MORPHOLOGY morphemes In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical

In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. When it stands by itself, it is considered a root because it has a meaning of its own

MORPHOLOGY FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES In linguistics, amorphemeis the smallest grammatical unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. When it stands by itself, it is considered a root because it has a meaning of its own MORPHEMES E.g. the morpheme cat. and when it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an affix because it has a grammatical function. E.g. the –s in cats to specify that it is plural. Every word comprises one or more morphemes. The more combinations a morpheme is found in, the more productive it is said to be. MORPHEMES Example: "Unbreakable" comprises three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying "not"), -break- (the root, a free morpheme), and -able (a free morpheme signifying "can be done"). Allomorphs of the plural morpheme for regular nouns: /s/ (e.g. in cats /kæts/), / z/ɨ (e.g. in dishes /d z/), ɪʃɨ and /z/ (e.g. in dogs /d z/). ɒɡ MORPHEMES Every morpheme can be classified as either free or bound. These categories are mutually exclusive, and as such, a given morpheme will belong to exactly one of them. CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEMES FREE VS. BOUND Free morphemes can function independently as words (e.g. town, dog) and can appear with other lexemes (e.g. townhall, doghouse) CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEMES FREE VS. BOUND Bound morphemes appear only as parts of words, always in conjunction with a root and sometimes with other bound morphemes. • For example, un- appears only accompanied by other morphemes to form a word. Most bound morphemes in English are affixes, particularly prefixes and suffixes, Examples of suffixes are: tion, ation, ible, ing, etc. • Bound morphemes that are not affixes are called cranberry orphemes. • Bound morphemes can be further classified as derivational or inflectional. Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root, change either the semantic meaning or part of speech of the affected word. For example, in the word happiness, the addition of the bound morpheme -ness to the root happy changes the word from an adjective (happy) to a noun (happiness). In the word unkind, un- functions as a derivational morpheme, for it inverts the meaning of the word formed by the root kind. MORPHEMES Inflectional morphemes modify a verb’s tense or a noun's number without affecting the word's meaning or class. Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to form dogs and adding -ed to wait to form waited. In English, there are eight inflections. MORPHEMES FREE MORPHEMES MORPHEMES BOUND MORPHEMES DERIVATIONAL INFECTIONAL _ ness: happy - happiness _ly: love - lovely un-, in-, im-, en-, re- … Ex: kind - unkind formal – imformal do - redo modify a verb’s tense Ex: adding –s  dog  dogs adding –es  watch  watches or modify a noun's number Ex: adding –ed  wait  waited adding –s  get up  she gets up