MORPHOLOGY

Research by:

Gemmalyn V. Balmes
Roldan June Turqueza
Razall Keith Martinez

Submitted to:
Mrs. Janet C. Borromeo
What is Morphology?
a. Morphology is the study of the structure of
words.
 Paradoxically,however, the concept of word itself
defies simple definition. In English, for example,
words tent to be smaller than the sentence, and we
combine words to form sentence. One tricky yhing,
however, is that in many languages, a single word
can have “sentence” meaning.

Summing up the topics:

 Morphology is the study of word structure and
word formation.
 Words, thought impossible to define in absolute
terms, can be thought of as the units that are
combined to form sentences in a language such as
English.
 Just as sentences can be broken words down into
smaller, meaningful parts.
 The smallest meaningful part of a word is called a
morpheme.
 Note: not all words have more than one morpheme.
Words that have only one morpheme are also
called monomorphemic words (e.g.pig). Words
with more than one morpheme are called
 polymorphemic words, as in foolishness (fool-ish-
nesh).

MORPHEMES:
Minimal until in which there is an arbitrary union of a
sound and a meaning (lexical meaning or grammatical
function).

A morpheme: may be represented by a singke sound

(“a” in “amoral”)
:may be presented by a single syllable
(“child” “ish”)
:may be represented by more than one
syllable
2 syllable:(camel,lady,water)
3 syllable:(crocodile)
4 syllable: (elevator)

MORPHEMES
Homonyms (a.k.a. Homophones)
One or two or more words pronounced alike but differ
meaning or spelling.
Example: to too two

Homograph
One of two or more words spelled identically but differ
in meaning or pronounciation.
Example: bow and arrow
Bow of a violin
Bow of a ship
Bow a tie
Japanese bow
TYPES OF MORPHEMES
Free Morphemes:
Is a morphemes that by itself can function as a word in
a language
Example: Boy, desire, gentle, man
CONTENT VS FUNCTION WORDS
Content Words Function Words
 The nouns, verbs,  A words that does not
adjectives, and have clear lexical
adverbs that constitute meaning but has a
the major part of the grammatical function.
vocabulary. Content Function words
words are referred to include: conjunctions,
as OPEN CLASS prepositions, articles,
words because we can auxiliaries, and
add new words to pronouns. Function
these classes. words are referred to
as CLOSED CLASS
words because we can
not add new words to
these classes.

Bound Morpheme:
Is a morpheme that cannot stand by itself to form a
word; it ust be joined to other mophemes. It is bound
because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone.
It must be attached to another morpheme to produce a
word.
Examples: -ish -ness -ly dis- trans
Free morpheme:bad
Bound morpheme: ly
Word:badly
AFFIXES
 Affix: is a bound morpheme that occurs before
(prefix), after (suffix), in the middle of (inflix),
and around (circumfix) stems (root morphemes)
Prefix: un-,pre-,bi-
Suffix:-ing, -er, -ist, -ly
Inflix: un-freaking-believable
Morphemes that are inserted between other
morphemes
Circumflix:
Morphemes that are attached to another morphemes
both initially and finally. Also known as:
discontinuous morphemes

ROOTS AND STEMS

 Root:is a non-affix lexical morpheme that cannot
be analyzed into smaller parts. Roots may or may
not stand alone as a word
Examples: paint (pain-ter) Read ()
Ceive (con-ceive)

 Stem: is that part of a word to which

Inflectional affixes are added. It
 a). Solely single root morpheme such as
(Simple stem such as dog)
b). Two root morphees e.g. (compound stem as in
blackbird)
c). A root morpheme plus a erivational suffix e.g.
(a complex stem as in uncrew)

a). cats:single root morpheme: cat + inflectional

suffix-s
b). crowbar: two root morphemes (crow+bar)
+ inflectional suffix-s
c). inventions: root morpheme invent + lexical
suffix-ion+inflectional suffix-s

WORD FORMATION (WORD COINAGE)

In linguistics, the ways in which new words are
made on the basic of other words of morphemes.

COMMON TYPES OF WORD FORMATION

 Coinages
 Nonce words
  Borrowing
 Calquing
 Clipping

COINAGES
Coinages is the word formation process in which a new
word is created either deliberately or accidentally
without using the other word formation processes and
often from seemingly nothing. For example, the
following list of words provides some common
coinages found in everyday English:
o Aspirin
o Escalator
o Herion
o Band-aid
o Factoid
o Frisbee
o Google
o Linoluem
NONCE WORDS
Nonce words are new words formed through any
number of word formation processes with the resulting
word meeting a lexical need that is not expected to
recur. Nonce words are created for a single occasion.
For example, the following list of words provide some
nonce words with definitions as identified in the
Oxford English Dictionary
 Cotton-wool: to stuff or close ears with cotton
wool.
 Twi-thought: an indistinct or vargue thought

BORROWING
ARE ALSO REFFERED TO AS LOANWORDS
 Borrowing is the word formation process in which a
word from one language os borrowed English words
are borrowed from foreign language:
 Algebra-Arabic
 Bagel-Yiddish
 Cherub-Hebrew
 Chow mein-Chinese
 Fjord-Norwegian
 Galore-Irish
 Haiku-Japanese
 Kielbasa-French
 Murder-French
 Near-Sanskrit
 Paprika-Hungarian
 Pizza-Italian
 Smorgasbord-Swedish
 Tamale-Spanish
 Yo-yo-Tagalog
CALQUING
 Calquing is the word formation process in which a
borrowed word or phrase is translated from one
language to another.
For example, the following common English words
are calqued from foreign languages:
 Beer garden-German-Biergarten
 Blue-blood-Spanish-sangre azul
 Commonplace-Latin-locus communis
 Flea market-French-marchė aux puces
 Free verse-French-vers libre
 Loanword-German-Lehnwort
 Long time no see-Chinese-hǎo jiǔ bu jiȧn
 Pineapple-Dutch-pijnappel
 Scapegoat-Herbrew- ez ozel
 Wisdom tooth-Latin- dens sapientiae
Calques are also reffered to as root-for-root or
word-for-word translations

CLIPPING
Clipping is the word formation process in which
a word is reduced or shortened without changing the
meaning of the word. Clipping differs from back-
 formation in that the new word retains the meaning of
the original word.
For example:
 Advertisement-ad
 Alligator-gator
 Examination-exam
 Gasoline-gas
 Gymnasium-gym
 Influenza-flu
 Laboratory-lab
 Mathematics-math
 Memorandum-memo
 Photograph-photo
 Public house-pub
 Raccon-coon
 Reputation-rep
 Situation comedy-sitcom
 Telephone-phone
The four types of clipping are back clipping, foreclipping,
middle clipping, and complex clipping. Back clipping is
removing the end of a words as in gas from gasoline.
Fore-clipping is remiving the beginning of a word as in
gator from alligator. Middle clipping is retaining only the
middle of a word as in flu from influenza. Complex
clipping is removing multiple parts from multiple words
as in sitcom from situation comedy.

IDENTIFYING MORPHEMES
1. Segmentation of words into minimal sound-meaning
constituents
 Basic strategy
 Comparing and contrasting forms that are
partially similar in sound and meaning
 Associating shared sound with shared
meaning
 Continuing to do so until forms cannot be
broken into smaller sound-meaning units
EXAMPLES
1. Segmenting repayment into its constituent
morphemes:
→comparing→contrasting→isolating
1. repayment: payment→re-payment
2.payment:pay→pay-ment
re-pay-ment
↓ ↓ ↓
Prefix+root+suffix
2. segment instructions into its constituent morphemes:
→comparing→contrasting→isolating

1. instructions:instruction→instruction-s
2.instruction:instruct→instruct-ion
3.instruct:construct→in-struct
In-struct-ion-s
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
Prefix+root+suffix+suffix
2. Segmenting inconsistent into its constituent
morphemes:
→comparing→contrasting→isolating
1.inconsistent:consistent→in-consistent
2.consistent:consist→in-consist-ent
3.consist:desist,insist,persist→con-sist

In-con-sist-ent
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
Prefix+prefix+root+suufix
The meaningof re-pay-menr=
The meaning of re-+the meaning of pay-+the
meaning of_ment
The meaning of in-struct-ion-s=
The meaning of in-+the meaning of –struct+the
meaning of-ion+the meaning of-s
The meaning of in-consist-ent=
The meaning of in-+yhe meaning ofcon-+the
meaning of-sist+the meaning of –ent

2. Bound rootd
 In segmenting a word into its consisteunt
morphemes,
Not all morphemes obvious
 Some of the segmentations,or breaks,are less
obvious
Compare:sist in consist
Re_ in rewrite
-er in writer
 Some root morphemes never occur alone in
modern English, morphemes such as -ceive,-
Mit,-fer have lost their independent meaning-their
meaning depends on the entire word in which they
occur.