Morpheme and its types in detail

morphemes

1. Name : Saba Ashraf Roll#: 32
Procedures
Step1: Preparation (pre-assessment activity/ Brain Storming)
What is Morphology?
The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning 'shape, form', and -
ology which means 'the study of something'. Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies
the structure of words.
Other Languages and Morphology:

English Morphology is in fact very dull in comparison to that of other languages. In Turkish, for
example, a huge array of words can be created by adding suffixes to just one root, and because of
this the number of words in the language is very high. The morphology of other languages also
seems to be more rule governed- for example, in Turkish the use of suffixes is dependent on
'vowel harmony'.

What is Word?

 Words are the smallest free-standing forms that represent meaning.
 Any word can be cited as an isolated item.
 It can serve as the headword in a dictionary list. It can be quoted.
 It can be combined with other words to form phrases and sentences.
 In general, the word is the smallest unit of sentence composition and the smallest unit that
we are aware of when we consciously try to create sentences.
 However, there are even smaller units that carry the fundamental meanings of a language,
and words are made up of these units.
 These units are morphemes.

2. Step 2: Presentation
Introducing Topic
Morphemes:

 Minimal, meaningful unit of a word or in the grammar of a language.
 Not further divisible or analyzable into smaller forms.
 The units of ‘lowest’ rank out of which words, the units of next highest rank
are composed.
 If we try to break up a morpheme, it loses its identity and it left with
meaningless noises.
 Semantically different from other phonemically similar or identical
linguistic forms. Eg. Speaker, deer, faster
 A sound sequence is not always regarded as a morpheme. Eg: man—
*woman, unnatural, unfaithful, *under, *sun
 It could be also termed as an abstract unit of meaning.
 A synonym for morpheme is glosseme
o Examples

3. o Unladylike
 Un+ lady+ like
 Encouragement
 En+ courage+ ment
 Disillusionment
 Dis+ illusion+ ment
 unhappiness
 un+happi+ness

A morpheme is a piece of phonological information that has a conventionalized
meaning arbitrarily associated with it.
 “cat” (meaning = CAT, num. = singular)
 “cats” (meaning = CAT, num. = plural)
 Therefore: cat = CAT and -s = plural.

History of Morphemes.
The history of morphological analysis dates back to the ancient Indian linguist Pāṇini, who
formulated the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in the text Aṣṭādhyāyī by using a
constituency grammar. The Greco-Roman grammatical tradition also engaged in morphological
analysis. Studies in Arabic morphology, conducted by Marāḥ al-arwāḥ andAḥmad b. ‘alī
Mas‘ūd, date back to at least 1200 CE. The term "morphology" was coined by August
Schleicher in 1859.
The properties of morphemes:
Since morphemes are the smallest carriers of meaning, each word must contain at
least one morpheme. The essential point about morphemes is that they cannot be
dissected further into smaller meaningful units: they are the smallest ones. The
properties which uniquely differentiate morphemes from other linguistic units are
these:
1) A morpheme is the smallest unit associated with a meaning. E.g. car, care,
carpet, cardigan, caress, cargo, caramel... Do all these words contain the
morpheme car?
2) Morphemes are recyclable units. One of the most important properties of the
morpheme is that it can be used again and again to form many words.
E.g. Morpheme care can be used to form?

4. In examples cardigan and caramel is car a morpheme? One way of finding out
would be to test whether the remaining material can be used in other words, i.e.
whether it is another morpheme. –digan and –amel do not meet our first definition
of a morpheme, they are not contributors of independent meanings, nor are they
recyclable in the way in which the morphemes care+ful, un+care+ing,
care+give+er are.
Recyclability can be deceptive, as it was in the case of carrot, carpet, caress,
cargo.
Though all morphemes can be used over and over in different combinations, non-
morphemic parts of words may accidentally look like familiar morphemes.
In some cases, a combination of tests is required.
If we try to parse the word happy, we can easily isolate happ- and –y as
morphemes. The latter adds to the grammatical meaning of the words by turning it
into an adjective. But what about happ?
happ- e.g. mishap, happen, hapless, unhappiness.
In other words, the recyclability of hap(p)- in the language today confirms its
status as a morpheme, even without the etymological information.
Morphemes and syllable:
Morphemes must not be confused with syllables. A morpheme may be represented
by any number of syllables, though typically only one or two, sometimes three or
four. Syllables have nothing to do with meaning, they are units of pronunciation. In
most dictionaries, hyphens are used to indicate where one may split the word into
syllables. A syllable is the smallest independently pronounceable unit into which a
word can be divided.
Morphemes may be less than a syllable in length. Cars is one syllable, but two
morphemes. Some of the longest morphemes tend to be names of places or rivers
or Native American nations, like Mississippi, Potawatomi, Cincinnati. In the
indigenous languages of America from which these names were borrowed, the
words were polymorphemic, but the information is completely lost to most of
native speakers of English.
Allomorphs :

5. The analysis of words into morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs. A
morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a
recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes).
We have a similar situation with LEXEME and WORD-FORM.
Lexeme and morpheme are abstract units, while word-form and morph are their
physical (phonological) realisations.
One and the same morpheme may take phonetically different shapes. (it may be
represented by different morphs). Different forms of the same morpheme are called
allomorphs (which means other forms). This general property of allomorphic
variation is called allomorphy.
Recognizing different allomorphs of the same morpheme is one of the surest ways
to extend one’s vocabulary and to identify relationships between words.
Any speaker of English will identify the nouns cares, caps, classes as sharing the
plural morpheme –s, though both the spelling and the pronunciation of the
morpheme vary in the three words, i.e. the morpheme has three allomorphs.
These are the four essential properties of all morphemes:
1) they are packaged with a meaning,
2) they can be recycled,
3) they may be represented by any number of syllables,
4) morphemes may have phonetically different shapes.
Activity (duration time: 2 minutes)
Partial Recapitulation:
Divide the following words into morphemes.
(a) untrue (b) owner (c) incompletely
(d) government (e) development (f) rewrite
(g) fewest
Types of morphemes:
There are two kinds of morpheme.
1) Free morpheme
2) Bound morpheme

6. Free Morphemes – a simple word consists of a single morpheme, and so is a free
morpheme, a morpheme with the potential for independent occurrence.
In “The farmer kills the duckling”, the free morphemes are the, farm, kill
and duck.


Two kinds of free morphemes:
A. lexical morpheme (open classs): has lexical meaning; new examples can be freely
added
examples: N, Verb, Adj, Adv (content words)
B. functional morpheme (closed class)
new examples are rarely added (but not impossible to add)
examples: Pro, Prep, Conj, Art. (function words)

Bound Morphemes – by contrast, require the presence of another morpheme to
make up a word; they can’t occur independently. The morphs –er, -s and –ling in
the given example are bound morphemes.

Activity (duration time: 3 minutes)
Partial Recapitulation:
Mention the free and bound morphemes in the following words,
1) Undo

7. 2) Disagreement
3) Beautiful
4) Internationalization
5) Meaningless
Affixation:
Prefixes, suffixes and infixes:
Prefixes occur before the morpheme, as in un-happy. Suffixes occur after a morpheme, as in
friend-ly. A third type of bound morpheme is an infix, that goes inside another morpheme, as in
'mother-in-law' (some languages make more use of this than English). Collectively, suffixes,
prefixes and infixes are called affixes.
Common prefixes
 Co+occur ‘occur together’
 Mid+night ‘middle of the night’
 Mis+treat ‘treat badly’
 Re+turn ‘turn back’
 Un+filled ‘not filled’
 Peri+meter ‘measure around’

Common suffixes
 Act+ion ‘state of acting’
 Act+or ‘person who acts’
 Act+ive ‘pertaining to being in action’
 Child+ish ‘like a child’
 Child+hood ‘state of being a child’
 Child+less ‘without a child’

Activity (duration time: 2 minutes)
Partial Recapitulation:
Identify the prefixes and suffixes in the following words.

8. (1) (a) untrue (b) owner (c) incompletely
(d) government (e) development (f) rewrite
(g) fewest
Root, stem, and base:
 Root: A root is the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it.
E.g. jump- jumps, jumping, jumped. Here, jump is the root.
 Stem: the stem is that part of a word that exists before the addition of any inflectional
morpheme. E.g. worker workers, shift shifted
 Base: Base is any unit of a word where any kind of affixes can be added. It could be both
inflectional or derivational. E.g. boy  boys, boy  boyish, boy  boyhood
 The bottom-line: All roots are bases, bases are called stem in context of inflectional
morphology
we can divide moephemes in 2 ways
 By dividing it up with hyphens:
e.g. truth-ful-ness
 By using a tree diagram
truth - ful - ness
Types of bound morphemes:
There are two types of bound morphemes:
1) Inflectional morphemes
2) Derivational morphemes
Inflectional morphemes:
An inflectional morpheme is used to create a variant form of a word in order to signal grammatical
information. For example, the suffix [-ed] signals that a verb is past tense: walk-ed.
English has only eight inflectional affixes:
 noun plural {-s} – “He has three desserts.”
 noun possessive {-s} – “This is Betty’s dessert.”
 verb present tense {-s} – “Bill usually eats dessert.”
 verb past tense {-ed} – “He baked the dessert yesterday.”

9.  verb past participle {-en} – “He has always eaten dessert.”
 verb present participle {-ing} – “He is eating the dessert now.”
 adjective comparative {-er} – “His dessert is larger than mine.”
 adjective superlative {-est} – “Her dessert is the largest.”
Nouns take two inflectional morphemes, plural and possessive.

Morphemes Type Examples
s plural picture  pictures
s third person
singular
I read.  She reads.
‘s possessive The son of Harriet.  Harriet’s son
ing present progressive We study.  We are studying.
ed past tense They start work tomorrow.  They started work
yesterday.
en past participle Jon beat Mark at chess.  Jon has beaten Mark at
chess.
er comparative Laure is pretty.  Laure is prettier than Lisa.
est superlative Laure is pretty.  Laure is the prettiest girl in my
class.
Derivational morphemes:
these are affixes that attach to a lexical root and result in a new word, a complex lexeme called
stem. The suffix – er / / in English is a derivational suffix. Adding it to a lexical root gives a
stem with related meaning.
Ex. bake – baker, boil – boiler.
These suffixes do not only change the meaning of the morpheme they are attached to, they also
change its part-of-speech.
Example
 Noun –Adjective Verb – Noun Adjective – Adverb
boy + ish sing + er exact + ly

10.  Noun – Verb Adjective – Noun Verb – Adjective
vapor + ize free + dom read + able
Some derivational suffixes do not cause change in grammatical class.
Example
 Noun – Noun Verb – Verb Adjective – Adjective
Friend + ship un + do pink + ish

Activity
Quick recap:
Q.What is the basic difference between inflectional and derivational morphemes?
Importance of studying morphology:
Decoding – Readers who recognize morphemes read more quickly and accurately.
Vocabulary Knowledge of meaning of word parts expands reader’s vocabulary.
Comprehension - Knowledge of morphemes helps makes meaning from text.
Spelling - Morphemes are units that can be predictably spelled.

11. Conclusion:
To sum up, morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. It can be full
word ar part of word. So to be clear: “un” is a morpheme.“yes” is also a morpheme, but also
happens to be a word. Morphemes are of two types: free and bound. Morphemes that can occur
on their own are free morphemes, and those that can’t (e.g., affixes) are bound morphemes. For
example, “cat” is a free morpheme, and the plural suffix “-s” is a bound morpheme. Bound
morphemes are divided into two types inflectional ( grammatical markrs) and derivational
morphemes. Derivational morphemes can change the class of words , for example ‘teach’
becomes ‘teacher’ teach is a verb but teacher is nou. Sometimes it maintain the class like friend
becomes friendship, they both are noun.

12. Step# 3.Practice:
Q#1. Identify that how many morphemes have these words.
1) Disrespectful
2) Gentlemanliness
3) Antidisestablishmentarianism
4) Undesirability
5) Unhappiness
Q#2. Identify free and bound morphemes.

1) Truthfulness
2) Unwholesome
3) Underdeveloped
4) Disillusionment
5) Unsystematically
Q#3. Change the class of given words with prefixes and suffixes.
1) Write
2) Quick
3) Use
4) Friend
5) specific
Q#4. Read the given statements carefully and tick true or false.
1. There is no difference between words and morphemes. T/F
2. Morphemes are minimal unit of language. T/F
3. Free morphemes must be attached to other words to convey their meaning. T/F
4. If we try to break up a morpheme, it loses its identity. T/F
5. In ‘unhappiness’ there are only two morphemes. T/Y
Q#5. Choose the correct answer.

1. There are basically………. types of inflectional morphemes.
a) 2 b) 3) c) 8
2. The general term for prefix, suffix and infix is…….
a) Prefixation b) intonation c) affix
3. ……… is phonologically distinct variants of the same morpheme.
a) Morph b) allomorph c) phone
4. There are …… types of bound morphemes.
a) 4 b) 5 c) 2
5. The word gentlemanliness have……morphemes.
a) 2 b) 3 c) 4 d) 5

13. Answer key:
Q#1. 1. Dis-respect-ful 2. gentle + man + li + ness 3. anti + dis + establish + ment + ari
+ an + ism 4. un + desire + able + ity 5. Un-happi-ness
Q#2.
Free Bound
Truth Full, ness
Whole, some Un.
Under. Develop Ed
Illusion Dis, ment
System Un, atic. Al, ly

Q#3.
1. Write-writer ( v-n) 2. Quick- quickness ( adjective-noun) 3. Use-usefully ( v- adverb)
4. friend-befriend( n- v) 5. Specific-specification ( adjective- noun)
Q#4. 1. F 2. T 3. F 4. T 5. F
Q#5. 1) c 2) c 3) b 4) c 5) b

Step 4: Production
 98% preview the lesson fully.
 70% discuss with group members happily.
 90% listen carefully and 75% have the answers. 50% are willing to answer the questions.
Test of the whole lesson will be taken and grading of the students will be done on the basis of
this test.
Homework task:
 Make any 10 words using prefixes and suffixes
 Find out detailed difference between inflectional and derivational morphemes.
 What are the differences between each type of morphemes?
 What is the difference between lexical and functional morphemes.?

14. Prefixes
Infixes