Comparativetypolog y

Comparative analysis of the morphological systems of English and Uzbek
Morphological structure of words
Word is usually characterised as the smallest naming unit consisting of a definite number of sounds and denoting a definite lexical meaning and expressing definite grammatical categories. It usually is a subject-matter of morphology, which studies the form and structure of the word. It is well known that the morphological system of the language reveals its properties through the morphemic structure of words. As a part of the grammatical theory morphology faces two segmental units of the language: the morpheme and the word.

Morpheme is known as the smallest meaningful unit of the language into which a word may be divided. E.g. in the word writ-ER-s the root morpheme write expresses the lexical meaning of the word, lexical morpheme -ER showes the doer of the action denoted by the root morpheme, and the grammatical suffix -s indicates the number of the doers, i.e. more than one person is meant. Similar opinion can be said regarding the following units of the language, such as finish-ed, courage-ous-ly, un-prepar-ed-ness; тугал-лан-ма-ган-лик-дан-дир, бе-даъво-лар-дан.

Being a meaningful segmental component of the word a morpheme is formed by phonemes but unlike the word it is elementary, i.e. it is indivisible into smaller meaningful components. There may be zero morphemes, i.e. the absence of morpheme may indicate a certain lexical or grammatical meaning: Cf: book _ - book-s, hope_ -hope-ful # китоб_ - китоб-лар; но-умид- _умид. In these examples the zero morphemes denoted by ( _ ) shows a singular form of the noun or absence of certain notion. In cases of “students come, children come, geese come” the morphs -s, en, and [i:] (Cf goose) are allomorphs of of the morpheme of plurality “-лар” in Uzbek.

Like a word a morpheme is a two-facet language unit, an association of a certain meaning with a certain sound-pattern. But unlike the word a morpheme is not an autonomous body (unit) and can occur in speech only as a constituent part of the word. It cannot be segmented into smaller units without losing its constitutive essence.

The morphemes can be divided into root (free) morphemes and affixal (bound) morphemes (affixes). A form is said to be free

if tit may stand alone without changing its meaning; if not it is a bound form, as it always bound to something else.

E.g: In the words sportive, elegant morphemes sport, elegant may occur alone as utterances, but the forms -ive,