Lecture on Morphology

Introduction

• Morphology: Study of forms used in language.
• New words like “ambimoustrous” show word formation processes.
• Importance of understanding internal elements of words.

Morphemes

• Definition: Minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.
• Examples in English:
  • Words like “talks,” “talker,” “talked,” “talking” all have the morpheme “talk.”

Types of Morphemes

Free and Bound Morphemes

• Free Morphemes: Can stand alone (e.g., “new,” “tour”).
• Bound Morphemes: Cannot stand alone (e.g., “re-,” “-ist,” “-ed,” “-s”).
• Stems: Basic word forms with bound morphemes attached.

Lexical and Functional Morphemes

• Lexical Morphemes: Carry content of messages (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs).
• Functional Morphemes: Serve grammatical purposes (articles, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns).

Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes

• Derivational Morphemes: Create new words or change grammatical category (e.g., “encourage” to “encouragement”).
• Inflectional Morphemes: Indicate grammatical functions (e.g., plurality, tense).
• Inflectional morphemes do not change grammatical category.

Morphological Description

• Difference between Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes:
  • Derivational can change word category; inflectional cannot.
• Example: “teacher’s” involves both derivational and inflectional suffixes.

Morphs and Allomorphs

• Morphs: Actual forms used to realize morphemes.
• Allomorphs: Variants of a morpheme (e.g., different plural forms in English).
• Examples include “cats,” “dogs,” and “horses” showing different plural allomorphs.