UNIT ONE

Morphology

Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. Words are at the interface among phonology, syntax and semantics (Spencer / Zwicky).

There are many current approaches to morphology. For expository purposes, this article will describe the phenomena in a fairly traditional way: treating words as combinations of discrete meaningful units (morphemes) put together by concatenation. A contemporary morphologist would call this a "morpheme-based" theory; alternatives are lexeme-based morphology and word-based morphology.

The components of a word form are called morphemes. Word formation rules describe how to select morphemes from the lexicon and to combine them.

Important concepts:

• Inflection
• Derivation
• Compounding (examples)

Morphemes make up words and are the smallest units of grammar: roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Native speakers recognize the morphemes as grammatically significant or meaningful. For example, "schoolyard" is made of "school" + "yard", "makes" is made of "make" + a grammatical suffix "-s", and "unhappiness" is made of "happy" with a prefix "un-" and a suffix "-ness".

Inflection occurs when a word has different forms but essentially the same meaning, and there is only a grammatical difference between them: for example, "make" and "makes". The "-s" is an inflectional morpheme.

In contrast, derivation makes a word with a clearly different meaning: such as "unhappy" or "happiness", both from "happy". The "un-" and "-ness" are derivational morphemes.

These examples also illustrate the other two kinds of morphemes, unbound (which are meaningful on their own) and bound (which have meaning when combined with another morpheme). Thus, the word "schoolyard" consists of two unbound morphemes ("school" and "yard"), while the word "makes" has one unbound ("make") and one bound, and "unhappiness" has one unbound and two bound.

A word may consist of two bound morphemes: the word "morpheme" itself illustrates this, since it consists, or traditionally consisted, of two bound morphemes ("morph" and "eme"). But as the example of "morpheme" reveals, bound morphemes may become unbound ones: "morph" has been adopted in linguistics for the phonological realization of a morpheme, and the verb "morph" was coined to describe a transition between morphological states (usually biological). A more familiar example is if we adopt the suffix "-ish" as a separate word, and use "ish" by itself to mean "somewhat, a bit, so-so". The suffix "-ism" is often applied in a similar way to mean "a system of beliefs or an ideology" (e.g. Darwinism).

A morpheme may have different realizations (morphs) in different contexts. For example, the verb morpheme "do" of English has three quite distinct pronunciations in the words "do", "does" (with suffix "-s"), and "don't" (with "-n't"). Such alternating morphs of a morpheme are called its allomorphs. Other examples are in past participles of verbs: "walked", "eaten", "drunk": one verb has a regular "-ed" allomorph, one has a less common "-en" allomorph, and one changes the vowel inside the verb. This last case is a problem for description, because you can't separate the morpheme "drink" from the morpheme for past participle. The two appear fused.

In some languages, of which Latin forms a prime example, several inflections are often fused into one phonetic form. These are called fusional languages. For example, dominus "master" has plural domini, while domina "mistress" has plural dominae. The ending -us contains the ideas of masculine and singular, and in addition is only used in the nominative case. In the accusative singular it is dominum, and in the genitive plural it is dominorum. It is impossible to isolate separate morphemes for case, or gender, or number. In contrast to fusional languages, agglutinative languages such as Turkish use multiple morphemes in the one word but they are all phonetically separable.

The Semitic languages show an extreme of fusion, in that word roots are often represented by fixed consonants, usually three, and their inflection and derivation is done with internal vowel patterns as well as affixes. For example, in Arabic we find kataba "he wrote", yaktubu "he writes", kaatib "writer", kitaab "book", maktab "office". All these forms use the consonant cluster KTB.

Suppletion is the replacement of a regular form by an unrelated word. In English "go" has the past tense "went", and "be" has various unrelated parts such as "am" and "was".

The term Gesamtbedeutung is used to describe the general semantic meaning of a particular morpheme, independent of grammatical function. The morphemes "-ing" and "-or" (as in "eliminating" and "eliminator") may be said to share a common Gesamtbedeutung, namely that of agency.

A cranberry morpheme is one that exists only in one bound form, such as the "cran-" of "cranberry". It is unrelated to the word "cran" meaning a case of herrings, and though it actually comes from "crane" the bird, it is not at all clear why. Phonetically, the first morphemes of "gooseberry" and "raspberry" also count as cranberry morphemes, as they don't occur by themselves, but the spelling gives an obscure clue to their origin. Compare these to "blackberry", which has two obvious unbound morphemes.

Morphemes

Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free morphemes can occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An example of a free morpheme is "bad", and an example of a bound morpheme is "ly." It is bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand-alone. It must be attached to another morpheme to produce a word.

Bound morphemes can only occur when attached to root morphemes.

Common English examples are:

• -ing
• -ed
• -er
• pre-
• cran- as in cranberry

The Root Morphemes

The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages represent root morphemes.

Roots can be either free morphemes or bound morphemes. Root morphemes are essential for affixation and compounds.

The root of a word is a unit of meaning (morpheme) and, as such, it is an abstraction, though it can usually be represented in writing as a word would be. For example, it can be said that the root of the English verb form running is run, or the root of the Spanish superlative adjective amplísimo is ampli-, since those words are clearly derived from the root forms by simple suffixes that do not alter the roots in any way. In particular, English has very little inflection, and hence a tendency to have words that are identical to their roots. But more complicated inflection, as well as other processes, can obscure the root; for example, the root of mice is mouse (still a valid word), and the root of interrupt is, arguably, rupt, which is not a word in English and only appears in derivational forms (such as disrupt, corrupt, etc.). The root rupt is written as if it were a word, but it's not.

Free morpheme: bad
Bound morpheme: ly
Word: badly

Definition: A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language.

Discussion

In Linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a given language.

English Example: The word "unbelievable" has three morphemes "un-", (negatory) a bound morpheme, "-believe-" a free morpheme, and "-able". "un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both are affixes.

Types of morphemes:

• Free morphemes like town, dog can appear with other lexemes (as in town-hall or dog-house) or they can stand alone, or "free". Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme, e.g. the plural marker in English is sometimes realized as /-z/, /-s/ or /-Iz/.

• Bound morphemes like "un-" appear only together with other morphemes to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes.

• Inflectional morphemes modify a word's tense, number, aspect, and so on.

• Derivational morphemes can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: the addition of "-ness" to "happy", for example, to give "happiness".

Current approaches to morphology conceive of morphemes as rules involving the linguistic context, rather than as isolated pieces of linguistic matter. They acknowledge that

Meaning may be directly linked to suprasegmental phonological units, such as tone or stress.

The meaning of a morpheme with a given form may vary, depending on its immediate environment.

Ex: Unladylike

• The word unladylike consists of three morphemes and four syllables.

·         Morpheme breaks:

• un- 'not'
• lady '(well behaved) female adult human'
• -like 'having the characteristics of'
• None of these morphemes can be broken up any more without losing all sense of meaning. Lady cannot be broken up into "la" and "dy," even though "la" and "dy" are separate syllables. Note that each syllable has no meaning on its own.

·         Dogs

·         The word dogs consists of two morphemes and one syllable:

• dog, and
• -s, a plural marker on nouns
• Note that a morpheme like "-s" can just be a single phoneme and does not have to be a whole syllable.

·         Technique

• The word technique consists of only one morpheme having two syllables.

·         Even though the word has two syllables, it is a single morpheme because it cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts.   

Classification 

Morphemes may be classified, on the basis of word formation, characteristics into the following types:                                                                          

Note: A clitic is a kind of morpheme that does not fit well in the above classification system because it is phonologically bound but syntactically free.

The other type of bound morphemes is called bound roots. These are morphemes (and not affixes) that must be attached to another morpheme and do not have a meaning of their own. Some examples are ceive in perceive and mit in submit.

UNIT TWO

Morpheme-morph-allomorph and phoneme-phone-allophone

The relationship between a morpheme and its morphs and allomorphs is parallel to the relationship between a phoneme and its phones and allophones.

What is morph?

Definition: A morph is the phonetic realization of a morpheme.

What is Allomorph?

Definition: An allomorph is one of two or more complementary morphs which manifest a morpheme in its different phonological or morphological environments.

Discussion: The allomorphs of a morpheme are derived from phonological rules and any morphophonemic rules that may apply to that morpheme.

Examples (English) The plural morpheme in English, usually written as '-s', has at least three allomorphs:

• [-s] as in [hQts] 'hats'
• [-z] as in [d&u0254;gz] 'dogs'

·         [«z] as in [bŒks«z] 'boxes'

What is a phoneme?

Definition: A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language.

Discussion: Phonologists have differing views of the phoneme. Following are the two major views considered here:

• In the American structuralism tradition, a phoneme is defined according to its allophones and environments.

In the generative tradition, a phoneme is defined as a set of distinctive features.

A morpheme is manifested as one or more morphs (surface forms) in different environments. These morphs are called allomorphs.

A phoneme is manifested as one or more phones (phonetic sounds) in different environments. These phones are called allophones.

What is a phone?

Definition: A phone is an unanalyzed sound of a language. It is the smallest identifiable unit found in a stream of speech that can be transcribed with an IPA symbol.

What is an allophone?

Definition: An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language.

Examples (English)

• [p] and [pH] are allophones of the phoneme /p/.

·         [t] and [tH] are allophones of the phoneme /t/.

English Morphemes

1. Free
1. Open Class
2. Closed Class
2. Bound
1. Affix
1. Derivational
2. Inflectional
2. Root

A morpheme is a unit of meaning. The meaning may be expressed by a word or by part of word. Think of the words talk and talker. The verb talk has a meaning. It means something like “ say something.” It is one word and contains one morpheme – one unit of meaning.

But the word talker has two meaning. It has the meaning of talk and also the meaning expressed by the ending er. This ending here means “ one who does,” and talker means   “ one who talks.”  So talker is a single word, but it expresses two units of meaning – it contains two morphemes.

How many morphemes are expressed by help? By helper? How many morphemes are there in thinker?

A morpheme is not the same as a syllable. Murder has two vowel sounds and therefore two syllables, but it expresses only one morpheme. We can’t break it down into murd + er because murd has no meaning by itself and murder doesn’t mean “ one who murds.” Murder is a two syllable word that has just one meaning and, therefore, just one morpheme.

How many syllables does murderer have? How many morphemes?

Some two- syllable words express one morpheme and some express two. The word is made up of two morphemes if the first part has a meaning of its own. For instance, in walker, the syllable walk has a meaning, but in cover, the syllable cov has no meaning of its own.

Tell which of the following words express one morpheme and which express two:

                        Mother             player               farmer              father

                        Rover               lumber              climber watcher

                        Finger               singer               creeper             other

Sometimes more than one morpheme may be expressed by a single syllable. For instance, goats is a one-syllable word, but it contains two morphemes, one is the word goat and the other is the ending spelled s, which expresses the meaning “ more than one” or plural. Goats contains the two morphemes the goat + plural.

Morphemes are not always pronounced or spelled in the same way, for instance, in goats we write the plural morpheme with the letter s. But how do we write the plural morpheme in bunches?

When some morphemes are added to certain words, the result is quite special. Boy + plural is boys, but man + plural is men. In men the plural morpheme is shown not by an ending at all but by a change in the vowel sound and in the spelling.

We will identify morphemes by understanding them. We will show that two morphemes go together by using plus signs. We will use arrows to show the words that are formed by combining the morphemes.

            Boy + plural                 boys                 play + er                       player

Write words for these morphemes:

Man + plural                             run + er                                    tower + plural

UNIT THREE

Kinds of Morphemes:

We have already talked about the plural morpheme and about the “one who does” morpheme. The “ one who does” morpheme changes a verb like talk to a noun like talker.

Morphemes, which make base words like talk into other kinds of words like talker, talkative, are derivational morphemes.

The plural morpheme is a kind called an inflection morpheme. We will begin our study of the eight inflection morphemes of English at this point.

1. Plural

2. Possessive

3. Present tense

4. Past tense

5. ing

6. Participle

7. Comparative

8. Superlative

Plural

The morpheme plural is represented by whatever we do to a noun to make it plural. When the noun is regular, what we do is add a sound spelled s or es and pronounced as an extra syllable, / əz /, or as / s / or / z /. The particular sound we use depends on the sound the singular ends with.

We add a syllable spelled es and pronounced / əz / when the singular form ends in one of the sounds: / ch /, / sh /, / s /, / z /, / j /.

/ch / churches               / sh / dishes                   / s / kisses, gases                      / z / roses, phrases        / j / judges, wages

When the singular noun ends in e, we need only to add s to form the extra syllable. To form the plural of all other regular nouns, we add the sound / s / or the sound / z /, but just the letter s in writing:

            / s / clocks, hats                        / z / sleds, days

Irregular nouns form the plural by changes in sound and spelling, man / men, or by making no change at all, deer / deer. We say that the plural morpheme in a noun like deer is represented by null, which means no change in sound or spelling.

To add the morpheme possessive to a singular noun, we add the same sounds that we add the morpheme plural: / əz /, / s /, / z /. Notice how the possessive morpheme is shown in writing after singular nouns.

/ əz /: the church’s, a judge’s, the bus’s,

/ s /: the ship’s, the goat’s, a turk’s,

/ z /:   herb’s, a hog’s, the knave’s, Sue’s, a lady’s

A plural and a possessive morpheme may both be added to a base word, when this is done, plural is added first and then possessive is added to the plural noun:

man + plural                 men                  man + possessive                 man’s

                        man +  plural +  possessive               men’s

Regular plural nouns end in the sound / əz /, / s /, or  / z / and the letter s or es. To add the possessive morpheme to regular plurals, we do not add any sound at all. Do you hear any difference when you say boys, boy’s, boys’?

The Morpheme of Comparison:

We have learned that the morphemes plural and possessive apply to nouns. Two more of the eight inflectional morphemes apply to adjectives. These morphemes are comparative and superlative. In the poem “ Velvet Shoes” you found three different ways to express the comparative morpheme:

                        …er than: softer than

                        more…than: more beautiful than

                        as… as: (as) white as

Adjective is the comparative morpheme and is used to compare one thing with another. 

Ex: Bob is stronger than Jim is.

The comparative forms of good and bad are irregular: better and worse.

To apply comparative to most linger adjectives, like beautiful, we use ( more …. than )  

Instead of ( ….er than):

Ex: more beautiful than. 

We may use (…. er than), though, with two- syllable adjectives that end in y, like rainy, and a few other two- syllable adjectives like narrow and simple.

When two things are equally pretty, sad, expensive, wide, and so on, we use ( as……as) to represent comparison.

Ex: pretty + comparison              as pretty as

      a. Bill is sad + comparison.                                     b. Sam is sad.

                                                c. Bill is as sad as Sam is.

The morpheme superlative is used to compare one thing with two or more things. To make such a comparison, we may use ( the …..est of ) to replace comparative.

Ex: the strongest of

            a. Bob is strong + superlative.                           b. The three boys are strong.

                                                c. Bob is the strongest of the three boys.

With the superlative transformation we must omit the entire predicate of the b sentence.  

Apply the superlative transformation to the following. The superlative forms of good and bad are best and worst.

With adjectives that require (more….. than) for comparative, we use (the most…….of) for superlative.

Ex: beautiful + sup.                   The most beautiful of 

Inflectional Morpheme in the Verb Phrase

We have applied two of the eight inflectional morphemes to nouns: plural and possessive. Two more have been applied to adjectives through the comparative and superlative transformations. Four inflectional morphemes remain, and all of these apply to verbs or to be.

Two of these morphemes are tense morphemes, present and past. English verbs have two just two tenses: present and past.

The present tense morpheme has two different forms, depending on what the subject is. If the subject is a noun phrase with a plural count noun, or if it is one of the words (I, we, you, or they), the form of present tense is null; that is, the simple form of the verb is used without change.

Ex: the + boy + plural + present + talk              the boys talk.

       You + present + talk                                              you talk.

The inflectional morpheme present applies to what follows it in the line, or string, of morphemes. The other three inflectional morphemes apply to verbs are: past, ing, and participle.

When the subject dose not contain a plural count noun or is not  (I, we, you, or they), the tense morpheme present has a form spelled ( s or es) at the end:

Ex: the + boy + present + talk                           the boy talks.

       She + present  + talk                                 she talks. 

Although the tense morpheme present has two forms when it is added to verbs, the tense morpheme past has just one form:

Ex: past + talk                    walked, as in “ He walked home yesterday.”

Verbs that have the ending (ed) in the past tense are called regular verbs. But in many verbs the past tense morpheme is shown in other ways: and such verbs are called irregular.

Ex: past + teach                     taught,                 past + go                    went.    

The word (be), unlike verbs, has three present tense forms: (is, am, are). The form (am) is used only with the personal pronoun (I) as subject, (are) is used with (we, you, they). If the subject does not contain a plural count noun, or is not (we, you, they), or (I), the present tense form is (is).

The verb (be) has two past forms: were for plural subjects (we, you, they); for other subjects, was.

Morphemes have and participle in the Auxiliary

 We have studied two inflectional morphemes that apply to verbs: present and past. Another inflectional morpheme that applies to verbs is called participle. Participle is the form used in a verb phrase after (have or has, or had). The following sentences contain verbs used in participle form.

Ex:  Bob had watched it.                       Bob had carried it.                    Bob had tagged it. 

Verbs taking (ed) are regular verbs, and their participle forms end in (ed), and many verbs, of course, have irregular past tense and participle forms.

Ex: participle + build             built

The have of have + participle is just a morpheme that precedes the participle it is not the verb (have) that means “ possess.” Notice that may add have + participle, but we do not have to. If we add the morpheme have + participle, we must add morphemes, not one and the other.

Morphemes be and ing in the Auxiliary

 We have studied three inflectional morphemes that apply to verbs: present, past, and participle. There is one more of these is the morpheme ing. We have seen that every verb phrase must have an auxiliary, and that every auxiliary must contain a tense morpheme, either past or present. We have also seen that the auxiliary may contain two optional structures. One of these is a modal; the other is a pair of optional morphemes (have + participle). We now complete the rule for the auxiliary by including a final pair of optional morpheme (be + ing).

Ex: something + past + be + ing + happen.                        Something was happening.

How Vocabularies Grow

What we learn when we learn our language is not just, or even most importantly, words and sentences. What we learn are system for making words and sentences. Knowledge of the systems permits us to make countless sentences that are correct, and that others can understand, although we have never heard or seen them before.

For instance, knowledge of the items in the sentence “ He likes it” plus knowledge of the modal system permits us to construct nine other sentences. Two of them are “ He may like it” and “ He could like it.” What are the other seven? We don’t need to have seen or heard any of these nine sentences previously to be able to make them and to know they arte correct. All we need to know is the system.

There are also word- building systems. Knowledge of these permits us to add hundreds and thousands of words to our vocabularies without learning the words one by one. Suppose for example, we know five hundred verbs- write, teach, help, find, like, spend and so on. Then we get onto the meaning of the morpheme (er) the “ one who does” morpheme. Immediately we have command of five hundred new nouns: writer, teacher, helper, finder, liker, and spender. Some of these we may never find a use for. We may never have occasion to say (liker). However, the possibility of it is always there if we should discover a need for it.

In what expression are the morphemes (er, find, keep) and plural used together?

Certain morphemes, of course, have more possible application than others. The morpheme (ly-adv-m) can be added to nearly all adjectives to make adverbs of manner. If you know (ly-adv-m) you have practically as many adverbs of manner at your disposal as you have adjectives. The morpheme (ly-adj) on the other hand, makes adjectives of only a certain subset of nouns. Knowledge of such morphemes is important too, however, in vocabulary growth. If you know the noun cost and (ly-adj), you can grasp the meaning of costly without looking it up in the dictionary. If we had to use the dictionary to discover the meaning of each new word we encounter, our vocabularies would grow very slowly.

Another derivational morpheme that contributes importantly to vocabulary growth is        (ness), as in goodness, kindness, sweetness, friendliness.

If you know the meaning of the underlying adjective, you also know the meaning of the related noun with the morpheme (ness). If you know what righteous means, you know what righteousness means.

The noun made by the addition of (ness) to an adjective is of the particular sort called an abstract noun. An abstract noun is one that refers to something that can thought of apart from a particular person or object. For instance, we can think of sadness apart from a particular person, who is sad, of pleasantness apart from a particular thing that is pleasant. The opposite of abstract is concrete. Friend is concrete; friendliness is abstract.

Most abstract nouns ending in (ness) are non count nouns, but non-count doesn’t mean the same thing as abstract. Sugar, blood, grass, are non-count nouns, but they are not abstract, they are concrete.

Some adjectives are made from abstract nouns. For instance, (angry) is made from           (anger). What abstract nouns are the adjectives dangerous, beautiful, innocent made from? If an adjective is made from an abstract noun, we are very likely to add (ness) to it to make another abstract noun. We say anger, not angriness; innocence, not innocentness.

Add (ness) only to those of the following adjectives that are not made from abstract nouns, and use the (ness) word in a sentence. If the adjective is made from an abstract noun, use that abstract noun in a sentence.

Two (ful) Morphemes

There are two morphemes spelled ful. One is the (ful) of (beautiful), the other the (ful) of (cupful). Both derivational morphemes come from the adjective (full), as in “ The world is full of beauty,” and “ The cup was full to the brim.”

We will call the ful of beautiful (ful- Adj), because it is added to nouns to make adjectives: (beauty + ful – Adj              beautiful.

Ex: mirthful, pitiful, healthful, fanciful, lawful.

The (ful) of (cupful) is called (ful- N) here because it makes nouns of measurement from certain other nouns. Thus cupful means “ the amount that will fill a cup.”

Ex: armful, spoonful, mouthful, bagful, handful.

The usual way to write the plural of nouns with (ful-N) is to add (s) at the end: (cupfuls).

Many words consist of more than two morphemes. For example, the word (cupfuls) has three morphemes: the base word (cup), the derivational morpheme (ful- N), and the inflectional morpheme (plural). When a derivational morpheme and an inflectional morpheme are both added to a word, the derivational morpheme comes first and the inflectional morpheme second.

Ex: bag + ful- N + plural                        bagfuls

Many words contain two or more derivational morphemes. Thus (beautifully) is made up of the base (beauty) and the derivational morphemes (ful- Adj) and (ly- Adv-m).

Ex: pity + ful- Adj + ly- Adv-m             pitifully 

The Morpheme less and un

The morpheme that we will name (less) makes adjectives out of nouns, and has the general meaning (without). Thus (less) added to the noun (home) gives the adjective (homeless), meaning without a home, as in “ The children were homeless.”

(Less) that represents the adjective- making morpheme is an affix, added at the end of words.

A morpheme meaning (not), however, is represented by a prefix, added at the beginning of words and spelled (un). We add the morpheme (un-not) at the beginning of adjectives and adverbs of manner

Ex: un-not + tidy                       untidy

       un-not + skillfully                       un skillfully

There are two (ful) morphemes and two (ly) morphemes so there are two (un) morphemes. The one we have studied, (un- not), adds the meaning (not) to adjectives and adverbs of manner. The other one reverses the meaning of verbs, so we will call it (un- reverse).

Ex: unchain means to take a chain off instead of putting it on, untie, unfold, unseat, unveil.

The Affixes of Old English

Many of the words that we have in modern English were not in the language in the Old English period. However, most of the more common words were. For instance, the prepositions, the modals, the adverbs of place, the indefinite pronouns, and all of the personal pronouns but one come from Old English. The one personal pronoun that doesn’t is (they) (with its related them, their, theirs). Besides, many common nouns, verbs, and adjectives were already in the language in Old English time, examples of nouns from Old English are (man, mother, tree), of verbs (eat, sing, climb), of adjectives, (warm, white, bold). However, a word in one of these word classes may be very common and still may be a borrowing from another language. It is also true that some of our affixes – prefixes and suffixes – come to us from Old English, while others do not. All of the affixes that represent inflectional morphemes do. On the other hand, only a few of the derivational morphemes come to us from Old English. We have already studied most of those that do: the two (ly’s), two (ful’s), (ness), (less) and (er).

Another morpheme from Old English is represented by the suffix (y). We will name it (y) morpheme. To what kind of word is (y) added in (dirty).

Ex: bony, stormy, funny, filmy, milky, steamy, rocky

There are other derivational morphemes that we do not use nowadays on a great many words, though we still use some of them on very common words.

Ex:

Ship: friendship, kinship, partnership,

dom: kingdom, boredom, freedom.

Hood: brotherhood, manhood, likelihood.

Some: winsome, wholesome, irksome.

Such derivational morphemes are sometimes called dead morphemes. They still occur in many words in the language, but we don’t use them much to make new words. On the other hand, morphemes like (less, ness, er, ful) are very much alive.

Some Prefixes from Old English

Even in the time of Anglo- Saxons, English was more a suffixing than a prefixing language. That is all of its inflectional morphemes and most of the derivational ones attached to the ends of words rather than to the beginnings. However, Old English did have a number of prefixes, some of which we still use. The most common of these is the morpheme (un), which we have already studied.

Another such prefix is the morpheme (be) as in (bedevil). This morpheme makes transitive verbs from nouns, adjectives, or other verbs. It has such meaning as                  “ completely” or “ thoroughly” or “ covered with” or “ affected by.” When added to adjectives, it has the meaning “ make” or “ cause to appear.” Thus belittle means “ cause to appear little.”       

The Old English morpheme (be) occurs in many words that we use today, such as (below, before, become). However, it is no longer felt to have a separate meaning.

Two other verb- making prefixes from Old English are the morphemes (over and under), which have in part the same meanings as the prepositions or particles (over and under).

Ex: overdo, overdevelop, undercharge, underfeed.

In words such as (understand, and undertake), the prefix is no longer felt to have a separate meaning. However these verbs behave just as the verbs (stand and take) do.

We have dead prefixes from Old English, just as we have dead suffixes. One is (with), but this prefix now occurs in just three verbs (withstand, withdraw, and withhold.)

UNIT FOUR

Derivational Morphemes from Latin

We have borrowed so many words from Latin that the derivational morphemes that make up the Latin words have become very familiar to us. Many of them have come into active use in English. We use them to make new words, without caring much whether the base words to which they are attached come from Latin or not.

A familiar example is the Latin morpheme spelled (ex). The morpheme (ex) was first of all a preposition in Latin meaning “ out of.” But it was also used as a prefix to add the meaning  “ out of” to verbs.

Ex: expel is composed of (ex) plus (pellere), a verb that meant “ drive.” Expel means (drive out).

The meaning of a morpheme like (ex), whether preposition or prefix, is often a bit slippery. A meaning like “out” or “out of” will often edge into other meanings, similar but a trifle different.

Ex: exceed, the morpheme (ex) has the meaning “out” exceed means something like “ go beyond.” What special meaning has (ex) acquired in the verb (expire).

In its use as an active morpheme in Modern English, (ex) has developed the general meaning “ former.” Thus an (ex- president) is a former president.

Another active derivational morpheme from Latin is represented by the prefix (re). In Latin words, this usually has the meaning “back” as in (recede), which means “go back.”

Sometimes, however, the morpheme (re) develops the meaning “ again.” For instance, the word (relent) is made of (re) plus (lentus). Lentus means “soft,” and (relent) means             “ become soft again.”

Ex: Noticing her disappointment, David relented.

As an active morpheme in English, (re) has the meaning “again”, (redo) means “ do again.”

The Morpheme in

We have seen that we usually use a hyphen with (ex) but write (re) solid with the word to which it is attached: (ex- president), (rearrange). However, there are occasions when we use (re) with a hyphen too.

Ex: He recovered the chair.                               He re-covered the chair.

The first sentence means that, he got the chair back. The second means that, he put a new cover on it. Adding the morpheme (re) to a word to give the meaning “again” may confuse it with a common verb beginning with (re). In this case we often use a hyphen for the form in which (re) simply means again.

Repose / re-pose                                  remark / re-mark                      release / re-lease

Notice that in these pairs there is usually a difference in the pronunciation of the prefix. In (repose), the (re) has the vowel sound schwa. But in (re- pose) pose again, (re) has the vowel sound / é/. Also repose has weak stress on the first syllable and (re- pose) middle stress.

A hyphen is sometimes used after (re) when the word to which the morpheme is added begins with the letter e, even when there is no danger of confusion: (re- elect and re- enter).

Another very common morpheme from Latin is usually spelled (in), as in (incomplete) or (informal). The prefix that represents the morpheme (in) is added mostly to adjectives to give the meaning “not.” (Incomplete) means not complete. So (in) has about the same meaning as our native English un-not.

A different between (in) and (un) is that we mainly add (un) to simple words, such as those that come down to us from Old English: (untrue, not intrue). We add (in) mainly to the words that come from Latin: (incomplete, not uncomplete).

We sometimes add (in) to nouns to give the meaning “not.” We do this particularly with nouns that end in (ity).

Ex: instability, inhumanity, informality, insanity, insecurity,

Sometimes (in) has special forms that depend on the beginning sound of the word to which the morpheme is added. For instance, (in) added to (possible) gives not, (inpossible), but (impossible)

Ex: imbalance, immovable.

This is part of a general process that is very important in word formation. The process is called assimilation means simply the tendency to make a sound in a word like the sound that comes next to it. The word (possible, balance, and movable) begin with the sounds /p/, / b /, and /m/. These sounds are all alike in the fact that they are formed by closing the lips. When we try to pronounce (in + possible) we tend to close the lips before we get to the (possible), while we are still saying the (in) part. Doing this changes the sound /in/ into the sound /im/. We show this in our spelling system by writing (in + possible) as (impossible).

More Examples of Assimilation

We have seen that the morpheme (in) is spelled (im) and pronounced (im) when it is added to words like (possible, balance, and movable). This process is called assimilation. We say that the /n/ is assimilation to /m/ when it comes before any of these sounds.

If we add the morpheme (in) to words like movable or mobile, how many m’s must the resulting word have?

We can’t misspell a word like (immovable or immobile) by using only one m for the prefix and another for the word to which the prefix is added.

The consonant of the morpheme (in) undergoes assimilation before certain other sounds also. Before words beginning with /r/, (in) is pronounced /ir/ and spelled (ir). For example (in + responsible is irresponsible).

People sometimes add (in) to regardless to make irregardless. But regardless already has a negative meaning given to it by the less; it means “ without regard or consideration.” Consequently it doesn’t need the additional negative of (in).

Before words beginning with / l /, the (in) of the morpheme (in) is assimilated to / il /.

Ex: in + legal                        is illegal

Remember that we have also a negative morpheme from Old English, the morpheme (un). We have seen that this is more likely to be added to simple words from Old English, whereas (in) generally goes with words borrowed from Latin. But sometimes either (un or in) may be added to the same base word. Thus we might say (unmoral as well as immoral). There is usually, as here, a slight difference in meaning, however. In such pairs, un generally means “ without.” In means “ without.”

The Morpheme ment and cy

The morpheme (ment), in the form of suffix spelled (ment), is added to verbs to make nouns:

Ex: achieve + ment                              achievement

The nouns made by the use of (ment) are mostly abstract, in some sense, but they are also mostly count nouns. However, some may also be used as non count nouns.

Ex: His goal is achievement.                      Meaning that he wants to achieve something. Here achievement is a non count noun.

But, we can also say,  

Ex: His six greatest achievements are well known. (Here achievement is a count noun)                

The morpheme (cy) also makes abstract nouns, mostly non count nouns. This morpheme is added mostly to words that ends in the sound / t /, spelled either / t / or / te / letters drop when the (cy) which represents the morpheme is added.

The morpheme (cy) may be added to adjectives or nouns. When added to adjectives it makes nouns, which mean the quality or condition of the adjective.

Ex: secrecy means “ the quality of being secret.”

Delicate - delicacy, intimate- intimacy, obstinate- obstinacy, literate- literacy, urgent- urgency, hesitant- hesitancy, frequent- frequency, malignant- malignancy.

There is one common word in which the letter / t/ is not dropped before (cy). Bankruptcy.            

The morpheme (cy) may also be added to nouns to make nouns of different sort. These nouns indicate an office or state of some kind.

Ex: presidency              the state of a president

      Piracy                                 the state of pirate.

There are some pairs of words that differ only in that one member ends in (ence or ance) and the other in ( ency or ancy):

Ex: dominance / dominancy, coherence / coherency.

Sometimes, as in these examples, there is no difference in meaning. The (ence , ency) form is usually more common and the one to use when in doubt. Sometimes, however, the meaning is quite different.

Ex: dependence/ dependency                emergence/ emergency

A Morpheme That Changes Stress

 In the word (excavation), there are three degrees of stress, two of which are shown in the dictionary respelling of the word by a heavy accent mark , and a light accent mark ΄:

Ex:                   (ek΄ kə. vā΄ shən)

We say that the syllable pronounced the most loudly has first stress; the one next in loudness has middle stress; the two pronounced least loudly have weak stress. The heavy accent mark shows the syllable with first stress: vā.

Schwa, / ə/, occurs in syllables with weak stress, and schwa may be spelled with any of the vowel letters. So the sound of the vowel in a syllable with / ə/ is no clue to the spelling.

However, certain suffixes shift the stress of words to which they are added. First stress may then fall on a syllable that has schwa in the underlying word. The syllable will now be pronounced with a vowel sound that may suggest the spelling.

Ex: organ (the second syllable has weak stress and the vowel schwa.

When the word is pronounced, there is no way to tell that / ə / in this word is spelled /a/. But suppose we add to organ a morpheme spelled (ic) that makes adjectives. The (ic) morpheme regularly shifts the stress to the syllable just preceding it.

Ex: organ + ic                             organic

With the first stress on the syllable (gan), which rhymes with (man). When we spell (organ) we think of (organic), we can’t possibly spell the second vowel with any letter but (a).

To make adjectives ending in (ic) from nouns ending in (y), the (y) is dropped.

Ex: pacify- pacific, specify- specific, history- historic, strategy- strategic, melody- melodic, academy- academic, harmony- harmonic, symmetry- symmetric.

The Suffixes ic and ical    

We have studied the use of morpheme (ic) to make adjectives from nouns. Some nouns already end in (ic). These are made into adjectives by adding (al).

Ex: music- musical, magic- magical, ethic- ethical, logic- logical, topic- topical, critic- critical,

Some adjectives that end in (ical), like the following, are not made from underlying nouns, or at least not from ones ending in (ic).

Ex: vertical, identical, chemical, mythical, radical, grammatical, nautical, botanical.

This existence of adjectives ending in (ical and ic) produces, as one might expect, a certain amount of confusion and certainty. One is often in doubt whether the word should end in (ical or ic), or perhaps in either. There are some words indeed, in which it doesn’t matter. There are pairs for which there is no difference of meaning or in which the difference is so small as to be unnoticeable. Such a pair are (alphabetical and alphabetic). One might say either “ an alphabetical arrangement” or “ an alphabetic arrangement.”

However not all members of (ic and ical) pairs are interchangeable.

Ex: economic doesn’t mean the same thing as economical. Economic means having to do with economics, as in “ an economic theory.” Economical means thrifty or frugal, as in “ an economical housewife.”

Many words that end in (ical) have no corresponding word that ends in (ic).

Ex: vertical but not vertic,                      identical but not identic.

On the hand, there are many words end in (ic) that have no sisters in (ical).

Ex: syllabic not syllabical                       scientific not scietifical  

       Volcanic not Volcanical                 basic not basical

When we make adverbs of manner from adjectives in (ical), we do so by adding (ly) in the usual way.

Ex: typical- typically, ironical- ironically, critical- critically, radical- radically

But except for the word (publicly), adjectives ending in (ic) do not form adverbs of manner in this simple way. (Publicly) is an exception; it is formed by simply adding (ly) to public. Nearly all other adjectives in (ic) add not (ly) but (ally):

Ex: basic- basically, magic- magically, scientific- scientifically, logic- logically.

The Morpheme fy

Adjectives and nouns are made into verbs by the addition of the morpheme (fy). The letter (i) proceeds the (fy).

Ex: glory- glorify, false- falsify

The morpheme (fy) borrowed from Latin. It comes from the Latin verb facere, which means, “ to make,” and it has this meaning in its use in English.

Ex: purify “ means to make pure”

Like the morpheme (ic), the morpheme (fy) has an affect on the stress. Words with (fy) have the principal stress on the third syllable from the end. Sometimes it is not the syllable that has the principal stress in the underlying word:

Ex: hūmid + fy              humīdify 

Nouns Ending in cation

Most of the verbs that end in (fy) have corresponding nouns ending in cation.   

Ex: verb- modify          noun- modification

       Verb- glorify         noun- glorification

You may remember that the (fy) comes from the Latin verb facere, which mean, “ to make.” English verbs don’t keep the (c) of facere, but the corresponding nouns do.

Verbs ending in (ply) also form nouns with the ending cation.

 Ex: verb- multiply                    noun- multiplication

The verb publish also has a corresponding noun in cation.

Third Subject: