13 Morphological Structures of English Words
Dr. Muralikrishnan T. R.
Learning outcome:
This module deals with the concept of Morphological structures of English words. Morphology is the systematic study of morphemes, the smallest unit of grammar. Two types of morphological operations in English are inflection and derivation. English words can be grouped into two morphological classes: Base words and derived words. The two common word building processes are two viz. suffixes, prefixes. Other means are modifying the base/stem/root, no change of form, Compounding, Conversion, Back formation, Clipping, Blending, Acronyms, Reduplication. The advanced concepts related to this are further taken up for discussion.
Content
- The concept of morphology
- Basic concepts such as morph, morpheme, lexeme, stem, base, allomorph etc
- Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic relations
- Six Principles of Nida for the identification of morphemes
- Inflection and derivation
- English derivational morphology
- Inflectional forms in English
- Morphophonemics
- Word building processes
- Morphological typology
- Morphological formation
Concept of Morphology
Just as etymology (the study of the origin of words) and phonology (the study of the sounds of a language) are relevant in the description of language in terms of words, morphology, the systematic study of morphemes (the smallest unit of grammar), is significant. Morphemes are taken into consideration based on two essential factors.
- They cannot be split into smaller morphemes.
- It is a word or a part of word that has meaning.
Hence, in the word
- unhappiness: there are three parts; un-happy-ness (3),
- unlikely: there are three parts; un-like-ly (3),
- pitiful: there are two parts; pity-ful (2),
- unjustifiable: there are three parts; un-justify-able (3)
- antidisestablishmentarianism: there are six parts; anti-dis-establish-ment-arian-ism (6)
Before we pass on to the discussion of this particular section, let us have a quick recap of certain concepts and terms which you have already been introduced:
- Morpheme: The word morpheme (consisting of two morphemes) is derived from the Greek word ‘morph’ meaning form/shape.
- Allomorphs: Just as phonemes have allophones, morphemes have allomorphs. For example /-z/ /-s/ /-iz/ are phonologically conditioned allomorphs of the English plural morphemes, as in dogs, cats, horses. When we can explain in phonological terms why one particular allomorph of a morpheme occurs rather than another, we call it ‘regular’. But when we specify the actual morphemes to which the allomorph to which the allomorph attaches and indicate the special form of that allomorph, then we have ‘irregular’ morphological conditioning. For example the plural forms of English words such as man (men), goose (geese), child (children)
- Base: A base is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which one can attach either an inflectional suffix or derivational suffix. E.g. hot: hotter; boy-boys; boy- boyhood.
- Class changing: It means effecting a change of word class when the affix is added to a stem. E.g. Clever-cleverness (adjective to noun)
- Class maintaining: It means, when added to a stem, the afix does not change the word class of the stem. E.g. Undo-do (both are verbs).
- Lexeme: In linguistics, lexeme is the fundamental unit of the lexicon (word stock) of a language. In Corpus linguistics, lexemes are referred to as “lemmas”. Laugh, laughed, laughing are all forms of the lexeme “laugh”
- Inflectional marking: This occurs among the various words that compose a lexeme. E.g. dog, dogs, dog’s, dogs’
- Derivational marking: This creates one lexeme form another. E.g. kind-unkind; good- goodness.
- Stem: A stem is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an inflectional suffix may be attached. ‘Cat’ is a stem of ‘cats’
- Free morpheme: It can occur as a word by itself. E.g. boy, run, happy
- Bound morpheme: It can never occur by itself. E.g. –s in cats; -ish in boyish
- Prefix: A prefix precedes a free morpheme. E.g. kind-unkind; like-dislike
- Suffix: A suffix follows a free morpheme. Kind-kindness; derive-derivation
- Null morpheme:In morpheme-based morphology, a null morpheme is a morpheme that is realizedby a phonologically null affix (an empty string of phonological segments). In simplerterms, a null morpheme is an “invisible” affix. It’s also called zero morpheme. The null morpheme is represented as either the figure zero (0), the empty setsymbol Ø.
- Clitics: These “words”are like separate words in terms of how they combine with other words.English makes use of clitics separately, but uses the special “apostrophe” separator for some clitics, such as the reduced forms of is, have and would (‘s ‘ve ‘d), and possessive ‘s.
Illustration of constituent structures
Paradigmatic relations and syntagmatic relations
A paradigm is a series of changes in the shape of linguistic forms, which matches a series of changes in position. For example, the following words constitute paradigms of verbal forms:
See-seeing-saw-seen
Write-writing-wrote-written
Cook-cooking-cooked-cooked
The following words contribute paradigms of noun forms:
Man-man’s-men
Child-child’s-children
Car-car’s-cars
If a number of linguistic units are joined in a structural bond according to the rules of utterance formation in that language, such units are in syntagmatic relationship. The three sounds in ‘tell’ are in syntagmatic relationship-three phonemes /t/, /e/ and /l/. The phonological rules of English do not allow the formation of a word with the sounds /t/,/w/, /g/ and /k/ in that order. There can also be a syntagmatic relationship at the morphological level. The word structurally is made up of the morphemes /s t r Λ k t ə /+/ə1/ + /li/. They are joined together in a structural bond.
Some basic analytic principles used in morphology. (Eugene Nida’s (1949; revised edition 1965) textbook Morphology)
As it has been stated earlier, a morpheme can be defined as the smallest unit of speech that has grammatical or semantic meaning. According to Nida (1946) to identify morphemes, we must have certain partially similar forms in which we can recognize recurring partials. In ‘paint’, ‘paints’, ‘painted’, the paradigm exhibiting certain partially similar forms include certain recognizable recurring partials. They are /s/ in paints, /iη/ in painting /id/ in painted. The recurring partials are morphemes in all these cases. The words in the paradigm contain other morpheme, for example ‘paint’. In immoral, immovable, imperfect, immortal, we can recognize here a recurring partial im- meaning something like ‘not’.
There are six principles according to Nida which we many apply in isolating and identifying morphemes.
Principle I
Forms which have common semantic distinctiveness and an identical phonemic form in all their occurrences contribute a single morpheme.
The /ə/ element in walker, dancer, trader, farmer, singer is the same morpheme. It has the same semantic meaning and an identical phonemic form in all the words. The element /ə/ does not have the meaning of the doer of something in all contexts. A ‘dancer’ is one who dances. A ‘worker’ is one who works, but one cannot say the something about the word ‘sister’. The element /ə/ in English has other meanings: in the words broader, wider, longer, the /ə/ sound has the semantic meaning of being more-than. The sounds of /ə/ in wider and in teacher are not the same morphemes, though they have identified phonemic form.
Principle II
Forms which have a common semantic distinctiveness but which differ in phonemic form (i.e. the phonemes or order of the phonemes), may contribute a morpheme provided the distribution of formal differences is phonologically definable. This means that the morphemes have semantic distinctiveness but they exist in different phonemic forms which can be accounted for the law of phonological conditioning. In the following words, inaudible, impossible, illogical, irrelevant, there are some factors in common, when they are broken down into units of meaning. Each word has the semantic meaning of not in it, inaudible means not audible and so on. The semantic distinctiveness is in the element that means not, but it is quite clear that these elements have different phonemic forms in the four words. The occurrence of the different in-im-il-ir- can be explained by the law of phonological conditioning.
It appears that in– is used before vowels as in the word inaudible cited above, and before alveolar consonants as in intangible, insincere and indirect; exceptions to this generalization include unalloyed, unsure, undefined and so on. Im- is used before bi- labial sounds, for example, /p/ or /b/; that is why the form is im- in impossible and imbalance.
Principle III
Forms which have semantic distinctiveness but which differ in phonemic form in such a way that their distribution cannot be phonologically defined contribute a single morpheme if the forms are in complementary distribution in accordance with the following restrictions:
- Occurrence in the same structural series has precedence over occurrence in different structural series in the determination of morphemic status.
- Complementary distribution in different structural series contributes a basis for combining possible allomorph into one morpheme only if there also occurs in these different structural series a morpheme which belongs to the distribution class as the allomorphic series in question and which itself has only one allomorph or phonologically defined allomorphs.
- Immediate tactical environments have precedence over non-immediate tactical environment in determining morphemic status.
- Contrast in identical distributional environments may be created as sub-morphemic if the difference in meaning or the allomorphs reflects the distribution of these forms.
For instance in the following words oxen, children, memoranda, larvae and hats the elements /in/, /rən/, /ə/ /i:/ and /s/ have a common semantic distinctiveness. They are all different in phonemic form and the difference cannot be phonologically defined as under Principle II above. But these differences are in complementary distribution in the sense that where one form occurs, the other form cannot. In English utterances, it is known that all the forms listed above take the plural forms of a verb after them.
The oxen are in the field
The children are here
The memoranda are ready
The larvae are not yet dead
The hats are new
It is quite clear from these utterances, therefore, that the various words are plural forms of English nouns. The common semantic distinctiveness that they all exhibit is that of more than one.
Principle IV
An overt formal difference in a structural series constitutes a morpheme if, in any member of such a series; the overt formal difference and a zero structural difference are the only significant features for distinguishing a minimal unit of phonetic-semantic distinctiveness.
‘An overt formal difference means a contrast, which is indicated by differences in phonemes or in the order of phonemes. The distinction between foot /fut/ feet /fi:t/ is an overt difference, since it consists in a difference of phonemes. The contrast between the singular sheep and the plural sheep consists of a zero and is covert; a zero structural difference is the technical way of saying that there is no perceptible difference in a structural series.
Principle V
Homophonous forms (linguistic forms which sound alike) are identifiable as the same or different morphemes on the basis of the following conditions.
- Homophonous forms with distinctly different meanings contribute different morphemes.
- Homophonous forms with related meanings contribute a single morpheme if the meaning classes are paralleled by distributional differences, but they constitute multiple morphemes if the meaning classes are not paralleled by distributional differences. According to the first condition, if two forms sound alike but have different meanings, they constitute different morphemes. The words son and sun represent two things, but represented /s n/. Similarly the word bank contributes two different morphemes (the place we keep money and the side of a river). ∧
In the second condition, ‘distributional differences’ refers to grammatical differences in privileges of occurrence. There are distributional differences between run (verb) and run (noun).
Principle VI
A morpheme is isolatable if it occurs under the following conditions:
- In isolation
- In multiple combinations in at least one of which the unit with which it is combined occurs in isolation or in other combinations.
- In a single combination provided the element with which it is combined occurs in isolation or in other combinations with non-unique constituents.
While considering these conditions, one can see:
- A morpheme is isolatable if it occurs in isolation, that is, if it can exist alone in the language. So forms such as boy, cow, water, run, jump are all isolatable morphemes because each of them occurs in isolation in the English language.
- A morpheme is isolatable if it occurs in multiple combinations in at least one of which the unit with which it is combined occurs in isolation or in other combinations. For example, in the word respectable, the morpheme –able is isolatable because it occurs with the word ‘respect’ which exists in isolation. The second condition of isolatability does not require that all combining element have an independent occurrence, but only that at least one form any such structural series have the capacity of occurrence in isolation or in other combinations. The prefix con- occurs only in combinations e.g. contain, conceive, condense, consume, but the form-‘dense’ occurs in isolation. This provides justification for considering con- a morpheme. But this type of analysis is not accepted by some other linguists who take receive, deceive, conceive as single morphemes, irrespective of their classical derivation form the Latin language through French. Etymologically they come from two different Latin roots. The type of analysis that take ‘receive’ as two morphemes is an example of what Lyons has referred to, in another concept, as ‘the classical fallacy’ (Lyons 1968:14). According to this point of view, it is not a sound linguistic procedure to refer to retain, detain, and contain as being made up of two morphemes each.
- A morpheme is isolatable if it occurs in a single combination provided the element with which it is combined occurs in isolation or in other combinations with non- unique constituent. Nida gives the example of cranberry, raspberry and crayfish. He concludes that the elements cran, rasp and cray are isolatable because the elements ‘berry’ and ‘fish’ occur in isolation or in other combinations.
Inflection and derivation
Two types of morphological operations in English are inflection and derivation. New words are formed in English by putting certain morphemes before some words while adding certain morphemes after some other. In the word, “unpredictable”, the root morpheme ‘predict’ is added with ‘able’ and these two are preceded by the morpheme ‘un’. As it has been mentioned earlier, the morpheme un- is an example of a prefix, that is a morpheme that comes before the root morpheme; ‘able’ is an example of suffix that comes after the root. The prefixes and affixes are collectively known as affixes.
Certain fundamental rules govern these morphological operations:
- Both inflection and derivation make use of suffixes, but derivation makes a new word (good-goodness, authorship) whereas inflection merely changes the relations of case, number, gender, person, tense etc.(dog-dog’s-dogs, look-looks-looked-looking)
- Inflectional affixes may be attached to stems containing derivational affixes, but derivational affixes do not attach to others containing inflectional affixes. Hence inflectional suffix occurs to the right of the derivational suffixes and inflectional prefixes occur to the left of the derivational prefixes. In English, prefixes are always derivational. Inflectional suffix performs a grammatical function in a word without changing the word class of the particular word.
- Derivation + inflection + past e.g. hospital+ize+ed
- Derivation + inflection + plural e.g. work + er + s
- Compounding + inflection + plural e.g. foot + ball + s
- Root + inflection (comparative) e.g. small + er
- No other morpheme can usually be added after an inflectional morpheme e.g. *’derivationses’ is not possible; derivations (derive + -ation + -s)
- Unlike inflectional affixes, which are always suffixes in English, derivational affixes may be either prefixes or suffixes e.g:‘re-structure’, ‘re-structur-ed’, ‘kind-ness’ are possible but not *kindsness
- Unlike derivational affixes, inflectional affixes always have a regular meaning. e.g. –s denotes ‘more than one’ in cats, tables, boxes; but –age in breakage, shortage do not have –age with consistent meaning.
- There are class maintaining and class changing prefixes
English derivative morphology
English words can be grouped into two morphological classes:
- Base words: child, house, demand
- Derived words: (a) one root + bound morphemes (e.g. friend+ly)
- two or more roots (e.g. bookshop)
- two or more roots + bound morphemes (bookshop+s)
English has an extensive derivational morphology. Given below are examples of both suffixes and prefixes in the derivational category. Kindly note the examples are only indicative of the properties which are taken for discussion.
Prefixes Nouns (examples)
Anti- antiwar, antitank
Ex- ex-president, ex-husband
Fore- forefathers, forbears
Mid- midstream, midair
Post- postwar, postproduction
Super- superman, superstructure
Verbs (examples)
Circum- circumnavigate, circumscribe
Counter- counterattack, counteract
Fore- foretell, forestall
Inter- interchange, interact
Out- outspend, outlast
Mis- misrepresent, misconstrue
Adjective (examples)
A- asymmetrical, amoral
Im- impossible, implausible
Over- overanxious, overabundant
Un- unkind, unhappy
5. 2 Suffixes To form Nouns from Nouns
-dom: kingdom, earldom
-ess: hostess, actress
-ful: handful, armful
-ist: violinist, stylist
-ship: friendship, kingship
-ster: gangster, mobster
To form Noun from Verbs
-age: drainage, wastage, breakage
-al: referral, trial
-ant: informant. Inhabitant
-ee: employee, payee
-er: employer, worker, buyer
-th: growth, health
To form Nouns from Adjectives
-dom: freedom, wisdom
-ism: idealism, realism
-ist: fatalist, loyalist
-th: width, length
-ity: feasibility, depravity
To form Verbs from Nouns
-ify: typify, beautify
ize: decimalize, publicize
To form Verbs from Adjective
-en: brighten, widen
To form Adjectives from Nouns
-al: national, fatal
-en; wooden, golden
-ish: girlish, foolish
-ic: organic, demonic
-less: headless, guiltless
-like: manlike, godlike
-ly: beastly, womanly
To form Adjectives from Verbs
-able: agreeable, affordable, adaptable
-ful: helpful, harmful, hopeful
-ive: assertive, active
-less: helpless, harmless
-ing: revealing, exciting
To form Adjectives from Adjectives
-ish: yellowish, smallish
To from Adverbs from Adjectives
-ly: calmly, hopefully, quickly
To form Adverbs from other words
-wards: backwards, westwards
-ways: crossways, sideways
-wise: lengthwise, timewise
Inflectional forms in English
Types of inflectional suffixes Nouns
English nouns have only two inflectional forms: the possessive case, as in man, man’s and the plural form, as in man, men.
Regular:cat, cats, cat’s, cats’
Irregular: man, men, man’s, men’s
Whereas the English genitive is always regular and is suffixed to either the base form or the plural form of the noun, the English plural is frequently irregular
Man, men; foot, feet; goose, geese, criterion, criteria; datum, data; sheep, sheep
Pronouns
The morphology of the English personal pronouns is extremely irregular. The table below shows the various forms:
English verbs have five inflections: They are infinitive, the –s form, the –ing form, the ed1 form, and the ed2 form. Hence the example walk, walks, walking, walked, walked.
Must, ought etc cannot to be formed as it is given below:
*Musting, *oughting; *to must,*to ought
Similarly verbs such as bring, catch, think, change to the form brought, caught, thought
Further verbs be, do have carry different forms
Adverbs
Regular adverbs form their comparative and superlative degrees like the regular adjectives. Some of such adverbial forms are identical phonetically with adjectives.
He drives fast; he drives faster; he drives fastest of all
Word building processes
The two common word building processes were discussed earlier viz. suffixes, prefixes Other word building processes are discussed below:
a) Modifying the base/stemroot:e.g.
Wreath-wreathe (voiceless to voiceless fricative)
Sing-song (vowel is replaced by a different vowel: ablaut)
Foot-feet (vowel changes to its corresponding fronted vowel: umlaut)
b) No change of form:e.g.deer-deer; sheep-sheep
c) Compounding (words formed from two or more bases). It may be endocentric or exocentric. e.g. rattlesnake, girlfriend, windmill (endocentric forms: they can substitute for one of its component parts); redneck, hotdog, highbrow, loudmouth (exocentric forms: they cannot be derived from the sum of their parts)Third, there are compounds in which both elements are heads for example ‘teacher-researcher’ and ‘producer-director’. These can be called coordinative compounds.
Different kinds of English compounds
Noun compounds
| Noun and noun | Boyfriend, deathblow, acid rain, blood test |
| Verb and noun | Cut-throat, hovercraft, pickpocket, watchdog |
| Noun and verb | Nosebleed, skyscraper, sunrise, boat-ride |
| Verb and verb | Hearsay, make believe |
| Adjective and noun | Fast-food, blackboard |
| Particle and noun | In-group, off-broadway, bystander |
| Verb and particle | Put-down, teach-in, hold-up |
Verb compounds
| Noun and verb | Carbon-date, colour-code |
| Adjective and verb | Fine-tune |
| Particle and verb | Outlast, overlook, undermine |
| Adjective and noun | Brown-bag, bad-mouth |
Adjective compounds
| Noun adjective | Ice-cold, duty-free, garden-fresh |
| Noun and verb | Man-eating, man-made, colour-blind |
| Adjective and adjective | Bitter-sweet, red-hot |
| Adjective and verb | Good-looking, easy-going |
| Particle and noun | In-depth, offside |
| Particle and verb | Hard-hitting, well-read |
| Verb and particle | See-through, tow-away |
| Particle and adjective | Wide awake, oversensitive |
d) Conversion
Conversion is a process in which a word may be shifted from one word class into another word class without the addition of a derivational affix.
Illustrations:
(a) He elbowed through the crowd
(b) What is your best catch?
(c) The children might dirty the school
(d) The deposit was distributed among the poor
e) Back formation: A new word is formed by deleting the suffix or what erroneously looks like a suffix at the end of the word:
e.g.
| affliction | afflict |
| negation | negate |
| surrealism | surreal |
| housekeeper | housekeep |
| television | televise |
| contraception | contracept |
f) Clipping: This involves the omission of part of word e.g.
| Memorandum | Memo |
| Hippopotamus | Hippo |
| Taxicab | Taxi |
| Influenza | Flu |
| Refrigerator | Fridge |
| Gymnasium | gym |
g) Blending: A new word is created out of two old words e.g.
| smog | Smoke and fog |
| brunch | Breakfast and lunch |
| motel | Motorist hotel |
| dancercise | Dance and exercise |
| pulsar | Pulse and quasar |
| Oxbridge | Oxford and Cambridge |
h) Acronyms e.g.
| UNESCO | United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization |
| NATO | North Atlantic Treaty Organization |
| LASER | Lightwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation |
| BASIC | Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code |
| VIRUS | Vital Information Resources Under Seize |
Morphophonemics
The elementary definition of ‘morphophonemics’ is that it is the study of the relationship between morphology and phonology. When morphemes are clustered or grouped in words then changes in the phonological structures of these words occur. Such changes are called morphophonemic changes. In the process of analysis of these changes, we compare the different allomorphs of a given morpheme whereby we call one of them the normal form in comparison to which other forms are variations of the normal form. The normal form is in fact the one that has the widest distribution.
There are some common types of morphophonemic changes inEnglish: (http://lamnguyentai.webs.com/TESOL/MorphophonemicsofEnglish.pdf)
(a) Loss of phonemes: The phoneme /n/ of the negative prefix{in-} is lost before the morphemes beginning with sonorant sounds /m/; /r/; /l/ and /n/.e.g. immobile ; irregular, illimitable. The phoneme /t/ is lost when changing word-class (adjective to a noun)
e.g. different → difference; democrat → democracy
(b) Addition of phonemes: e.g. solemn → solemnize (phoneme /n/ is added) long → longer (phoneme /g/ is added)
sword → swordsman; sale → salesgirl; craft → craftsman( the phoneme /s/ is added )
(c) Simple change of phonemes: e.g. path → paths; mouth → mouths, etc. The phoneme/ θ/ is changed to / ∂ / when pluralized.
(d) Assimilation – Dissimilation
Assimilation is the process of replacing a sound by another sound under the influence of a third sound which is near to it in the word or sentence. e.g. resist, consist etc. The change of /z/ to /s/ under the influence of /n/
Dissimilation is the opposite of assimilation. It takes place when the combining of two morphemes bring together two identical phonemes, resulting in the change of one of them to a phonemeless like its neighbour. e.g. The prefix in- has the allomorph –igas in ‘ignoble’
(e) Synthesis: There is the fusion of the two phonemes brought together by morpheme combination into a single new phoneme.e.g. moist→ moisture
(f) Stress shift, gradation: In many cases the addition of an affix to a word is accompanied by a shift in stress called stress shift.e.g. línguist → linguistics ;The process of derivation including stress shift involves vowel change. This kind of change is called gradation.e.g. symbol → symbolic
(g) Suppletion: This shows `irregular’ relation between the words as in “be-am-is-was, go-went, good-better”
However, it may be noted that a few principles are generally acknowledged:
(I) Two morphs cannot be all morphs of a single morpheme if they contrast.
For instance, stricken and struck both appear to be past participles of the verb “strike”. They cannot be morphemically identical; so if they are based on the same stem, the inflectional affixes are different morphemes.
(II) Two morphs cannot be allomorphs of a single morpheme unless they have the same meaning. For example: the /s/ of ants, the /z/ of tigers, and the /∂n/ of oxen are all similar enough in meaning that we do not hesitate to consider them as a single morpheme if the other criteria are satisfied. In fact, it is possible that the /∂n/ of oxen is not the same morpheme as the /z/ of tigers.
(III) Even if other criteria are satisfactorily met, we do not consider two morphs to a single morpheme unless the resulting morpheme fits into the emerging grammatical picture of the language in a sensible way.e.g. –dom in Kingdom and –y in monarchy
Morphological typology
Morphological typology is the categorization of a language according to the extent to which words in the language are clearly divisible into individual morphemes. Morphological typology is like a spectrum in which languages fit in somewhere from analytic to polysynthetic. The two main morphological types are analytic languages and synthetic languages.
Analytic Languages
These are also known as isolating languages because they’re composed of isolated, or free, morphemes. Languages that are purely analytic in structure don’t use any prefixes or suffixes, ever.
English, on the other hand, is one of the most analytic Indo-European languages, but is still usually classified as a synthetic language.
Synthetic Languages: They differ from analytic languages because they do use affixes, They are also known as bound morphemes. There are three subtypes of synthetic languages:
Agglutinating Languages: In these languages, morphemes within words, are usually clearly recognizable so as to make it easy to tell where the morpheme boundaries are. Their affixes will only have a single meaning. Turkish, Korean, Hungarian, Japanese, and Finnish are all in this group.
Fusional Languages: Similar to agglutinating languages, except that the morpheme boundaries are much more difficult to discern. Affixes are often fused with the stems, and can have multiple meanings. A prime example of a fusional language is Spanish.
Polysynthetic Languages: These languages are undoubtedly some of the most difficult to learn. They often have verbs that can express the entirety of a typical sentence in English, which they do by incorporating nouns into verbs forms.
Morphological processes
Concatenation: A method of adding continuous affixes, which is the most common process. Often marked by phonological changes on morpheme boundaries.
Reduplication: This method makes use of rhyme:
e.g. flower-power; hobnob; helter-skelter; walkie-talkie; flip-flop
Morpheme internal changes: The word changes internally as in sing-sang-sung, man- men
A note on ‘Sandhi’
‘Sandhi’ is any modification in pronunciation at a grammatical boundary. The term is taken from the ancient Sanskrit grammarians. In internal sandhi, the change applies within a single word at a boundary between two morphemes. For example in the word electric, when pronounced in isolation the sound /k/ comes in the final. But when the suffix –ity is added, the resulting electricity is pronounced with /s/, not with /k/. In external sandhi, the change applies across the boundary between two consecutive words. For example, in isolation, don’t is pronounced with a final /t/ and you is pronounced with an initial /j/ but in the phrase don’t you the /t/ and the /j/ often merge into a single affricate /tƒ/.
(All consulted books and sites are posted along with the reference section)
Summary
- Morphology is the systematic study of morphemes, the smallest unit of grammar.
- Two types of morphological operations in English are inflection and derivation
- English words can be grouped into two morphological classes: Base words and derived words: such as (a) one root + bound morphemes (e.g. friend + ly); (b) two or more roots (e.g. bookshop) (c) two or more roots + bound morphemes (bookshop + s)
- The two common word building processes are two viz. suffixes, prefixes
- Other means are Modifying the base/stem/root, No change of form, Compounding, Conversion, Back formation, Clipping, Blending, Acronyms, Reduplication
| you can view video on Morphological Structures of English Words | |
Reference
- Bauer, L. 1983. English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Bauer, L. 1988. Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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