Morphology

Morphology

Morphology is the branch of linguistics (and one of the major components of grammar) that studies word structures, especially regarding morphemes, which are the smallest units of language. They can be base words or components that form words. 

A systematic study of morphemes or how morphemes join to form words is known as morphology.

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. One accounts for the internal structure or form of words; the other describes how these words are put together in sentences.

Some Basic Concepts of Morphology

Morpheme

In the English language, a morpheme is the smallest unit that is meaningful. For example, the ‘s’ in the end of the word ‘cats’, is a morpheme. The ‘s’ won’t have any meaning if it is separated from the actual word. That is the difference between a word and a morpheme. A word has its own meaning, but a morpheme cannot have a meaning if it is not associated with a word.

The English word unkind is made up of two smaller units: un and kind. These are minimal units that cannot be further sub-divided into meaningful units. Such minimal, meaningful units of grammatical description are generally referred to as morphemes. A morpheme meets three criteria:

1.       It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.

2.       It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of its meaning or without meaningless remainders.

3.       It recurs in differing verbal environments with a relatively stable meaning.

The word unlikely has 3 morphemes while the word carpet is a single morpheme. The words car and pet are independent morphemes in themselves. The word carpet has nothing to do with the meaning of car and pet. Carpet is a minimal meaningful unit by itself. Again, the word garbage is a single morpheme while the words garb and age are independent morphemes by themselves. 

Morpheme is, therefore, the minimal unit of grammatical structure, possessing a distinctive phonemic form, having a grammatical function and may differ in its phonological manifestations. 

Morph :

The term ‘morph’ means shape. Any minimal phonetic form that has meaning is a morph. 

 A morph is simply the phonetic representation of a morpheme, how the morpheme is said.

Thus bus , in books,  book ,  are two morphs. 

The concept of morph recognises that a morpheme has a phonetic shape. This phonetic representation is called its morph. The word writer has two morphemes, write and -er. These are realizable in the phonetic shapes as /rait/ and/-∂:/. These are two morphs of the morpheme (or word in this case).

ALLOMORPH-

Allomorphs are the variants of the same morpheme. They are said to be the different realizations of one morpheme. . 

For example- the plural marker /-s/ has three allomorphs /-s, -z, -iz / which occur in three different environments such as-

cats, dogs and buses

 Similarly, the past tense morpheme can appear as /-d/, /-t/, /-id/, and /-q/. Each of these morphs belongs to the same morpheme. These are called allomorphs.

The relationship between the terms morph, allomorph and morpheme is similar to that between phone, allophone and phoneme. Those morphs which belong to the same morpheme are called allomorphs of that morpheme. Thus /s/, /z/ and /Iz/ are allomorphs of the plural morpheme {e(s)}.

Allomorphs of a morpheme may change their phonemic shapes due to  morphological conditioning.

Morphological Conditioning

The regularity of phonological conditioning is restricted. There are several irregular forms that don’t show the predictable direction of morphophonemic changes. We can always explain reasonably why such variant forms as the /t/~/d/~/id/ occur for past tense and /s/~/z/~/iz/ for plural morpheme.

But such explanation is not possible in the case of the plural form of child – children, and sheep – sheep. These forms are not phonologically conditioned, i.e. the proximity of a sound doesn’t affect these forms. en is peculiar to children, oxen and brethren. Such changes are said to be due to morphological conditioning.

We shall consider below some major types of morphological conditioning.

Zero Suffix

A zero morph is a morph, consisting of no phonetic form, that is proposed in some analyses as an allomorph of a morpheme that is ordinarily realized by a morph having some phonetic form. Examples: The plural form that is realized in two sheep is Ø, in contrast with the plural -s in two goats.

Certain words in English do not show any change of form when inflected either for pluralizing or making into past tense form. 

These singular – plural and present and past tense forms are alike.

Set A          (Singular)                    Set B (Plural)

                  Sheep                           sheep

                  deer                             deer

                  

Set A          (Present Tense)            Set B (Past Tense)

                  cut                                cut

                  put                               put

               

But we know that set A words are in present tense and that set B words are in the past tense. With this understanding we use the words.

There is a sheep

There are sheep

He cuts

He has cut

We can say that a zero suffix of plural and a zero suffix of the past tense has been added to these forms. 

 

Free Morphemes and Bound Morphemes

There are Two types of morphemes in English 

: free form and bound form. 

A morpheme that occurs alone, or can stand alone is a free form. It does not require the presence of another morpheme; in other words, such a morpheme doesn’t need the support of any other element. All content words are free forms : house, church, girl, cat, walk, see, red, short, book, water. Some form words are also free forms, always, though, but, never, and, or, if. The meaning of such words is ‘contained in their ability to refer to some point in the world outside’.

A second class of morphemes called bound form, contain elements that must always be attached to some other elements. They cannot occur or stand alone. In words like watery, invisible, reader, possibility, madness, cats, and manly. We can identify such morphemic particles as -y, in, -He, – cr, -ty, -ness, -s, and -ly. Their meaning is in their grammatical functions such as noun-making, verb-forming, pluralizing, adjectivising, and so on. They can be attached to any other free forms of the same form class to construct similar segments. Isolated they don’t stand by themselves.

affix, a grammatical element that is combined with a word, stem, or phrase to produce derived or inflected forms. There are three main types of affixes: prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. A prefix occurs at the beginning of a word or stem (sub-mit, pre-determine, un-willing); a suffix at the end (wonder-ful, depend-ent, act-ion); and an infix occurs in the middle. English has no infixes,

A prefix precedes a free form, a stem or a root. We see these in the following words : uncommon, decentralise, disappoint, recycle. Un-, de-, dis-, re- are all prefixes. There are many other prefixes. All these are word-formative elements.

A suffix is also a word-formative clement – it follows a free form. Examples are sleeveless, temptation, government, activate, darkness, reader.

By adding a suffix we can either negativise a word, i.e. hat less, merciless, or change its form class; dark is an adjective, by adding -ness we can change it into noun.

Inflection and Derivation

Affixes are classified on the basis of their function into two categories

First, inflectional morphemes never change the grammatical category (part of speech) of a word. derivational morphemes often change the part of speech of a word. Thus, the verb read becomes the noun reader when we add the derivational morpheme -er. It is simply that read is a verb, but reader is a noun.

 – derivation and inflection. Affixes that cannot take another affix is generally identified as inflectional affixes. If we add -s or -ed to present we will get derivative words presents and presented

We cannot add another suffix to it. Inflectional suffixes of this type may create a set of forms of a morpheme within the same form class. Such words are said to be ‘inflected’. We can in this way pluralise a noun, speeches, judges and tops, etc.

These words are said to be inflected for pluralising.  Generally, in English, inflectional affixes are suffixes. They define a part of speech, but donot change it – ugly, uglier, ugliest – all the three forms belong to the adjective form class.

Both prefixes and suffixes can be derivational. The form-class of the morphemes may be changed by additing a derivational affix. Globe (N) may become global (Adj), globalize (vb), globalization (N); and so also child (N), childish (Adj), childishly (Adv), childishness (N). Each time a derivational affix is added in the above examples, we see the form-class changing.

Another function is that they maintain the form-class, that is, the grammatical category is not changed, as is seen below :

If we add the prefix un-to certain (Adj.), we donot find the prefix changing the root to another form-class. Uncertain remains as much an adjective as certain is. Similarly, possess (vb) can take a negativising prefix dis- to make an antonym dispossess while retaining its form-class association.

Structure of Words

Considered from the point of view of their morpheme constituents, there are mainly three types of words:

(i) Simple Words: They consist of a single free morpheme followed, or not, by an inflectional suffix, e.g. play, plays, stronger.

(ii) Complex words: They consist of a base and a derivational affix, e.g. goodness, enable, boyhood, determination.

(iii) Compound words: They consist of two (or more) free stems which are independent words by themselves, e.g. over-ripe, happy-go-lucky, elevator-operator.