INTRODUCTION TO MORPHOLOGY

     

Etymologically, the term “morphology” comes from two words, which are morphos and logos. Morphos means “form” and logos means “study of”. Hence morphology is the study of forms.

Morphology is study of internal structure of the words

For example, Books- is a plural form

                        Book-is a ‘root’             

                        S- is suffix

Atakuja

a-ta-kuj      

biological

bi-olog-cal

Morphology deals with three things, which are meaning of words, meaningful parts of the words and structural relationship of words.

                             THE PURPOSE OF STUDYING MORPHOLOGY     

E.g., why do we study morphology?

a)      We can spell the words easily

b)      It helps us to learn grammar

c)      It helps us to learn the meaning of words

d)      It also helps us to make language analysis easily

                    

                                                    WORDS

What is a word?

Word is a meaningful linguistic unit, which form parts of sentence. Or, is an arbitrary pairing of sounds and meaning. Also, word can be defined as a linguistic form, which is separated by space from others.

Three Important elements in Morphology are Morph, Allomorph and Morpheme

MORPHEME

Is a meaningful form of a word e.g., unfaithfulness Un-faith-ful-ness .These are morphs.

ALLOMOPH

Is a variant forms of the same morpheme e.g. S is a morpheme in the word books, book also is a morpheme.

MORPHEME

Is a smallest meaningful linguistic unit in the structure of language. Eg S is a morpheme, therefore it is meaningful in a word.

                                                                  / s/

                                          S                          / z/

                                                                 / iz/

boys /iz/

books /s/

cows /z/

These all are the allomorphs

TYPES OF MORPHEMES

Morpheme are classified according to two criterion

1.      Structure/form

It is structural classification of morpheme

a)      Free morpheme

b)      Bound morpheme

Free morpheme

Is a morpheme which can stand alone and give meaning it needs no assistance of another word e.g. article, a, an, the, in words book, take, go

Bound morpheme

Is morpheme which can not stand alone, it is dependent e.g. ‘er’ in word teacher , ‘ness’ in happiness, ‘ful’ in faithful.

2.      According to the meaning, where by we get;

a)      Lexical morpheme

These are the morphemes, which express complete meaning. They are divided into two categories

                                                        i.            Free morpheme

E.g. dog, teach, play, take, write.

                                                      ii.            Bound morpheme

E.g. mono, un, er. etc.

b)      Grammar/functional morpheme

                                                        i.            Free morpheme

                                                      ii.            Bound morpheme

                                  Morpheme

 

                         Free morpheme                                                                        Bound morpheme

Major class word        Minor class word                                        Affixes         Base     Contracted forms

(open class word)        (closed class word)                       Prefix   Suffix   Infix

e.g. verbs, adjectives  -no new words can be added 

, nouns, adverbs          e.g. preposition, articles

                                    , conjunction

                                           

                                           WORDS AND MORPHEMES

Words and morphemes can be equal. A word with single morpheme can be a word or morpheme. Several morphemes can constitute a word.

Words in English or any other language are made distinct not only by their differences in meaning and other aspects, but they are also identified by their forms. That is the sequence of sound that constitutes them. Meaning and forms are essentials in language, According to De Sanssure a ‘word’ is a linguistic sign in which there is an arbitrary union between the sound which is form and meaning which is concept. Therefore, form and meaning of word are inseparable.

Knowing the word means to know both its form and concept for which it stands. That means you must understand it as a unit made up of sound meaning combination that a word is a unit of sound and meaning. You may not know the pronounciation of the word if the word is not well stored in your mental dictionary and some of the parts are not known well. This means to know the word you must know its elements

                                      TYPES OF WORDS

Words can be classified according to meaning and its structure

1.      According to Meaning

        i.            Lexical/Content words

Are words with high meaning values. They are also referred to as open class word because new words can be added to a lexicon or vocabulary. E.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.

      ii.            Function /grammatical words

These are words with less meaning values. They are also known as closed class words, they include minor words like conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, articles.  These words do not allow new word class creation. None of them can easily coined and added to the vocabulary of the language.

2.      According to structure

                                i.            Simple word

                              ii.            Compound word

                            iii.            Complex word

Simple word

Sometimes it is called a basic word. These are words with one morpheme they can not be broken and still give a meaning. E.g. play, eat, write, jump, teach. etc.

Compound words

Are words with two free morphemes, they have two simple words go together. E.g. raincoat, housegirl, headmaster, classleader.

Complex words

These are words with more or many morphemes. In the sense that a word with more than one morpheme.

                      e.g. teachers                teach-er-s

                             classrooms            class-room-s

Parts of the complex words

A complex word has three parts 

                                                   word

         affix                                   base                             affix

BASE

Is the basic or main part of the word to which other morphemes can be added. Katamba (1992) defined a base as any unit to which affixes or any kind can be added. The affixes added to base may be inflectional affixes which alter the meaning or grammatical category of the base. E.g. a word ‘boy’ is a base because can be attached an inflectional suffixes (s) to form plural form of a word.       

              (s) Is inflectional affix

              (ish) from noun to adjective ‘boyish’

ROOT

Is a smallest part of the word which can not be broken, analysed, or divided into meaningful units. E.g. put, rain, play, read, etc.

STEM

Is the base which can still be broken further into meaningful units and can be added affixes. Or stem can also be defined as a part of word that is in existence before any inflectional affixes.

                        E.g. un-faith-ful-ness

                                ‘faith’ is a base

                                ‘ unfaithful’----base/stem

                                 ‘faithful’----base/stem

                                 ‘faithfulness’----base/stem

AFFIXES

An affix is an a morpheme which only occurs when attached to some other morphemes such as a root, stem or base. Is a morpheme which is added to a base in order to form another word. Affixes are bound morphemes since no word may contain only an affix standing on its only.

THREE TYPES OF AFFIXES

1.      Prefixes

These are affixes attached before the root, stem or base.

E.g. un, re, in

        Unkind, remake, inaccurate   

2.      Suffix

Is an affix attached after a root, stem or base

E.g. ly, er, ist

       Specially, teacher

3.      Infix

Is an affix inserted in to the root. They are common in semitic language like Arabic and Hebrew. They are also found in a language called Tagalog

a)      basa-----read

bumasa----read!

           ‘um’ stands for exclamation mark.

b)      tawaga----- to call

tumawaga-----call!

t----uma----waga

c)      sulat----- write

sumulat----- write!

N.B: Infixes in tagalong language have been underlined above.

                                                      

                                                          TYPES OF PREFIXES

1. Negative Prefixes

E.g. un, ill, im, ir, in, dis.

2. Prefixes which show number

E.g. ‘bi’ means two

        ‘di’ means two

        ‘tri’ means three

        ‘quadra’ means four

        ‘penta’ means five

        ‘hexa’ means six

        ‘sept’ means seven

        ‘octor’ means eight

        ‘nona’ means nine

        ‘deca’ means ten

  3.Pejorative Prefixes (disapproach)

          Mis----- wrong, astray e.g. mislead, misbehave

          Mal-----bad or badly done, e.g. maltreat, malnutrition, malformed

          Pseudo-----false,imitation e.g. pseudopodia, pseudonym

4.      Prefixes of degree

    Arch---- highest, top, head, e.g. archbishop

    Super---- above, better, over, more than e.g. supersonic, superpower

    Out---- to do something better, faster, longer than e.g. outshine, outstanding,

                    outshine                                                        

    Sur----- over, above, e.g. surface, surpass, surcharge

    Over----- too much, beyond level e.g. overconfidence, overloaded, overtake

    Sub---- lower, less than e.g. submarine, substructure

    Under---- too little, below level e.g. undermine, underdeveloped.

    Hyper---- extremely e.g. hypertension

    Ultra---- beyond, extremely e.g. ultraviolet, ultrasound

    Min---- little, small e.g. miniskirt, minbus

5.      Attitude Prefixes

Co--- with, jointly, together e.g. co-operative, co-ordinator, co-education

Bene--- good, well e.g. benefit, benefactor, benedict

Contra--- opposition to, against e.g. contraceptives, contradiction

6.      Locative Prefixes

     Sub--- beneath, less in rank e.g. subway, subconscious

     Inter--- between, among e.g. international, interclass

    Trans--- across, one place to another e.g. transport, transplant

    Ex--- out, aside of something e.g. expel, export, exhaust

    Circum--- around e.g. circumference, circumstances

7.      Prefix of time and order

     Fore--- precede, before e.g. foretell, foresee, forecast

     Pre--- before e.g. pre-colonial, pre-mature

     Post--- after to noun e.g. postwar, postgraduate

     Ex--- former, past, retired e.g. ex-president, ex-soldier

Other prefixes are;

Auto--- self control e.g. automatic, autoreverse

Neo--- new, revived e.g. neo colonialism, neo culture

Pan--- all, worldwide e.g. Pan-Africanism,

Tele--- far, distant e.g. television, telephone

Semi--- half e.g. semi final, semi desert

Vice---depute e.g. vice chairman, vice chancellor

Syn and Sym--- with, the same, equal e.g. synonyms, sympathy