Lecture Notes on Morphology

Introduction to Morphology

• Definition: Study of forms in linguistics, particularly the internal structure of words.
• Focus: Understanding morphemes and their types.

Key Concepts

Morpheme

• Definition: Smallest meaningful unit in a language.
• Cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts (only sounds, which are meaningless).
• Example:
  • Cats: Contains two morphemes - "cat" (meaningful) + "s" (plural).
  • Category: One morpheme, cannot be broken down meaningfully into smaller parts.

Identifying Morphemes

• Tip: Ask if the sum of the parts equals the meaning of the whole.
  • If yes, likely multiple morphemes; if no, likely one morpheme.

More Examples

• Categorize: Two morphemes - "category" + "ize" (forms a verb).
• Categorized: Three morphemes - "category" + "ize" + "d" (past tense).
• Overestimating: Three morphemes - "over" + "estimate" + "ing".
• Keyboard: Two morphemes - "key" + "board".
• Cranberry: One morpheme - does not meaningfully break down into "cran" + "berry".
• Anti-disestablishmentarianism: Six morphemes - "anti" + "dis" + "establish" + "ment" + "arian" + "ism".

Types of Morphemes

Free Morphemes

• Definition: Can stand alone as individual words.
• Two types:
  1. Lexical Morphemes:
     • Carry content and meaning (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs).
     • Open class: new members can be added (e.g., slang).
  2. Functional Morphemes:
     • Serve grammatical roles (prepositions, articles, pronouns).
     • Closed class: cannot accept new members.

Bound Morphemes

• Definition: Cannot stand alone, typically affixes.
• Types:
  1. Derivational Morphemes:
     • Create new words and can change parts of speech.
     • Examples: "pre-" (as in "predetermine"), "-er" (as in "teacher").
  2. Inflectional Morphemes:
     • Serve grammatical functions, do not create new words.
     • Only eight in English:
       • Plural "s"
       • Possessive "s"
       • Third person singular "s"
       • Past tense "ed"
       • Present participle "ing"
       • Past participle "en"
       • Comparative "er"
       • Superlative "est"

Conclusion

• Importance of understanding morphemes for linguistic analysis.
• Next topics:
  • Part 2: Difference between morphemes and allomorphs.
  • Part 3: Morphological analysis.

Closing

• Thanks for attending the lecture!