Morphology: Affix and Morphemes Cranberry Morphemes

What is Morphology?
LING 201
§Definition: the study of the construction of words out of morphemes

Morphology
Janice Fon
The Ohio State University

1

Morphemes (I)

2

Morphemes (II)

§Definition: smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function l l

free morpheme: morphemes that can stand alone as words (ex) clock, sick bound morpheme: morphemes that always attach to other morphemes, never existing as words themselves (ex) -ly, non-

Morpheme
(according to positions)
Free
(Stem)
(ex) tiger

Bound
(Affix)

Prefix
(ex) non-refundable

Infix
(ex) Cinder-fucking-rella

Suffix
(ex) friend-ly

3

Morpheme (III)

4

Morphemes (IV)

§Categorization according to functions: l l

l

derivational morphemes: morphemes that change the meaning or lexical category of the words to which they attach (ex) multi-, -ation inflectional morphemes: morphemes that serve a purely grammatical function, never creating a new word but only a different form of the same word
(ex) -ed, -’s in all languages, there are many derivational affixes but only a limited number of inflectional affixes
5

Morpheme
(according to functions)
Free
(Stem)
(ex) tiger

Bound
(Affix)

Derivational
(ex) re-union

Inflectional
(ex) book-s
6

1

Inflectional Morphemes (I)
Suffix

Function Example

Suffix

Inflectional Morphemes (II)
§ do not change meaning or part of speech, just add extra grammatical information

Function Example

3rd per. sg. pres.

kicks

-ed

past

kicked

-’s

poss.

book’s

-ing

prog.

kicking

-er

comp.

colder

-en

past. part. fallen

-est

super.

coldest

-s

-s

pl.

books

l

(ex) shoe, shoes, shoe’s → nouns

§ required by syntax
§ very productive
§ occur at the margin of a word, after any derivational morphemes l

(ex) sens-ib-iliti-es

§ not listed in the dictionary
§ in English, only suffixes
7