MORPHOLOGY

Introduction

In language study, it is important to pay attention to how words are formed and how the
different elements that form words are put together to create meaning. In linguistics, this is the
concern of morphology. So, what are the main aspects that morphology studies?

Definition

Morphology is a system of language that studies the form of words or the internal structure of words.
It is a level of structure between phonology and syntax since phonology studies the combination between
sounds to form words, morphology studies the form of these words and syntax studies the combination
between them to form sentences. Besides, we can say that a word is the unit of distinction between
morphology and syntax.

Morpheme

A morpheme is the unit of analysis in morphology. It can be defined as the smallest individually
meaningful unit at the grammatical level. This means that it is the minimal unit of grammatical analysis
which cannot be further divided only at the phonological level i. e it can be transcribed into sounds.

Example 1:

The word untruthful can be divided into 4 morphemes: un/true/th/ful.

Example 2:

We can recognize that the English word forms, such as talks, talked, talker and talking consist of one
element talk, and a number of other elements, such as “s”, “ed”, “er” and “ ing”. All these elements are
described as morphemes. So, a morpheme is a 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).

A morpheme can be viewed from a number of different views:

a. It is a physical unit which means that it has a phonetic shape i.e: we can transcribe it. But a
zero morpheme does not have a physical shape. It has its own meaning which can be understood in
the sentence. A zero morpheme is symbolized by Ø. It is a morpheme that has a semantic meaning
but does not have a phonetic shape.
Example of a zero morpheme:

Singular. Plural
Sheep. Sheep+ Ø
We need to put the word "sheep" in a sentence to understand whether it is in the plural or in the
singular form like: the sheep are cheap or the sheep is cheap.
 The word “sheep” gets attached to a null plural morpheme which changes the meaning, but is not
expressed phonologically. This means that although there is no change in pronunciation after the addition of
this morpheme to the root, it is changing its meaning to plural.

Example:

Simple present Simple past

Put. Put+ Ø

I have not found my keys but I remember that yesterday, I put them in my bag.

b- It has meaning. Here, we make reference to lexical and functional morphemes:

- Lexical morphemes: They are the set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that we think of as the

words that carry the “content” of the message we convey.

Example:

“girl, man, house, sad, long, open, look” are all lexical morphemes.

- Functional morphemes: This set consists largely of the functional words in the language, such as
conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns.

Although, morphemes are said to be meaningful units, exceptionally some of them do not
have meaning like link morphemes that have no meaning but their only function is to link between
the parts of compound words.

Example:

“O” in Franco-American or in labio-dental.

c- It has a syntactic role to play in the construction of larger units. The following sentence
“The three boys kicked the ball” is composed of 8 morphemes. Each of them has a meaning and a
phonetic shape.
The selection of the two morphemes “the” + “three” necessitates the selection of a noun in the
plural form like "boys". However, the selection of the morpheme “the” does not necessitate a word
in the plural form like "the ball" and so on and this is how we form phrases, clauses and sentences
that are the largest units of analysis in linguistics.

Allomorphs

A morpheme, like a phoneme, can be realized differently. These different realizations are
called allomorphs or morphemic alternants. The term allomorph can be divided into two
morphemes:
- Allo which means variant and,
- Morph which means morpheme.

There are two types of allomorphs: phonologically-conditioned allomorphs and morphologically-

conditioned allomorphs.
a- Phonologically-conditioned allomorphs: They are those variants of morphemes that are strictly
dependent on the phonetic environment where they occur within a word.

Example:

The morpheme that indicates plurality in the English language can be pronounced differently
according to its position within a word (called as, well phonetic or physical environment). In the
word: cats, dogs and horses, the morpheme “s” that indicates plurality is realized differently. In
other words, it has different phonetic shapes /s/ or /z/ or /iz/, accordingly.

b- Morphologically-conditioned allomorphs: These allomorphs are not dependent on the phonetic

environment where they occur within a word but follow some processes inherent to the morphology
of a particular language.

Example:

Some English words do not take “s” to indicate plurality but follow other processes, like:

Singular Plural

Sheep Sheep + Ø
Child Children
Ox Oxen

Hence, {Ø, ren, en} are called morphologically-conditioned allomorphs.

Types of morphemes

1- Free morpheme: A free morpheme can stand alone. It constitutes a word by itself. It
is necessarily a mono-morphemic word (a word formed of one morpheme).

Example:

Love, pen, door …….etc.

2- Bound morpheme: It is a morpheme that cannot exist alone. It must appear with at
least one other morpheme. It is called as well an affix.

Example:

“Cats” is a word which is composed of 2 morphemes “cat” and “s”. “Cat” is a free morpheme and
“s” is a bound morpheme.

Types of bound morphemes

Bound morphemes can be divided into three (3) types depending on their position within a
word, namely prefix, infix and suffix.

a- Prefixes: They are types of morphemes that are affixed in the front of the root (that part of a
word structure that is left when all affixes are removed) or another prefix.
Example:

Reopen

b- Infixes: They are those affixes that appear within the consonant and the vowel sequence of the
root form (affixes appear in the middle of the word).

Example:

Men (plural of man),

Mice (plural of mouse),

Feet (plural of foot)

The change in these words happens within the root not in the end of the root as in regular nouns.

c- Suffixes: They are kinds of morphemes that are affixed at the end of the root morpheme or
another suffix.

Example:

Lovely

The bound morpheme “ly” is a suffix.

Conclusion

Morphology is a system of language concerned with the study of the internal form of words. A
morpheme is the unit of analysis in morphology. It can be divided into different types and realized
differently according to its physical position within a word.

Activities

- Find two (2) words with more than one prefix.

- Find two (2) words with more than one suffix.