Three terms which are indispensable in analysing words are
‘root’, ‘base’, and ‘affix’. According to Bauer et al. (2013) A ROOT
is a centre of a word, a lexically contentful morph, either free or bound, which is not further analysable; it is what remains when all affixes are removed. For example in (4) the roots are read, hear, large, perform, happy, soft, and speak. AFFIXES are obligatory bound items that attach to roots. In English, there are kinds of affixes: prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are obligatory bound morphs attached before (to the left of) a root; suffixes are obligatorily bound morphs attached after (to the right of) a root, as illustrated in (4) and (5).
(4) Prefixes in English: de-compose, dis-qualify, fore- word, inter-national, mis-align, non-smoker, pre- requisite, re-watch, sub-marine, super-impose, un- natural, en-able.
(5) Suffixes in English: America-n, happy-ness, relation-ship, brother-hood, caramel-ize, woman-ly, jugdment-al, read-s, beaut-ify, separate-d, usher-ette, speak-er, fish-ing.
24 Because English enables affixation to forms that already include affixes on a regular basis, we will occasionally have reason to use the term BASE: a base is any morphological element to which other morphological elements are added during the construction of words. To summarize: A base may be made up of a single root, as in the word friend-ly, of multiple roots, as in a compound word or phrase like file cabinet, of a phrase or word like old maidish, or of a root plus one or more affixes, as when the suffix -ness is attached to the word friend-ly in the word friend-li-ness.
Although under normal circumstances affixes are obligatorily bound and roots are potentially free, this is not always the case.
Consider the words in (6):
(6) micro-film, psyco-logy, derm-atitis, endo-derm
It is possible to find bound morphs in all of these words. It is not uncommon for the morphs micro-, o(logy), derm-, and endo- to occur together in a single word, and they do so in a number of words, as affixes do. The same as with affixes, some of them are more commonly found in the initial position (e.g. micro-, endo-), while others are more commonly found in the final place (e.g. – (o)logy). Yet, most morphologists would reluctant to classify them as affixes in this context. For starters, if we were to refer to them as affixes, we would be left with the potential of creating a word that is wholly composed of affixes (e.g., endoderm), which would violate the definition of affix provided above. Another advantage of this category over English affixes is that some items in it can appear either initially or at the end (e.g., derm in dermatitis and
25 endoderm), which is never the case with English affixes. As a result, we will distinguish between BOUND ROOTS and affixes in this section. Bound roots can serve as bases for affixes or other bound roots.
We have seen two types of complex words so far: those with a single free root, such as (3a), and those with a single bound root, such as (3b). Is it true, then, that a word can only have one root and that it cannot have more than one root? Without a doubt – in fact, such words are fairly common; they are COMPOUNDS, as previously explained in conjunction with the cranberry morphemes.
Examples are bookcase, motorbike, penknife, and truck-driver. The reason for bringing up compounds once more is because, if a complex word can be built from two (or more) free roots, it is only natural to wonder whether a word can have two (or more) bound roots as well as free roots. Yes, they do exist – although, given the English language's propensity for free roots, they are not nearly as common as conventional compounds in the language. Electrolysis, electroscopy, telescope, microcosm, psychology, and endoderm are just a few examples of terms that have two bound roots. Among the other words that, like cranberries, contain both a bound and a free root are microfilm, electrometer, and the Sino-Japanese phrase (assuming that Japanese contains the free root Japan). It will be immediately apparent that the majority of these words are not often used; in fact, I would anticipate just a small number of readers of this book to be familiar with all of them. However, in contrast to ordinary compounds, these words are nearly all technical terms of
26 scientific language, coined with the knowledge that they were made up of non-English elements, usually from Latin and Greek. Since there is such a significant difference between ordinary compounds and these learned words, and because the bound morphemes that compose them have a non-English character, many linguists and dictionary-makers classify these bound morphemes as neither affixes nor bound roots (such as the ones we encountered in (3b)), but instead classify them as a special category of combining forms.
Given that free roots are prevalent in native English words, one may assume that if a word composed of combining forms is widely used, the morphemes contained within it would tend to acquire the status of free morphemes as a result of their widespread use. This expectation proves to be right in the end. For example, the word photograph existed before the word picture as a taught technical term formed of combining forms; nevertheless, the word photo must now be categorized as a free morpheme because it is no longer a learned technical term. Other combining forms that have more recently "gained their independence" are micro- and macro- (as in, on a micro- or macro-scale) and retro- (as in, related to music or fashion), all of which are more recent developments.