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# 6
# Morphology
> AMBIMOUSTROUS
(adj.) able to use a computer mouse with both hands
Collins English Dictionary (2019)
Throughout Chapter 5, we approached the description of processes involved in
word formation as if the unit called the word was always a regular and easily
identifiable form , even when it is a form such as ambimoustr ous that we may
never have seen before. This new word is based on an established form,
ambidextr ous (able to use either hand equally well ), with the middle element,
dext(e)r (right hand ), replaced by mous(e) . Clearly this single word has more
than one element contributing to its meaning. Yet we don t normally think of a
word as hav ing int ernal elements. We tend to think of words as those
individual forms marked in black with bigger spaces separating them in written English. In this chapter , we ll investigate ways of taking a closer look inside
words.
# Morphology
In many languag es, what appear to be single forms actually turn out to contain a
lar ge number of word-like elemen ts. For example, in Sw ahili (or Kiswahili,
spoken throughout East Africa), the form nitakupenda conveys what, in English,
would have to be represented as something like I wi ll love you . No w, is the
Swahili form a single word? If it is a word, then it seems to consist of a number
of elements that, in English, turn up as separate words. A rough
correspondence can be presented here:
It would seem that this Swahili word is rather dif ferent from what we think of
as a written English word. Yet there clearly is some similarity between the
languages, in that similar eleme nts of the whole message can be found in both.
Perhaps a better way of looking at linguistic forms in dif ferent languages would
be to use this notion of elements in the messag e, rather than depend on
identifying only words.
The type of exercise we have ju st performed is an example of investigating
basic for ms in language, known as morphology . Th is term, whi ch literally means
the stud y of forms, was originally used in biology , but is now also used to
describe the study of those basic elements in a language. What we have been
describing as elements in the form of a linguistic message are technically
known as morphemes. Morphemes
We do not actua lly have to go to other languages such as Swahi li to discover that
word forms may consist of a number of elements. We can recognize that
English word forms such as talks, talker , talked and talking must consist of one
element talk , and the other four elements -s, -er , -ed and -ing . All these five
elements are described as morphemes . The definition of a morpheme is a
minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. Un its of grammatical
function include forms used to indicate past tense or plural, for example. So, we
can take words apart, as shown in Table 6.1 with the verb re-new-ed and the noun
tour -ist-s , to reveal the dif ferent elements in their morphology .
TABLE 6.1 Morphemes
Fr ee and Bound Morphemes
Looking at the examples in Table 6.1 , we can make a broad distinction between
two type s of morphemes. There are fr ee morphemes , th at is, morphemes that can
stand by themselves as single words, for example, new and tour . There are also
bound morphemes , which are those forms that cannot normally stand alone and
are typically attached to another form, exemplified as re-, -ist, -ed, -s . These
forms were described in Chapter 5 as af fixes. So, we can say that all af fixes
(prefixes and suf fixes) in English are bound morphemes. The free morphemes can
generally be identified as the set of separate English word forms such as basic
nouns, verbs, adjectives and adv erbs. When they are used with bound morphemes
attached, the basic word forms are technically known as stems . For example: We should note that this type of description is a partial simplification of the
morphological facts of English. There are a number of English words, typically
derived from Latin, in which the element treated as the stem is not a free
morpheme. In words such as receive, reduce and repeat , we can identify the
bound morpheme re- at the beginnin g, but the elem ents -ceive, -duce and -peat
are not separate word forms in English and hence cannot be free morphemes.
These types of forms are sometimes described as bound stems.
Lexical and Functional Morphemes
What we have described as free morphemes fall into two categories. The first
category is that set of ordinary nouns (girl, house ), verbs (br eak, sit ), adjectives
(long, sad ) an d ad verbs (never , always ) that we think of as the words that carry
the content of the messages we convey . These free forms are called lexical
morphemes . We can add new lexical morphemes to the language rather easily , so
they are treated as an open class of words.
Other types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes . Examples
are articles (a, the ), conjunctions (and, because ), prepositions (on, near ) and
pronouns ( it, me ). Be cause we al most never add new functional morphemes to th e
language, they are described as a closed class of words.
Derivational Morphemes
The set of af fix es that make up the category of bound morph emes can also be
divided into two types. One type is described in Chapter 5 in terms of the
derivation of words. These are derivational morphemes . We use these bound
forms to make new words or to make words of a dif ferent gram matical category from the stem. For example, th e addition of the derivational morpheme -ment
changes the verb encourage to the noun encouragement . Th e noun class can
become the verb classify by the addition of the derivational morpheme -ify .
Derivational mo rphemes can be suf fixes like -ment and -ify and also prefixes,
such as re-, pr e-, ex-, mis-, co-, un-.
Inflectional Morphemes
The second set of bound mo rphemes contains inflectional morphemes (or
inflections ). These are not used to produce new words in the language, but
rather to indicate the grammatical function of a word. Inflectional morphemes are
used to show if a word is plu ral or singular , past tense or not, and if it is a
comparative or possessive form . English has only eight inflectional morphemes,
all suf fixes.
Jim s two sister s ar e r eally differ ent.
One like s to have fun and is always laugh ing .
The other enjoy ed school as a child and has always be en very serious.
One is the loud est person in the house and the other is quiet er than a
mouse.
In the first sente nce, both inflections are attached to nouns, marking possessive
(-s) and plural (-s ). There are four inflections attached to verbs: -s (3rd person
singular , present tense), -ing (present participle) , -ed (past tense) and -en (past
participle). Two inflections attach to adjectives: -er (comparative) and -est
(superlative).
There is some variation in the form of these inflectional mor phemes. For
example, the possessive somet imes appears as a plural form -s (those boy s
bags ) and the past participle is often -ed (they have talk ed alr eady ). Table 6.2 has
a summary .TABLE 6.2 Derivational and inflectional morphemes
# Morphological Description
The dif ference between derivational and inflectional morphemes is worth
emphasizing. An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category
of a word. For example, both old and older are adjectives. The -er inflection here
(from Old English -ra ) simply creates a dif ferent version of the adjective.
However , a derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a
word. The verb teach becomes the noun teacher if we add the derivational
morpheme -er (from Old English -er e). So, the suf fix -er in Modern English can
be an inflectional morpheme as part of an adjective and also a distinct
derivational morpheme as part of a noun. Just because they look the same (-er )
doesn t mean they do the same kind of work.
Whenever there is a derivational suf fix and an inflectional suf fix used
together , they always appear in that order . First the derivational (-er ) is attached
to teach , then the inflectional (-s ) is added to produce teachers . Armed with all
these terms for dif ferent types of morphemes, we can now take most sentences of
English apart and list all the elements. For example, in the sentence The
teacher s wildness shocked the girls par ents , we can identify thirteen
morphemes. A useful way to remember all these dif ferent types of morphem es is presented in
Figure 6.1 .
Figur e 6.1 Types of morphemes
# Morphs, Allomorphs and Special Cases
The rath er neat chart presented in Figure 6.1 con ceals a num ber of outstanding
problems in the analysis of Eng lish morphology . The inflectional morpheme -s is
added to cat and we get the plural cats . What is the inflectional morpheme that
makes sheep the plural of sheep , or men the plural of man ? These two words are
clearly exceptions to the general pattern and have to be treated as special cases.
One way to des cribe more regular dif ferences in inflectional morphemes is
by proposing variation in morph ological realization rules. In order to do this, we
draw an analogy with processes already noted in phonology (Chapter 4 , page 50).
Just as we treate d phones as the actual phonetic realization of phonemes, so we
can propose morphs as the actual for ms used to realize morphemes. For example,
the form cats consists of two parts, /kt/ + /-s /, wi th a lexical morpheme (cat )
and an inflectional morpheme (plural ). Th e words dogs and horses also consist
of two parts, /d / + /-z/ and /h rs/ + /-z/, each consisting of a lexical
morpheme and an inflectional morpheme (plural ). So we have at least three
forms (/-s/, /-z/ and /-z/) used to realiz e the inflectional morpheme plural. Just
as we no ted that there were allophones of a phoneme, so we can recognize the
existence of allomorphs of a morpheme, again using the prefix allo- (= one of
a clo sely related set). The three allomorphs of the one morpheme (plural ) are
shown in Table 6.3 .TABLE 6.3 Allomorphs
Returning to our special cases, we could propose that there may be a zero-
morph inv olved when we add the plural mo rpheme to a word like sheep, so
that the plural of sheep can be analyzed as /ip/ + //, adding another form (/ /)
to th e se t of allomorphs of plural. When we add plural to /mn/, we could
have a vowel change in the word ( ) as the morph that produces the
irregular plural form men . Howev er , it is more likely that we treat the two
forms /mn/ and /m n/ as two distin ct lexical morphemes that we learn as
separate words.
There is a similar pattern in the way past tense is realized in English. The
inflectional suf fix -ed is used in the ty pical derivation : flirt ed , hugg ed and kiss ed .
The irregular forms are like separate lexical morphemes: go /went, be /was /wer e.
See T ask C, on page 88, for more on the allomorphs of past tense in English.