Audiolingual Method Advanced Class

Definition of Morpheme:
It is the minimal of meaning or grammatical function Introducing a notion of morpheme:
Morphology

Morphology is the study of word formation, of the structure of words.

Some observations about words and their structure:

1. Some words can be divided into parts, which still have meaning.

2. Many words have meaning by themselves. However, some words have meaning only when used with other words.

3. Some of the parts into which words can be divided can stand alone as words. But others cannot.

4.These word-parts that can occur only in combination must be combined in the correct way.

5. Languages create new words systematically.

What linguists infer from these observations:

• The meaningful parts into which words can be divided—e.g., boldest can be divided into bold+est --are called the morphemes of the language. These are considered the basic units of meaning in a particular language.

• Words that have meaning by themselves—boy, food, door—are called lexical morphemes. Those words that function to specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and another—words like at, in, on, -ed, -s -are called grammatical morphemes.

• Those morphemes that can stand alone as words are called free morphemes (e.g., boy, food, in, on). The morphemes that occur only in combination are called bound morphemes (e.g., -ed, -s, -ing).

• Bound grammatical morphemes can be further divided into two types: inflectional morphemes (e.g., -s, -est, -ing) and derivational morphemes (e.g., -ful, -like, -ly, un-, dis-).

• Processes of word-formation can be described.

Morphemes

A morpheme can be defined as a minimal unit having more or less constant meaning and more of less constant form.

For example, linguists say that the word buyers is made up of three morphemes {buy}+{er}+{s} As well as teachers {teach}+{er}+{s}. The