Morphemes and Their Classification: Morphosyntax of English

Morphosyntax of English
Morphemes and
their classification
Morphemes:
A minimal unit of meaning or
grammatical function.
Are the smallest parts that
have meaning.
Free morphemes:
Morphemes that can stand by
themselves as single word
It can occur in isolation and cannot
be divided into smaller meaning units
Examples:
big girl
Lexical morphemes:
Set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs
that we think of as the words that carry the
“content” of the messages we convey.
We can add new lexical morphemes to the

language rather easily, so they are treated as
an “open” class of words
Examples:
house man
Types of lexical morphemes:
Nouns: are words used to refer to people, objects, Examples:
creatures, places, qualities and abstract ideas as if hat love
they were all “things.”
Adjectives: are words used, typically with nouns, to Examples:

provide more information about the things referred brave young
to
Verbs: are words used to refer to various kinds of Examples:

actions and states involving people and things in be listen
events.
Adverbs: are words used, typically with verbs, to Examples:

provide more information about actions, states and very fast
events, are also used with adjectives to modify
information about things.
FUNCTIONAL
Morpheme
Functional morphemes these morphemes consist

mainly of the functional words in the english
language and they include words that belong to the
closed class of the parts of speech .

In linguistics functional morphemes also sometimes

referred to as functors are building blocks for
language acquisition.
What are the "Functional Morphemes"?
Examples
the, a, and Articles
at, in, on, above Prepositions
he, she, her, we, that, this Pronouns

She
and, nor, or, but, so

Conjuctions
Bu
tI
can
't...
B O U N D
M O R P H E M E S
Bound Morphemes are those forms that cannot normally stand alone and
are typically attached to another form, exemplified as
re-, -ist, -ed, -s. We can say that all affixes (prefixes and
suffixes) in English are bound morphemes.
The free morphemes can generally be identified as the set of separate

English word forms such as basic nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.
When they are used with bound morphemes attached, the basic word
forms are technically known as stems.
Stems is the base from to which affixes are attached in the formation of
words
Bounds
E X A M P L E S
Undressed Carelessness
Un- dress- ed Care- less- ness
Un- Un-
Prefix Stem Suffix Stem Suffix Suffix
(Bound) (Free) (Bound) (Free) (Bound) (Bound)

DERIVATIONAL
M O R P H E M E S
We use these bound morphemes to make new words or to make

words of a different grammatical category from the stem.
Derivational morphemes change adjectives to nouns.
Example
Good + Derivational morpheme "ness"= Goodness

DERIVATIONAL
MORPHEMES
A noun can also become an adjective using derivational morphemes
Example
Care+ Derivational morpheme "-ful" or "-less= Careful
Careless
A list of Derivational Morphemes The list will also include Prefixes,
will include Suffixes, for example: for example:
-ish= foolish re= rewrite
-ly=quickly pre= prejudice And many more...
-ment=payment ex= excluding
un= unfinished
INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES
The second type of bound morphemes consists of inflectional

morphemes that are used to show some aspects of the
grammatical function of a word. We use inflectional
morphemes to indicate if a word is singular or plural, whether
it is past tense or not, and whether it is a comparative or
possessive form.
In fact, inflection exists in many languages, but compared to

other languages of the world there is relatively little inflection
in English. Today there are only eight inflectional morphemes in
English
English Inflectional
Morphemes Added to Examples
-s plural Nouns She has got two guitars
-'s possessive Nouns Jessica's hair is long
-er
comparative Adjectives Her hair is longer than his
-est superlative Adjectives She has the longest hair
-s 3rd person singular tense Verbs He plays the guitar
-ed past tense Verbs He played the guitar at the party
-ing progressive Verbs He is playing the guitar at the party
-en past participle Verbs He has taken the guitar to the party
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DERIVATIONAL AND INFLECTIONAL
MORPHEMES
First, inflectional morphemes never change the grammatical
category (part of speech) of a word. For example, tall and
taller are both adjectives. The inflectional morpheme -er
(comparative marker) simply produces a different version of
the adjective tall.
However, derivational morphemes often change the part of
speech of a word. Thus, the verb read becomes the noun
reader when we add the derivational morpheme -er. It is
simply that read is a verb, but reader is a noun. However,
some derivational morphemes do not change the grammatical
category of a word.

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Morphosyntax of English

We can add new lexical morphemes to the

Adjectives: are words used, typically with nouns, to Examples:

Verbs: are words used to refer to various kinds of Examples:

Adverbs: are words used, typically with verbs, to Examples:

Functional morphemes these morphemes consist

In linguistics functional morphemes also sometimes

at, in, on, above Prepositions

he, she, her, we, that, this Pronouns

and, nor, or, but, so

The free morphemes can generally be identified as the set of separate

(Bound) (Free) (Bound) (Free) (Bound) (Bound)

We use these bound morphemes to make new words or to make

Good + Derivational morpheme "ness"= Goodness

The second type of bound morphemes consists of inflectional

In fact, inflection exists in many languages, but compared to

-'s possessive Nouns Jessica's hair is long

-est superlative Adjectives She has the longest hair

-s 3rd person singular tense Verbs He plays the guitar

-ed past tense Verbs He played the guitar at the party

-ing progressive Verbs He is playing the guitar at the party

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