signed
languages make use of the shape and movement of the hands. All languages, whether
spoken or signed, have word forms.

Morphologists describe the constituent parts of words, what they mean, and how they
may (and may not) be combined in the world’s languages. The pairing of a meaning with
a form applies to whole words, like sleep, as well as to parts of words like the ‘past’
meaning associated with the ending -ed as in frimped.

Morphology applies within words, as in the addition of a plural ending to cat /kæt/ to
change its form to cats /kæts/ and its meaning to ‘more than one cat.’ It also applies
across words, as when we alter the form of one word so that some part of it matches, or
agrees with, some feature of another word, for example:
a. That cat sleeps all day.
b. Those cats sleep all day.
One of the most important functions of morphology is to distinguish the roles played by
the various participants in an event; we could not interpret language without this
information.

In the sentence in (a), the word cat is a third-person singular (3SG) subject,
which in most varieties of English requires that we add an -s to another word – the verb
– when they occur together in a sentence. This verbal suffix “means” something like ‘my
subject is third person and singular.’ In (b), however, the word cats is plural, which in
English doesn’t require the verb to add any special agreeing form. (English is highly
unusual among the world’s languages in this regard!) In the examples above, notice that
the words that and those also crossreference the singular vs. plural meaning distinction
between cat and cats. This kind of morphological agreement between matching parts of
words is widely observed among the world’s languages.
Languages vary widely in their amount and functions of morphology (often as a result of
historical development – see Chapter 8). For example, all languages need a way to
signal grammatical roles such as subject and direct object (or, who did what to whom).
English depends quite strictly on the order of words in a sentence to do this.
The meaning of (1) is very different from that of (2):
1. Brutus killed Caesar.
2. Caesar killed Brutus.

Morphemes

We said earlier that tea and teas are both words with slightly different meanings, and
that this difference is due to the -s ending on teas. But since -s is not itself a word, how
can it have its own meaning? In fact, it is not words, but rather morphemes, that are the
smallest units of language that combine both a form (the way they sound) and a
meaning (what they mean).
Words are made up of morphemes. Simple words consist of a single morpheme.
Complex words consist of more than one morpheme. For example, cat is a simple word
compared with cats, which contains two morphemes – the noun cat plus a plural marker
-s. Similarly, in the word unfriendly, there are three morphemes: un-, friend, and -ly,
each of which contributes some meaning to the overall word.

So, words are not the most basic units of meaning. They are frequently composed of
even more basic elements.
a. obvious: homework, dinnertime, moonlight, classroom
b. medium: fearless, quickly, fishing, momentary
c. difficult: walks, tenth, dog’s, flipped

Each of the preceding examples contained at least 2 morphemes. We can take, for
instance, ”th” from ”tenth” and say that it has a meaning all to itself – namely, ”the
ordinal numeral corresponding to the cardinal numeral I’m attached to”.

Basic Concept Of Word Structure

Morphemes do not combine in arbitrary ways. There are definite patterns to the
distribution of morphemes in polymorphemic words.
e.g. rewrite = write-re, walks = s-walk.
The number, order of and type of morphemes used to make up a particular word is
called its structure.
Morphologists study not only the meanings of the various morphemes, but also their
patterns of distribution – the structures they are capable of forming. This knowledge is
part of linguistic competence.
The structure of words can be represented by trees.

In building words (and phrases and sentences), two basic kinds of morphemes are
used. Morphemes with richer lexical “vocabulary” meaning (referring to things and
qualities and actions in the world) are called lexical morphemes or lexemes. Lexemes
typically belong to the “major” part-of-speech categories of nouns (N), verbs (V), or
adjectives (A); simple lexemes may serve as the root of more complex words.
On the other hand, morphemes that contribute mainly grammatical information or
indicate relationships between the lexemes are called grammatical morphemes.
In the sentence in below, the words maniacal, little, dog, attempt, bite, and mailman are
all lexemes. The grammatical morphemes, which have been underlined, are their, -al,
-ed, to, and the.
Their maniacal little dog attempted to bite the mailman.

Grammatical morphemes are the glue that holds the lexemes in a sentence together,
shows their relations to each other, and also helps identify referents within a particular
conversational context. In the sentence above, the pronoun their consists of
grammatical features (third person, plural) that partially identify via agreement some
previously mentioned referents (say, John and Mary), and simultaneously signals a
possessor relation between them and the lexeme dog. Like the morpheme the (in the
phrase the mailman), their also has definite reference, indicating that the speaker
assumes the hearer knows who is being referred to. The past tense marker -ed tells us
that an event (the ‘biting-attempt’) already happened. The morpheme to is a formal
device (called an infinitive marker) for marking an untensed verb (to bite). Finally,
although the word mania-
cal is a lexeme (because it is an adjective that refers to an attribute of the dog, just like
little), it is a complex word derived by adding the morpheme -al to the root noun maniac.
Thus, -al has the grammatical function of turning a noun into an adjective meaning
‘having the qualities of ’ that noun.
Classification Of Morphemes
Morphemes can be either free or bound. Bound morphemes must be attached either to
a root or another morpheme, it can only appear as part of a larger, multi-morphemic
word, but free morphemes can stand alone, it is able to appear as a word by itself. Most
lexemes in English, such as dog and bite, are free morphemes. Suffixes, like -ed and -
al, are bound
• Free morphemes are also referred as roots.
• Bound morphemes are also referred to as affixes, among which there are prefixes,
infixes, and suffixes.
a. prefixes: un-happy, re-write, pre-view
b. suffixes: writ-ing, quick-ly, neighbor-hood
c. infixes: (very rare in English) speech-o- meter

Bound morphemes may be derivational or inflectional

• A stem can be defined as a root to which an affix can be added.
• Thus, the root dog is also a stem, because, even though it contains no affix(es), an
affix could be added to it - to form, e.g., dog-s. This notion is necessary because not all
roots are such that affixes can be added to them - e.g., of, or, I, etc.

Derivational morphemes create new words.

They derive new words from other words:
e.g., unhappy ← un + happy; happiness ← happy + ness; preview ← pre + view.
Further properties
• change part of speech or the meaning of a word
a. part of speech: us-able (V → A), trouble-some (N → A), judg-ment (V → N)
b. meaning: dis-comfort, ex-boyfriend
c. both: use-less (V → A)
are not required by syntax
• are not very productive: dis-like, *dis-hate
• usually occur before inflectional suffixes: work-er-s
• can be either suffixes or prefixes (in English)

Inflectional Morphemes
• They do not change meanings or parts of speech, but instead simply make minor
grammatical changes necessary for agreement with other words.
e.g., cats ← cat + s; cooler ← cool + er.
• There are only eight inflectional morphemes: -s, -ed, -ing, - en, -s, -’s, -er, -est
• They occur after derivational morphemes, usually at the very end of the word (in
English)
• They can only be suffixes (in English)
The Hierarchical Structure Of Words
• Words are formed in steps, with one affix attaching to a complete word, which can be
a free word or a morphological complex word.
• Affixes in general can only combine with words of a single part of speech. (e.g., ”-able”
and “re-” only combine with verbs). Also, the words affixes form after combination are
usually of a single part of speech as well, not necessarily the same as the words with
which it combines. (”-able” forms adjectives, “re-” forms verbs).
• This fact implies that the order of combination for morphemes makes a difference,
because otherwise you would end up with ”non-well-formed” words.
a. unusable = un + (use + able), not *(un + use) + able.

b. reusable = (re + use) + able, not *re + (use +able).

• Because trees have a particular order of morphemic combination associated with

them, we can say that their structure is hierarchical.
• There is a hierarchy among the various morphemes as to the order in which they were
added to the word.
• Some words can have multiple structures associated with them because of various
combinatorial possibilities for the constituent morphemes.

Word Formation Processes

• Affixation: process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes.
– V + -able → A: predict+ -able
– V + -er → N: sing+er
– un + A → A: un-productive
– A + en → V: deep+ -en, thick+ -en

• Compounding: word formation process by which new words are formed by combining
two or more independent words.
– A + A → A: bittersweet
– N + N → N: rainbow
– V + V → V: sleepwalk
– P + P → P: without
– V + N → N: pickpocket
– N + V → V: spoonfeed
– P + V → V: overdo

• Reduplication: process of forming new words either by doubling an entire word (total
reduplictation) or part of a word (partial reduplication).
– English: humpty-dumpty, higgledy-piggeldy (partial reduplication)
– Creole: blak “black”, blakblak “very black” (total reduplication)

• Morpheme-internal Changes: a type of word formation process wherein a word

changes internally to indicate grammatical information.
– ablaut: sing, sang, sung; swim, swam, swum
– other changes: man, men; mouse, mice, goose, geese

• Suppletion: a relationship between forms of a word wherein on form cannot be

phonologically or morphologically derived from the other, this process is rare.
– am - was; go -went
– good - better; bad - worse

Minor Word Formation Processes

• Acronyms: Abbreviations formed by taking the initial sounds (letters) of the words of a
phrase and uniting them to form a pronounceable word.
– laser : light amplification by simulated emission of radiation
– scuba: self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
– radar : radio detecting and ranging
– AIDS : Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

• Blending: process of creating a new word by combining the parts of two different
words, usually the beginning of one word and the end of another.
Breakfast + lunch -
Camera + recorder
Emotion + icon
Motor car + hotel
Situation + comedy
Smoke + fog
Spoon + fork
Work + alcoholic
Note + book
Work + room
Breast + feed

• Back formation: word formation process in which a new base form is created from an
apparently similar form by using proportional analogy.
– revise : revision; televise : television
– actor : act; editor : edit
– create : creation; donate : donation

• Clipping: process of creating new words by shortening parts of longer words.

Math – Mathematics
Memo – Memorandum
Pub – Public house
Rep – Representative
Abs – Abdomen
– doctor, professional, veterinarian, laboratory, advertisement, dormitory, examination,
bicycle, refrigerator