CHAPTER IV MORPHOLOGY
B. Morphemes
We do not actually have to go to other languages such as Swahili to discover that “word forms” may consist of a number of elements. We can recognize that English word forms such as talks, talker, talked and talking must consist of one element talk, and a number of other elements such as -s, - er, -ed and -ing. All these elements are described as morphemes. The definition of a morpheme is “aS minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.”
Units of grammatical function include forms used to indicate past tense or plural, for example. In the sentence The police reopened the investigation, the word reopened consists of three morphemes. One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re- (meaning “again”) and a minimal unit of grammatical function is -ed (indicating past tense). The word tourists also contains three morphemes. There is one minimal unit of meaning tour, another minimal unit of meaning -ist (marking “person who does something”), and a minimal unit of grammatical function -s (indicating plural).
1. Free and Bound Morphemes
There is a broad distinction between two types of morphemes, free and bound. Free morphemes are the set of separate English word forms such as basic nouns and verbs that can stand by themselves as a single word such as open and tour. Then bound morphemes are morphemes that typically need to be attached to another form, exemplified as re-, -ist. This last set is identified as affixes. When free morphemes used with bound morphemes attached are technically known as stems. For example:
undressed carelessness
un- dress -ed care -less -ness
prefix stem suffix stem suffix suffix (bound) (free) (bound) (free) (bound) (bound)
However, there are a number of English words in which their stems are factually not free morphemes. In words such as receive, reduce, re- at the
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beginning of those words are identified as the bound morphemes but the elements –ceive, -duce are not separate.
a. Free Morpheme
Free morpheme (FM) is a word that can stand alone and has the potential to form words. There are two types of FM, lexical morpheme and functional morpheme. Lexical morpheme can receive both suffix and prefix prefixes. As an example:
Noun House + s Houses
Adjective Un + Happy Unhappy Verb Write + s Writes
Adverb Slow + ly Slowly
Meanwhile, functional morpheme cannot receive additions, including:
1. Pronoun: I, You, They, We, He, She, It 2. Conjunction: And, But, Before, ... etc 3. Preposition: In, At, On, ... etc
4. Interjection: Ah, Hi, Hello, Wow, ... etc 5. Article: A, An, The
6. Demostrative: That, This, These, Those B. Bound Morpheme
Bound Morpheme (BM) is a morpheme that cannot stand alone, has no potential to form words but has the potential to form affixes. The types are Derivational Morpheme (DM) and Infective Morpheme (IM). DM can form new words. While the meaning and class of words can change or not. DM is divided into 2 types, namely:
a. Derivational prefix: Irregular, Dislike b. Derivational suffix: Careless, Fortunately
The words irregular and dislike above have gotten the ir and dis prefix.
The addition of the prefix above clearly changes its meaning and even becomes the antonym of the original word which is regular and like. However, the word class does not change, which is still adjective (irregular and regular) and transitive verb (like and dislike). Often, the words formed by DM change the word class, for example —ness changes adjective good to noun goodness.
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Meanwhile, IM cannot form new words. The meaning and class of words do not change. More precisely, IM is used for grammar needs, for example, to indicate whether a word is plural or singular noun, past or not, or whether it is comparative or possessive. For example morpheme-ed is added to verb produce to form past tense produced, morpheme -est is added to adjective tall to form superlative tallest.
2. Lexical and Functional Morphemes
What we have described as free morphemes fall into two categories. The first category is that set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that we think of as words that carry the "content" of the messages we convey. These free morphemes are called lexical morphemes and some examples are: girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow, sincere, open, look, follow, break. We can add new lexical morphemes to the language rather easily, so they are treated as an
"open" class of words. Other types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes. Examples are and, but, when, because, on, near, above, in, the, that, it, them. This set consists largely of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions ,prepositions,articles and pronouns. Because we almost never add new functional morphemes to the language, they are described as a
“closed” class of words.
3. Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes
The set of affixes that make up the bound morpheme category can also be divided into two types. One type is explained in Chapter 5 in terms of the derivation of words. This is a derivative morpheme. We use this bound morpheme to make new words or make words from grammar categories that are different from the stem. For example, adding derivational -ness morphemes changes the nature of adjectives to the goodness of nouns. Noun care can be a careful or careless adjective by adding good-even or even morphemes. The list of child morphemes will include suffixes such as -ish in dumb, -ly quickly, and -ment in payment. This list will also include prefixes like re, pre-, ex-, mis-, co, un and much more. The second set of bound morphemes contains what are called infective morphemes. This is not used to produce new words in the language, but rather to show aspects of the grammatical function of a word. Inflective morphemes are used to indicate whether a word is plural or singular, whether it is past or not, and whether it
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is comparative or possessive. English has only eight inflected morphemes (or
"inflections"), illustrated in the following sentence.
Jim's two sisters are very different. Someone likes to have fun and always laugh. Others like to read as a child and always take things seriously.
One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quieter than a mouse.
In the first sentence, both inflections (-s, -s) are attached to nouns, one is possessive and the other is plural. Note that - here is possessive reflection and is different from - used as an abbreviation for is or has been (eg, he sings, it happens again). There are four pieces of information attached to the verb: - s (3rd person singular), -ing (present participle), -ed (past tense) and -en (past participle). There are two pieces of information attached to adjectives: -er (comparative) and -est (superlative). In English, all morphemes of infection are suffixes.
Nouns + -s, -s
Verbs + -s, -ing, -ed, -en Adjectives + -er, -est
There are several variations in the form of this infective morpheme. For example, possessiveness sometimes appears as -s (the boy's bag) and past participants as -ed (they have finished).