Lecture on Morphology: The Study of Forms in Linguistics

Overview

Focus on morphology, specifically the internal structure of words.
Discussion on morphemes, types of morphemes, including free, bound, lexical, functional, derivational, and inflectional morphemes.

Definition: Smallest meaningful unit in a language.
- Cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful elements.
- Example:
  - Cats = "cat" + "s" (plural)
  - Category = one morpheme (whole meaning not sum of parts)
  - Categorize = "category" + "ize" (verb-forming suffix)
  - Categorized = "category" + "ize" + "d" (past tense)

Overestimating: 3 morphemes ("over" + "estimate" + "ing")
Keyboard: 2 morphemes ("key" + "board")
Cranberry: 1 morpheme ("cranberry" as a single, unanalyzable unit)
Anti-disestablishmentarianism: 6 morphemes ("anti" + "dis" + "establish" + "ment" + "arian" + "ism")

Definition: Can stand alone as words.
Types:
- Lexical Morphemes:
  - Carry content/meaning (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs).
  - Open class (new terms can be added).
  - Example: "Google" as a lexical morpheme.
- Functional Morphemes:
  - Serve grammatical roles (prepositions, conjunctions, articles, pronouns).
  - Closed class (no new members can be added).

Definition: Cannot stand alone; include affixes.
Types:
- Derivational Morphemes:
  - Create new words/change part of speech.
  - Examples: "pre-", "un-", "er" (teacher), "full".
  - All prefixes in English are derivational.
- Inflectional Morphemes:
  - Serve grammatical functions, do not change lexical category.
  - Only eight in English: plural "s", possessive "s", third person singular "s", past tense "ed", "ing", past participle "en", comparative "er", superlative "est".