Morphological structure of a word. Classification of Morphemes

1. Morphological structure of a word. Classification of Morphemes

The word is the main unit of Morphology. The Word is the smallest unit of the language having positional independence and generalized representative of all word-forms, which it has. e.g. Speaking of word “река”we mean all word-forms (реку, реки, рекой). Thus a word-forms is a particular form of a word & the word represents all possible word-forms.

While the word is the largest unit of Morphology, the morpheme is the smallest unit, having both form (sound) & substance (meaning). The notion of the morpheme was introduced by Бодуэн де Куртэ as a generalized expression of the components of the word: the stem & the affixes.
The morpheme is represented in the language by its variants – allomorphs, having special forms & sounding differently (one & the same meaning). e.g. dreamed [d], worked [t], loaded [id].
A great many words in a language has a composite nature & are made up of smaller units, each having sound form & meaning. These are called morphemes. e.g. Teach-er, help-less-ness, sports-man.
Like a word a morpheme has a sound form & meaning.
Unlike a word a morpheme can’t be divided into smaller units without losing their constitutive meaning & can’t be used separately, can occur in speech only as a constituent part of a word.
1. Semantic classification of morphemes:
1. root morphemes: they are lexical centers of the words, their basic constituent parts (black-ness, London-er); The roots of words are classical lexical morphemes. Obligatory for any word.
2. affixational morphemes: subdivided into: prefixes + suffixes + inflexions = affixes: they have a generalized lexical meaning & the-part-of-speech-meaning (–er, -est, –ee -> A doer of an action, noun-forming affixes). Not obligatory.
Prefixes & suffixes have word-building functions, together with the root they form the stem of the word. Words which consist of a root and a prefix or suffix (or both) are called derivate words or derivatives.
Inflections express different morphological categories. e.g. fatherless & worked.
The morphemic model of the word is the following: prefix + root + lex suffix + gram suffix.
2. Structural classification of morphemes:
1. free morphemes (root morphemes) – a form may stand alone without changing and meaning.
friend, way, day, week;
2. bound morphemes (all the affixes) can’t form words by themselves, they are only part of words: un-, -less, pre-, -or, -er, dis-, mis-;
Productive bound morphemes: 1) -(e)s denotes * the plural of nouns, * the possessive case of nouns, * the 3d person singular of verbs (Present); 2) –(e)d denotes the Past & Past Participle of verbs; 3) –ing: * the Gerund, * the Present Participle; 4) –er, -est: the Comparative & Superlative degrees of adj-s & adv-s.
3. semi-bound (can function as an affix & as a free morpheme): thing (free)–something (bound), like – manlike, ladylike, do well–well-bred, well-done, well-known.1. Morphological structure of a word.