Morphology Essay

319 Words2 Pages
Morphology 1. What is the Morphology meaning? Morphology is the study of word formation. Morphology is to words what syntax is to sentences. Some morphemes, called: Lexical morphemes, grammatical morphemes, free morphemes, bound morphemes. Morphemes: A morpheme can be loosely defined as a minimal unit having more or less constant meaning associated with more or less constant form. Four points about Morphemes: First, they are distinct from syllables. Second, identical spellings do not indicate morphemes. Ex: “buyer” and “shorter” both of them have the same form, but they have different meaning. Third, the definition of a morpheme should be taken as a general rule rather than a hard and fast criterion. Fourth, the goal of morphological analysis is to determine the rules that speakers follow for forming words in a particular language. Lexical and Grammatical Morphemes: Distinction: Lexical morphemes have a sense. Grammatical morphemes do not really have a sense express some sort of relationship between lexical morphemes. Free and Bound Morphemes’ distinction: Straightforward. Free morphemes can stand alone as words. But Bound morphemes cannot stand alone as words. Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes: Affixes,can be subdivided into prefixes and suffixes. English has eight inflectional affixes. All other affixes are derivational. Inflectional Affixes: (PLU)=plural, (POSS)=possessive,(COMP)=comparative, (SUP)=superlative,(PRES)=present.(PAST)=past,(PAST PART)=past participle. (PRES PART)=present participle. Differences between Types of Affixes: Historical Development: All inflectional affixes are native to English Distribution: All inflectional affixes are suffixes; derivational affixes may be either suffixes or prefixes. Range of Application: Inflectional affixes have a relatively wide range of application while derivational

More about Morphology Essay

Open Document