ENGL 3371: Morphology

1
ENGL 3371Morphology

• Dr. Min-Joo Kim

2
Key questions

• What is morphology?
• What is a morpheme, as opposed to a word?

3
What is morphology?

• Its a study of word structure and word
  formation.
• Todays focus word structure and its components.

4
Morpheme vs. word

• A morpheme is the smallest unit that carries
  meaning.
• Words can be decomposed into more than one
  morpheme.
• Example
• (1)a. uncovered ? un-cover-ed
• b. conventionalization ? convention-al-iz-atio
  n

5
Types of morphemes

• Free vs. bound morphemes based on whether it can
  stand alone or not.
• Roots vs. affixes based on whether it carries
  the base meaning of a word or not.

6
Free vs. bound morphemes

• Free morpheme can stand alone.
• E.g. the, man, walk
• Bound morpheme cannot stand alone.
• E.g. solutions, walked, walking

7
Root vs. affixes

• Root caries the core meaning of the word.
• e.g., invent-ion, kind-ness, un-fortunate-ly
• Affix occurs attached to the root of a word.
• e.g., invent-ion, kind-ness, un-fortunate-ly

8
Important point about roots

• Not every root is a free morpheme.
• English geology, sociology, psychology.
• The root of these words is logy, which is a
  bound morpheme ? logy.
• Ancient Greek log-os (Nom), log-ou (Gen), log-o
  (Dat), log-on (Acc).
• The root of these words is log, and it cannot
  stand alone ? log.

9
More on affixes

• Depending on where they occur in the word with
  respect to the root, affixes can be classified
  into four types
• Prefix X-Root, where X stands for an affix.
• Suffix Root-X
• Infix Part of root-X-part of root
• Circumfix X-Root-X

10
Examples of various types of affixes

• Prefix un-kind
• Suffix kind-ness
• Infix tengao (to celebrate a holiday)
• t-um-engao-ak (I will celebrate a
  holiday.) (Bonto Igorot the Philippines)
• Circumfix d-o-gwapi-ta-I
• NEG-3-sit-FUT-NEG
• (Kaiowa-Guarani Equatorial-Tucanoan Brazil)

11
Exercise 1

• Decompose the following words into morphemes
• This undermines his claim.
• Derivational morphemes are interesting.
• Some sentences are obviously tenseless.
• John was really amusing.

12
Exercise 2

• Determine whether the underlined parts are bound
  or free morphemes
• I have two toothbrushes
• The actor was extremely talented.
• Mary wanted to go to the store
• I am an undergrad at TTU.
• Jamie was running really fast.
• Josh is probably the fastest runner among us.

13
Exercise 3

• Decompose the following words and determine
  whether each morpheme is a root, prefix, or
  suffix, and also whether the root is a bound
  morpheme or a free morpheme.
• Connections (2) preconditional (3) localize
• (4) anti-post-modernism (5) psychological
• (6) Multifacetedness (7) intervention

14
Next class

• Homework 1 will be due. (will be sent by e-mail.)
• More on morphology.