The Branches of Linguistics "MORPHOLOGY"

WHAT IS MORPHOLOGY?

Morphology is the branch of linguistics (and one of the major components of grammar) that studies word structures, especially in terms of morphemes. According to Bloomfield, it is the study of the constructions in which sound forms appear among the constituents. Dorfman defines morphology as the study of the ways and methods of grouping sounds into sound-complexes or words.

Morphology is a level of structure between the phonological and the syntactic. It is complementary to syntax. Morphology is the grammar of words; syntax is the grammar of sentences.

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1.1 MORPHEME

          A morpheme is an minimal indivisible unit in morphology. According to Hockett: “Morphemes are the smallest individually meaningful elements in the utterance of a language”.

The word ‘unlikely’ has three morphemes while the word ‘carpet’ is a single morpheme. Thus, a systematic study of morphemes or how morphemes join to form words is known as morphology.

1.2 FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES

There are two types of morphemes, free morphemes and bound morphemes.

a.      free morphemes is the morphemes which can stand by them self as single words. For example : open and tour

b.      bound morphemes is the morphemes which can not stand alone and are typically attached to another forms/ suffix and affix (re-, -ist, -ed, -s, ect.). for example :

Undressed

un-                   dress                -ed

prefix               stem                suffix

(bound)            (free)               (bound)

Lexical and functional morphemes

a)     Lexical morphemes are free morphemes which fall into two catagories set nouns, adjectives, and verbs as a content. It is treated as an ‘open’ class of words. For example : girl, man, house, ect.

b)    Functional morphemes are also free morphemes, but the se consists largely of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns. It is described as a ‘close’ class of words. For example : and, but, when, on, near, above, in, the, that, ect.

Derivational and inflectional morphemes

a)     Derivational morphemes are used to make new words or to make words of different grammatical category from the stem. For example :

·        ness changes the adjective “good” to the noun “goodness”

·        full changes the noun “care” to the adjective “careful”

b)    Inflectional morphemes are used to produse new words in the language, but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. It shows if a word is plural or singular, past tense or not, comparative or passive form.

·        Noun + -s, s

·        Verbs + -s, -ed, -ing, -en

·        Adjective + -est, -er 

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