English Morphems in Linguistic class

What is a morpheme?

Definition

In linguistic, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. In other words, it is the smallest meaningful unit of a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called mmorphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. When it stands by itself, it is considered a root because it has a meaning of its own (e.g. the morpheme cat) and when it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an affix because it has a grammatical function (e.g. the –s in cats to specify that it is plural). Every word comprises one or more morphemes. The more combinations a morpheme is found in, the more productive it is said to be. Clasification of Morphmes Free Morphemes 1. Free morphemes can function independently as words (e.g. town, dog) and can appear with other lexemes (e.g. town hall, doghouse). 2. 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 prefixess and suffixes, examples of suffixes are: tion, ation, ible, ing, etc. Bound morphemes that are not affixes are called cramberry morphemes. Bound morphemes can be further classified as derivational or inflectional. Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root, change either the semantic meaning or part of the 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, for it inverts the meaning of the word formed by the root kind. Inflectional morphemes modify a verb's tense or a noun's number without affecting the word's meaning or class. Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to form dogs and adding -ed to wait to form waited. In English, there are eight inflections. Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme that differ in pronunciation but are semantically identical. For example, in English, the plural marker -(e)s of regular nouns can be pronounced /-z/, /-s/, or /-ɨz/, depending on the final sound of the noun's singular form. Content vs. function Content morphemes express a concrete meaning or content, while function morphemes have more of a grammatical role. For example, the morphemes fast and sad can be considered content morphemes. On the other hand, the suffix –ed belongs to the function morphemes given that it has the grammatical function of indicating past tense. Although these categories seem very clear and intuitive, the idea behind it can be harder to grasp given that they overlap with each other. Examples of an ambiguous situation are the preposition over and the determiner your, which seem to have a concrete meaning, but are considered function morphemes because their role is to connect ideas grammatically. A general rule to follow to determine the category of a morpheme is: Content morphemes include free morphemes that are nouns, adverbs, adjective, and verbs. It also includes bound morphemes that are bound roots and derivational affixes Function morphemes can be free morphemes that are prepositions, pronouns, determiners, and conjunctions. Additionally, they can be bound morphemes that are inflectional affixes.

Activity # 1								1(a). From the following list of words, select five words with inflectional morphology. Click on 'Check Inflectional' to check. 1(b). Clear your answers and then select five words with derivational morphology. Click on 'Check Derivational' to check. elements gain and unkind as some case example feature great have linked Indo-European speech egg off ordering one morphology Persians killed such cram tend the these thought within