Morphology Lecturer Ms Abrar Mujaddidi LANE 321 Introduction

Morphology Lecturer Ms. Abrar Mujaddidi LANE 321

Introduction In many languages, what seems to be a single form, turn out to contain many ‘word-like ‘forms’. e. g. In Swahili nitakupenda In English I will love you This raises up a question of ‘what are words’? A better way of looking at linguistic forms in different languages is to look at the ‘elements’ rather than the words.

What is morphology? Morphology is the study of word structure. It is also the study of how these words are built and the rules which govern them. It basically deals with morphemes.

Morphemes In English, some words are made of a number of smaller elements. e. g. Talk, talks, talker, talking, talked Morphemes are ‘minimal units of meaning or grammatical function’ e. g. reopened tourists re+open+ed tour+ist+s

Free and bound morphemes Free morphemes: morphemes that can stand by themselves like open and tour Bound morphemes: Forms that cannot stand alone and are typically attached to another form such as re-, -less, -ed. All affixes in English are bound morphemes.

cont. , undressed un- dress -ed prefix bound stem free suffix bound The basic word forms are technically known as the stem.

Lexical and functional morpheme free morphemes Lexical morphemes - nouns, adjective, adverbs. . - Open class of words functional morphemes - conjunctions, prepositions Articles, pronouns - closed class of words

Derivational and functional morphemes bound morphemes Derivational morphemes Bound morphemes used to Create new words or words With different grammatical functions e. g. –ness goodness -ment payment inflectional morphemes used to indicate aspects of the grammatical functions of the word eg. -er -ed small talk smaller talked

Morphs and Allomorphs

Morphs and Allomorphs Morphs are the actual realization of morphemes. Morphemes are abstract units, morphs are discrete units. Some morphemes are realized by one or more morphs according to their position in a word or a sentence : allomorph.

Other Languages • Refer to the book and the exercises

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