What operation is called morphemic analysis ?

9-Task

1. 
   What operation is called morphemic analysis ?
   

There are two levels of morphological analysis : morphemic and derivational . Morphemic analysis is the segmentation of a word into morphemes , their number and types . For example : en/courage – en /courage/ment ( 2 morphemes – 3 morphemes ) . The aim of the morphemic analysis is the segmentation of a word into morphemes , the defining of the number and type of these morphemes . The basic unit of the morphemic analysis is the morpheme . Morphemic analysis is when a student comes a new word and breaks it down into segments in order to assess the meaning to certain parts and thus come to a more reasonable definition then just guessing . By analyzing a word’s structure using morphemes , it allows parts of new word to be understood .

2. 
   What are the procedures for revealing morphemes suggested by Z .Harris and Ch. Hockett .
   

According to Zellig Harris "The morphemic analysis is the operation by which the analyst isolates minimum meaningful elements in the utterances of a language, and decides which occurrences of such elements shall be regarded as occurrences of "the same" element".The general procedure of isolating the minimum meaningful elements is as follows:

Step 1. The utterances of a language are examined (obviously) not all of them, but a sampling which we hope will be statistically valid. Recurrent partials with constant meaning (ran away in John ran away and Bill ran away) are discovered; recurrent partials not composed of smaller ones (way) are alternants or morphs. So are any partials not recurrent but left over when all recurrent ones are counted for. Every utterance is composed entirely of morphs. The division of a stretch of speech between one morph and another, we shall call a cut.

Step 2. Two or more morphs are grouped into a single morpheme if they:

a) have the same meaning;

b) never occur in identical environments and

c) have combined environments no greater than the environments of some single alternant in the language.

Step 3. The difference in the phonemic shape of alternants of morphemes are organized and stated; this constitutes morphophonemics.

Ch . Hockett’s approach to this theme :