Nominal Morfology- Mophemes

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Nominal Morphology Seminar 1 MORPHEMES AND SYLLABLES The traditional term for the most elemental unit of grammatical form is morpheme. A single word may be composed of one or more morphemes. (V. Fromkin, R. Rodman, An Introduction to Language, 1974) Morphemes could be shown in writing, for instance by using hyphens: The tradition-al term for the most element-al unit of gramma-tic-al form is morph-eme. A single word may be compos-ed of one or more morph-eme-s. but it is not conventional to do so. The smallest grammatical unit which has meaning and which is marked in writing is the word. • inflectional morphemes – show a grammatical function: past tense –ed (worked), the plural –s (girls). • derivational morphemes – change the grammatical category of a word: by adding –al the nouns element and tradition become the adjectives elemental, traditional. A morpheme at the end of words is called a suffix. A morpheme like un-, meaning not, placed in front of the word to make untraditional, unconditional, is called a prefix. The general term which includes both suffixes and prefixes is affix. Central to a syllable is a vowel sound, either on its own – e.g. I [ai] – or opened and/or closed with a consonant – e.g. tie [tai]. syllable – a unit of sound morpheme – a unit of grammar which has meaning e.g. singer [siŋ]+[∂] – two syllables & two morphemes – (sing)+(er): sing – free morpheme (it can stand alone as a verb) -er – bound morpheme (it is always a suffix, never a word, and its meaning is to create a noun from a verb, to signify a person who performs the action of the verb – singer is the one who sings. 1. Mark the syllables in the following words, using the International Phonetic Alphabet, e.g. pitifully – [pi/ti/ful/ly]=4 syllables. Mark the morphemes in the same words, e.g. piti/ful/ly

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