Morphological construction of the words Morphemes and Words word

Morphological construction of the words

Morphemes and Words

WORD

• particular meaning
• particular sound form
• capable of a particular grammatical employment
• able to form a sentence
• autonomous

MORPHEME

• particular meaning
• particular sound form
• not autonomous
• constituent part of a word
• not divisible into smaller meaningful units

Words are subdivided into two classes:

Non-segmentable

• (to) teach
• (to) bear
• drive

Segmentable

• teacher, teaching
• unbearable
• driver

ALLOMORPHS

• Variants of one and the same morpheme

e.g. poor – poverty

south – southern

wide - width

Complementary distribution (allomorphs)

• Two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment
• E.g. –ion/-sion/-tion/-ation

im-/il-/ir-/in- (impossible/ illegal/irresistible/indirect

long - lengh

Contrastive distribution (morphemes)

• Two language units can appear in the same environment
• They signal different meanings
• E.g. –able (measurable)

-ed (measured)

FREE morphemes

• Coincide with a word-form
• May stand alone without changing its meaning
• Can be only roots
• E.g. sport- in sportive

BOUND morphemes

• Do not coincide with separate word-forms
• Occur only as a constituent part of words
• Are mostly derivational morphemes
• E.g. –ive in sportive;

eleg- and -ant in elegant

A ROOT MORPHEME

• is a lexical center of a word
• has an individual lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words (word-family)

e.g. to write, writer, writing

A ROOT MORPHEME

• does not possess a part-of-speech meaning

e.g. cold water, to water flowers

• is often homonymous to words

e.g. find, bear, land, man

• is an ultimate constituent at a morphological level of analysis

A STEM

• is what remains of a word when a derivational or functional affix is removed from the word

e.g. hearty, heart - hearts

A STEM

• expresses lexical and part-of-speech meaning

e.g. develop- (verbal stem) + -ment = development (noun stem)

A STEM

• remains unchanged throughout a word’s paradigm

e.g. hearty – heartier – (the) heartiest;

to ask – asks – asked – asked- asking;

singer – singer’s – singers – singers’

FUNCTIONAL AFFIXES

• Convey grammatical meaning

e.g. –s –the plural of nouns – boys

-er – comparative degree of adjectives - smaller

FUNCTIONAL AFFIXES

• build different forms of one and the same word (a word-form)

e.g. boy- boys, boy’s – boys’;

take – takes;

hearty – heartier – (the) heartiest

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

• build new words

e.g. to teach - a teacher

• have a part-of-speech meaning

e.g. to change – changeable

to organize – organization

• are dependent on the root they modify (bound)

A SUFFIX

• a derivational morpheme
• follows the stem or root
• forms a new derived word in a different part of speech or a different word class

e.g. heart – hearty, heartless, hearten

A PREFIX

• a derivational morpheme
• stands before the root or stem
• modifies the word meaning

e.g. hearten – dishearten

AN INFIX

• is placed within the word

e.g. stand

to-us-ward (toward us)

A SEMI-AFFIX

• occupies an intermediate position between roots and affixes
• is a root morpheme which functions as a derivational affix

e.g. well-done, well-fed

fireman, spaceman

ill-dressed, ill-housed

lady-like, business-like

CLASSIFICATION OF AFFIXES

• Native & borrowed (e.g. sleepy – actor)
• Productive & non-productive (e.g. disappoint – childhood)
• Frequent & non-frequent (e.g. harmful)
• Noun-forming, adjective-forming, etc. (e.g. mobster, awake, untie, etc.)

CLASSIFICATION OF AFFIXES

• transpositive (change the lexico-grammatical meaning of the word) & non-transpositive (do not change the lexico-grammatical meaning)

e.g. non- + stop (v.) = non-stop (adj.)

employ (v.) + -ee = employee (n.)

CLASSIFICATION OF AFFIXES

• polysemantic (possess several connected meanings) & monosemantic (possess only one meaning)

e.g. un- 1) to reverse action: untie

2) to deprive of: unhive, unearth

-less, without: colorless

ANALYSIS INTO IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENTS (анализ по непосредственным составляющим)

Ungentlemanly

• Un- + gentlemanly (unnatural, untimely)
• Un- +gentleman- + -ly (womanly, masterly)
• Un- + gentle- + -man- + -ly (noble)
• Un- + -gent- + -le- + -man- + -ly

STRUCTURAL TYPES OF WORDS

MONOMORPHIC WORDS

• Simple words (root words) = one root morpheme + (functional affix)

e.g. seldom, dog, asked, chairs

POLYMORPHIC WORDS

• Affixed (derived) words or derivatives = one root morpheme + one or more derivational affixes + (functional affix)

e.g. acceptable, outdo, dislikes, discouragement

POLYMORPHIC WORDS

• Compound words = two or more root morphemes + (functional affix)

e.g. baby-moons, eye-ball, stick-and-carrot (policy)

POLYMORPHIC WORDS

• Compound-affixed words (derivational compounds or compound derivatives) = two or more root morphemes + one or more derivational affixes + (functional affix)

e.g. job-hopper, pen-holder, light-mindedness