English Morphology for English Students in University

Morphology

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words.

A.    Morphemes

A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. There are three criterias in a morpheme:

1.      It a word or a part of a word that has meaning

2.      It can not be divided inot smaller parts

3.      It has stable meaning

For example in the word soften, suffix en shows a sense of make. En is a part of word with its meaning and it can not be divided into smaller units. It has stable meaning because it can be compared with en in the other words like brighten, darken, and deepen. All those words show a sense of “make”. It includes all criterias above, so it can be said as a morpheme.

B.     Free and Bound Morphemes

There are two kinds of morpheme that can be found in English: free and bound morphemes. A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand alone without adding any affixes. For example: sit, speak, and beat. Otherwise, bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand alone with its meaning. For example: dis, pre, ed, inter and un.

C.     Bases

A base morpheme is the part of a word that has the principal meaning. Base can become a new word when it is added by prefix or suffix. For example, in the word rewrite the base of this word is write, re is a prefix which is called bound morpheme.

a.    It can attach as an immediate constituent. Examples: retype, disagree, and remembered.

b.   It is an allomorph. Examples knife (knives)

c.   It is borrowed from another language. Example the word bio in biology which has meaning life.

D.    Difficulties in Morphemic Analysis

There are some difficulties when people want to identify morphemes. People have their own stock of vocabulary, so it will affect the way people want to analyze a morpheme. For example, when people want to analyze the word “important” people may analyze it with different ways of thinking. Some may think it consists of one morpheme and some may think it consists of two morpheme. People will have different opinions in morphemic analysis. Some may think as if only consists of one morpheme, some may think different. The other difficulty is that English has million vocabularies, some words can be unfamiliar for people where English is not their native language. It can be sufficiently complicated for people to analyze unfamiliar words without their dictionaries.

E.     Affixes

In English, there are three affixes: prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. What is an affix? an affix is a bound morpheme that occurs before or within or after a base.

a.   Prefix is a morpheme that attached before a base. For example: unhappy, impossible,  preview.

b.     Infixes are bound morphemes where it is inserted into the base itself. In English we rarely meet infixes.

c.      Suffixes are bound morphemes that attached after base as in beautiful, singing, happiness.

F.      Inflectional Suffixes

Inflectional affix	Examples	Name
{-s pl}	Dogs, oxen, mice	Noun plural
{-s sg ps}	man’s	Noun singular possessive
{-s pl ps}	Children’s, teachers’	Noun plural possessive
{-s 3d}	Drinks, eats, sits	Present third-person singular
{-ING vb}	Speaking, running	Present participle
{-D pt}	Found, found, deleted	Past tense
{-D pp}	Spoken, typed, sung	Past participle
{-ER cp}	Bigger, worse, smarter	Comparative
{-EST sp}	Nicest, darkest, worst	Superlative

1.         They don’t change the part of speech.

         It means the additional suffixes will not change the part of speech of the base.

2.         They come last in a word. As we know suffixes appear in the end of the word.

3.         They match will all stems of given part of speech.

4.         They do not pile up; only one ends a word.

         It means we can not add more than one suffix in a word.

G.    Derivational suffixes

a.     The word with which derivational suffixes combine is an arbitrary matter. For example the verb compete, it must be added tion to make it becomes a noun.

b.    Sometimes a derivational suffix changes the part of speech when it has already added. For example create to be creation, it means verb change to the noun.

c.   Derivational suffixes usually do not close off a word. It means a word can be added and inflectional suffix as in fertilize to fetilizer and also can be added s.

H.    Suffixal Homophones

Some suffixes, both inflectional and derrivational have homophonous forms.

1.      The inflectional morpheme {Er cp} has two homophones:

a.    Derivational suffix {ER n} which is attached to verb to form nouns as in speaker, reader and fisher. It shows an action. Sometimes it may also be attached to nonverbal stems as probationer, new yorker and teenager. It refers to general meaning “which relate to”.

b.  Derivational morphem {-ER rp} which appears at the end of words, it shows a repetition as in chatter, mutter, and glitter.

2.      The verbal inflectional suffix {-ING vb} has two homophones:

a. Nominal derivational suffix {-ING vb} which in word like meeting and wedding.

b.  Adjectival morpheme {-ING aj} as in charming woman.

3.      The verbal inflectional {-D pp}

4.     The adverbial derivational suffix {-LY av} is added to most adjectives to form adverbs of manner as in richly and happily. {-LY av} has as homophone the derivational suffix

a.    It is added monosyllabic nouns to form adjectives are inflected with –er, -est. For example: love-lovely.

b.     It is added to nouns to form adjectives are inflected with –er, -est. For example: mother-motherly.

c.    It is added to a few adjectives that are also inflected with –er, -est. For example: dead-deadly.

d.   It is added to a short list time nouns to form adjectives. For example: month-monthly.

I.       Noun Feminine Form

English has a small group of nouns with feminine derivational suffixes. They have been added to a maschuline form or a base morpheme.

Suffix	Maschuline	Feminime
-e	Fiance	Fiancee
-enne	Comedian	Patrioness
-ess	Patron	Patroness
-etta	Henry	Henrietta
-ette	Farmer	Farnerette
-cuse	Masseur	Masscuse
-ina	George	Georgina
-ine	Hero	Heroine
-ster	Spinner	Spinster
-stress	Seamster	Scamtress
-ix	Aviator	Aviatrix

           The status of feminine derrivational suffixes:

1.        Ess is the most common and productive.

1.        Stress is completely dead

2.        Enne and euse are words borrowed from French

3.        E French is merely orthographic

4.        Ster is no longer a feminizing suffix

J.       Noun Diminutive Form

A diminutive is a word form or suffix that indicates smallness. Diminutive is usually followed by suffixing –y and –ie to reduce form of word as in hanky for handkerchief and doggie for  dog.

Based on Cambridge dictionary, native speakers often use a diminutive with names or with abbreviated names when they want to be more informal or they want to express affection for someone or something.  For example “I can feel droplet of rain” (little drop of rain) and “I look for a booklet which I love the most” (a small book).

There are six diminutive suffixes in English. They are the following:

1.      –ie, -i, -y                     as in birdie, doggie, sweetie

2.      –ette                            as in cigarette, novelette

3.      –kin, ikin kins,            as in lambkin, manikin

4.      –ling                            as in darling, duckling

5.      –et                               as in circlet

6.      –let                              as in booklet, droplet

K.    Immediate Constituents

There are four sorts of morpheme, bases, prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. In this immediate constituents, we will see how these things are put together to make it being a word. The examples of one word are like beauty and happy and the examples of a word with two morphemes are like beautiful and happiness.

L.     Allomorph

Allomorph is a variant form of a morpheme. In English there are some examples include the past tense and the plural morphemes.

1.      Past tense (t, d, ed)

As in laughed {-D pt/-t}, played {-D pt/-d}, hunted {-D pt/id}

2.      Present tense for third singular person (s, es, z)

As in catches {-S sg/-es}, dogs {-S pl/-z}, books {-S pl/-s

Note: In allomorph there is also zero allomorph such as sheep.

M.   Conditioning: Phonological and Morphological

In phonological, we learn about the nature of preceeding word. For examples: picked and wedget. Otherwise, we discuss about associate with the spesific words in morphological. For examples: oxen and sheep.

N.    Replacive Allomorph

Replacive allomorph can be illustrated by going back to the past tense {-D pt}. As we know this morpheme has three allomorph which can be written /-ed/-t/-d/. The question is how about the other form such drank or sang. Here is the explanation, the /t/ of sing is replaced by the /ae/ of sang to refer the past tense. It can written like this /saen/ = /sin/ + /t> ae/.

O.    Homophones

It is a word which has similar sound to another words but differ in meaning, part of speech and gramatical structure. for examples, the word made and maid, hole and whole, and also role and roll.

P.      Phonethemes

Phonesthemes are speech sounds that in themselves express, elicit, or suggest meaning. Phonethemes can appear anywhere in a word, even it is the beggining, middle or final position.

At the beggining of a words, we can see these:

/gl-/ = light as in gole, glare, glint, glisten

/fl-/ = moving light as in flash, flare, flame

/sp-/ = point as in spire, spot, spade, spark

/sl-/ = movement as in slump, slide, slosh, slink

At the end of one-syllable words, the voiceless stops /p/, /t/, and /k/ show an abrupt of movement. For examples, hit, slap, tap, click.

At the end of two-syllable words, there are the phonemes /-el/ and /-er/ which has the meaning of repetition. It can be an auditory or visual detail. Here are the examples:

/-er/ twitter, chatter, patter, shatter, flutter

/-el/ bable, gigle twinkle, crackle, sparkle, wriggle, drizzle. 

Words

A.    Definition of Word

Word is the smallest segment of speech that can be used alone. When someone speaks, s/he will often pause. It’s because s/he gives their mind a time for thinking. A pause is done between the word not within the word. Look at this example "I will pick up my sister tomorrow" in this sentence, the words are spoken with a pause between word to word. If we count it how many time we need a pause in pronouncing this sentence?. Here the explanation, "I-will-pick up-my-sister-tomorrow-" there are six pauses. Pick up in this sentence is included in a special class, it is only pronounce as a single word. There is no a pause needed between the word pick and up. 

B.     Simple and Complex Word

1)  Simple word consist of a single free morpheme. For example, hit, beat, and sit.

2)  Complex word contains consist of bound + bound such as televise, free + bound such believer, bound + free such as unhappy, and also bound + free + bound such as unforgettable.

C.     Compound Word

Compound word consist of two or more free morphemes. Sometimes compound words are written as single words or as seperate word or it can also be written with hypen. There are three types of compund word:

1)      Closed

The examples of this type are sunglasses and greenhouse, there are no space needed in those words.

2)      Opened

The examples of this type are ice cream and football stadium, sometimes compound words are also written as two seperate words, but there is no word that can be added between those words.

3)      Hypenated

                         In this type compound words neeed strees patterns as in mother-in-law.

Processes of Word Formation

A.    Compounding

Compounding is how two or more words into a single word joined together, as in hang glider, alongside, breakfast and high school.

B.     Derivation

Derivation is the process to make a new wordsby combining derivational affixes or bound bases with existing words, as in disadvise, emplane, deplane, and teleplay.

C.     Invention

All word comes after an invention like kodak, nylon, and dingbat.

D.    Enchoism

Words come from the sounds of something, either natural like the roar of a waterfall or artificial like the clang of a bell. Example: moan, whisper, murmur, thunder, lips, chickadee, and click.

E.     Clipping

In clipping, the words are cut of the beginning or the end or both. The resultant form is called a clipped word. For example: lab, prof, gym, psych, exam and etc.

F.      Acronymy

Acronymy is the process to form an abbreviation from the initials or beginning segments of a succession of words. For examples: NATO, UNESCO, OPEC and CIA.

G.    Blending

Blending is the fusion of two words into one, usually the first part one word with the last part another as in gasohol, from gasoline and alcohol.

H.    Back Formation

This process is just the re-verse of our customary method of word formation like speak and by adding the morpheme ER. This process is called back formation.