MORPHOLOGY

DEFINITION OF MORPHOLOGY

Morphology is a branch of linguistics that deals with struction and a form of a word in a language.

WHAT IS A WORD? 

      Smallest independent units of language.

All words can be devided into 2 categories :

1. Content words

                   Content words are a word that have a clear lexical meaning, this classes compose of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. There word from people, things, actions, ideas, and attributes. Content words are considered and open class, because new words can be added.

2. Function words

                   Function words, in the other hand do not have a clear lexical meaning, but do serve a functional in professional language. There are words such as conjunctions, articles, preposition, and pronouns. Function words are considered a close class, because generally speaking do not make addition to this category.

MORPHEME

Morphemes - the building blocks of morphology

Words are make up of one piece, but many other words make up more than one piece, more than one component and this component are called morpheme.

Words have internal structure: built of even smaller pieces

1.     Simple words: don't have internal structure (only consist of one morpheme) eg work, build, run. They can't be split into smaller parts which carry meaning or function.

2.     Complex words: have internal structure (consist of two or more morphemes) eg worker: affix -er added to the root work to form a noun.

Morpheme is a minimal unit of a meaning, so well some words can consist of one morpheme, most words can consist more than one morpheme. Morphemes are devided into 2 types :

1.     Free morpheme

2.     Bound morpheme

FREE VS BOUND MORPHEMES

Free morpheme: a simple word, consisting of one morpheme eg house, work, high, chair, wrap. They are words in themselves.

Bound morpheme: morphemes that must be attached to another morpheme to receive meaning.

EG:  UNKINDNESS

• UN- and -NESS are the bound morphemes, requiring the root KIND to form the word.

These are also called affixes as they are attached to the stem. There are two types as outlined below:

1.     Derivational Affixes

An affix can be either derivational or inflectional. "Derivational affixes" serve to alter the meaning of a word by building on a base. In the examples of words with prefixes and suffixes above, the addition of the prefix un- to healthy alters the meaning of healthy. The resulting word means "not healthy." The addition of the suffix -er to garden changes the meaning of garden, which is a place where plants, flowers, etc., grow, to a word that refers to 'a person who tends a garden.' It should be noted that all prefixes in English are derivational. However, suffixes may be either derivational or inflectional. URL: http://able2know.org/topic/141194-1

Discussion
	In contrast to an inflectional affix, a derivational affix
	is not part of an obligatory set of affixes generally occurs closer to the root generally is more meaningful, and is more likely to result in a form that has a somewhat idiosyncratic meaning.

Examples (English)
	Joyful Joyfulness Stapler

2.     Inflectional affixes

There are a large number of derivational affixes in English. In contrast, there are only eight "inflectional affixes" in English, and these are all suffixes. English has the following inflectional suffixes, which serve a variety of grammatical functions when added to specific types of words. These grammatical functions are shown to the right of each suffix.

-s noun plural
-'s noun possessive
-s verb present tense third person singular
-ing verb present participle/gerund
-ed verb simple past tense
-en verb past perfect participle
-er adjective comparative
-est adjective superlative

URL: http://able2know.org/topic/141194-1

References :

https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/all-about-linguistics-2013-release/branches/morphology/what-is-morphology