Summary and Mind Map Morpheme

Summary Morphology

The linguistic term for the most elemental unit of grammatical form is morpheme. The word is derived from the greek word morphe, meaning ‘form’. If Goldwyn had taken a linguistics course, he would have said, more correctly, ‘In two morphemes: im-possible’.

                The study of the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed, is morphology. This word itself consists of two morphemes, morph + ology. The suffix –ology means ‘science of’ or ‘branch of knowledge concerning’. Thus the meaning is morphology is ‘the science of word forms.

                Morphology is part of our grammatical knowledge of a language. Like most linguistic knowledge, it is generally unconscious knowledge.

                Some morphemes, such us boy, desire, gentle and man, may constitute words by themselves. These are free morphemes. Other morphemes such us –ish, -ness, and –ly are never words by themselves but are always parts of words.

Morphemes are the minimal linguistic signs in all languages, and many languages have prefixes and suffixes, but languages may differ in how they deploy their morphemes. A morpheme that is a prefix in one language may be a suffix in another and vice versa.

Some morphemes are bound in that they must be joined to other morphemes, are always parts of words and never words by themselves. Most morphemes are free in that they need not be attached to other morphemes; free, king, serf and bore are free morphemes; -dom, as in freedom, kingdom, serfdom and boredom, is a bound morpheme. Affixes, that is, prefixes, suffixes, infixes and circumfiexes, are bound morphemes. Prefixes occur before, suffixes after, infixes in the middle of and circumfixes around stems or roots.

Most bound morphemes are either derivational or inflectional affixes.

Derivational affixes, when added to a root or stem, may change the syntatic word class and the meaning of the word.

Inflectional affixes are determined by the rules of syntax. They are added to complete words and follow any derivational morphemes that happen to be present.

Reference :

Anderson, S R 1992, A−Morphus morphology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Aronof, M 2003 Introducing Linguistic morphology, 2nd edn, Georgetown University Press: Washington, DC.

Jensen, J T 1990, Morphology: word structure in generative grammar, John Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam and Philadelphia.