Lecture 2

Morphological Structure of English Words

I. Some definitions
- Morphology is a sub-branch of linguistics
- It deals with the internal structure of word-forms
- Basic units of analysis recognized in morphology are morphemes
- What are morphemes?
1. Morphemes
Many words are made up of various other elements, e.g. sportive = sport + -ive,
happily = happy + -ly,
Example: Consider the word untouchables.
- How many constituent elements into which can it be segmented?
- What is the phonological form, the meaning and the distribution of each element?
+ un- has a fixed phonological form, a meaning of negation, recurs in words like
unavailable, unbelievable
+ touch has a fixed phonological form and a fixed meaning, recurs in word-forms
like touched, touches, touching
+ -able has 2 phonological forms /eib(∂)l/ and /ib(∂)l/, a fixed meaning, recurs in
words like advisable, dislikeable
+ -s has a range of phonetic forms /s, z, iz/, a meaning of plurality, recurs in words
like cats, girls
Each of these elements has its own form/set of forms, meaning, distribution and
cannot be divided any further into meaningful parts. Each of these elements
represents a morpheme.
=> Morphemes can be defined as minimal language units of grammatical analysis and
minimal meaningful language units into which a word can be divided.its that
constitute words or parts of words
Notes
- A morpheme is an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern
- Unlike words, morphemes are not autonomous: occurring in speech only as
constituent parts of words, not independently
- Indivisible into smaller meaningful units
- The word and the morpheme coincide in cases like these, e.g. book, luck, sport,
employ (words consisting of only one morpheme)

2. Morphs
Morphemes are abstract elements of analysis. What actually occurs is a phonetic
or an orthographic form which realizes the morpheme.
- When the phonetic or orthographic strings which realize morphemes are
segmented into portions, these portions are called morphs.
=> A morph is the phonetic (or orthographic) form of a segment of a word-form
which represents a particular morpheme.
 Examples:
- In the word untouchables the four segmented portions (un.touch.able.s ) are
morphs, each of which represents a morpheme
- Cats consistudents of two morphs cat and -s, realizing a lexical morpheme and an
inflectional (grammatical) morpheme, respectively.
- A single morph might represent more than one morpheme. E.g. the word-form was
represents the morphemes {BE}, {preterite}, and {singular}.
3. Allomorphs
1. How is the plural morpheme realized phonologically?
/iz/after sibilant consonants: horses, churches, /s/ after any voiceless obstruent:
books, deaths, /z/ as in bags, bones, boys
Three different phonological realizations -three different morphs – of the plural
morpheme. Which form depends on the phonetic environment. => it is
phonetically conditioned.
2. What is the plural of the lexeme OX?
OX is the only lexeme which makes its plural by adding –en. This variant of the
plural morpheme is conditioned by the lexeme. => It is lexically conditioned.
3. Different variants of the morpheme in- (prefix used to form adjs., advs., nouns)
meaning not are: in- (indirect, inability), im- (impossible), ir- (irregular), il-
(illegal)
Different realizations of in- depending on the initial bilabials of the word with
which it will assimilate. => It is phonetically conditioned.
4. Personal nouns derived from act: actress or actor. The personal suffix is either
–ess or –or, depending on a grammatical feature of the noun, i.e. whether it
denotes a female or male. => It is grammatically conditioned.
= > An allomorph is a phonetically, lexically or grammatically conditioned member
of a set of morphs representing a particular morpheme.
5. Different realizations, different morphs, of a morpheme are allomorphs
's' in boys, 'es' in boxes, 'Ø'in sheep and 'en' in oxen are allomorps of the
morpheme 'plural' in English
6. Root, stem and base
Root, stem and base are all terms used to designate that part of a word that
remains when all affixes have been removed
a. A root: a form not further analysable; part of a word-form that remains when all
inflectional and derivational affixes removed; basic part always present in a
lexeme (e.g. un.touch.ables, wheel.chair.s)
- Roots are very numerous and most of them in English are free but some are
bound.
E.g. boy, girl, house...............: free roots
‘ceive ‘ in ‘receive, perceive, deceive’ is a bound root ; ‘logy’ in ‘
lexicology, phonology, methodology.............is a bound root.
- There may be some roots in a word
E.g. blackbird, boyfriend, methodology,....................
b. A stem: inflectional (not derivational) affixes added to it; part of a word-form
that remains when all inflectional affixes removed; may be complex (containing
derivational affixes or more than one root) (e.g. govern.ment, red.skin,
un.touch.able.s, touch.ed, wheel.chair.s)
c. A base: any form to which affixes of any kind can be added; any root or stem can
be termed a base but not vice versa
E.g. touchable acts as a base for prefixation to give untouchable, but in this
process touchable is not a root bec. it is analysable in terms of derivational
morphology, nor is it a stem since it is not dealing with the adding of inflectional
affixes.
touchable acts as a base for prefixation to give untouchable, but in this process
touchable is not a root bec. it is analysable in terms of derivational morphology,
nor is it a stem since it is not dealing with the adding

II. Classification of morphemes

1. Free vs. bound morphemes

a. Free morphemes: b. Bound morphemes:

- those which can stand by themselves
as single words (open, tour, man,
good, as)
- lexical morphemes: open class of
words such as nouns, many verbs,
adjectives, some adverbs (look,
follow, man, tiger, sad, yellow, hard,
etc.)
- functional morphemes: conjunctions,
preps., articles, pronouns (and, but,
when, because, on, near, above, the,
that, it, etc.)
- those which cannot normally stand
alone but are typically attached to
another form (re-, im-, un-, -ist, -ed,
-s)
- derivational morphemes: used to make
new (gram. or lexical) words (misuse,
unhappy, goodness, foolish)
- inflectional morphemes: not used to
make new words, but to indicate
aspects of grammatical function of a
word

2. Derivational vs. inflectional morphemes

a. Derivational morphemes: b. Inflectional morphemes:

1- change meaning or part of speech of
a word (teach–teacher, beauty–
beautiful–beautifully–beautify,
possible-impossible)
2- typically indicate semantic relations
within a word (in dislike dis- is
related to like)
3- usually not very productive, typically
1- never change meaning or part of
speech of a word (old–older, teach-
teaches, certificate-certificates)
2- typically indicate syntactic or
semantic relations between dif. words
in a sentence (Jim likes bananas)
3- very productive, typically occur with
all members of a class of morphemes
 occur with only some members of a (E.g. the plural morpheme –s occurs
class of morphemes (-hood occurs with almost all nouns)
with a few nouns brother, neighbor, 4- typically occur at margins of words,
not with most others friend, after any derivational morphemes
daughter, etc.) (ration.al.iz.ation.s)
4- typically occur before any 5- carry only lexical meaning
inflectional suffixes are added 6- all are suffixes in English
5- can carry both lexical and gram.
meaning
6- may be prefixes or suffixes

Notes
- inflectional morphemes are used to show if a word is plural or single, if it is past
tense or not, and if it a comparative or possessive form
- English has only 8 inflectional morphemes, all are suffixes: possessive –’s, plural –
s, 3 rd person present singular –s, present participle –ing, past tense –ed, past
participle –en, comparative –er, superlative -est

Inflection and derivation

a. Inflection:
- is a morphological process that produces from the stem(s) of a given lexeme all
the word-forms of that lexeme which occur in syntactically determined
environments
- involves relatively few variables in a closed system
b. Derivation:
- is a morphological process that results in the formation of new but derived
(related) lexemes
- involves many variables in an open class

3. Lexical vs. grammatical morphemes

a. Lexical morphemes comprise of:
- derivational affixes (as they are used to form new lexical entities)
- free morphemes which carry lexical meaning such as nouns, many verbs,
adjectives, some adverbs
b. Grammatical morphemes consist of:
- inflectional affixes (bec. they are used to show syntactic relations)
- free morphemes which serve grammatical functions (preps., articles, relative
pronouns)

Practice

1. How many morphemes are there in the following sentences?

- “Cowards die many times before their deaths.”
 - “I’ve asked my boyfriend if he was unmarried and he said he’d been
unmarried even twice.”
2. How many morphs are there in the following words? What kind of morphs are
they?
unmistakable, unmentionable, inaccessible, keyboard, superstructure,
exclusiveness, ex-directory number, greenhouse effect, differences,
distinguishable, hand-bags, proceedings
3. Identify root, stem, and base in the words listed in Exercise 2.
4. Find examples of allomorphs of the morpheme en- (verb-forming prefix):
a. With nouns and verbs forming verbs
b. With adjs and nouns forming verbs
Explain the meaning of the prefix in the two groups of verbs.
5. List the bound morphemes found in these words:
misleads, shortened, unhappier, fearlessly
6. In which of the following examples should the “a” be treated as a bound
morpheme: a boy, apple, atypical, AWOL?
7. Divide the following words into morphemes and identify each morpheme as free
or bound, derivational or inflectional, lexical or grammatical.
toothbrush debug between impish daylight
repetition closely receive over
8. Identify the functional morphemes in this sentence: The old man sat on the chair
and told them tales of woe.
9. What are the inflectional morphemes in the following phrases?
- the singer’s songs - the newest style
- it’s raining - the cow jumped over the moon