Morphology as one of the branches of Linguistic

CHAPTER I

EXPLANATION

A.    Introduction To Morphology

Morphology is the branch of linguistics and one of the major components of grammar that studies word structure, especially in terms of morphemes. There is a basic distinction in language studies between morphology and syntax. Morphology is primarily concerned with the internal structures of words, while syntax is primarily concerned with the way in which words are out together in sentences.

The term ‘morphology’ has been taken over from biology where it is used to denote the study of the form of plants and animals. It was first used for linguistics purposes in 1859 by the German linguist, August Schleicher, to refer to the study of the form of words. In present-day linguistics, the term morphology refers to the study of the internal structure of words, and the systematic form-meaning correspondences between words.

Morphology is an essential subfield of linguistics. Generally, it aims to describe the structure of words and patterns of word formation in a language. Specifically, it aims to:

1.      Pin down the principles for relating the form and meaning of morphological expressions.

2.      Explain how the morphological units are integrated and the resulting formations interpreted.

3.      Show how morphological units are organized in the lexicon in terms of affinity and contrast.

The study of morphology uncovers the lexical resources of the language, helps speaker to acquire the skills of using them creatively and consequently express their thoughts and emotions with eloquence.

B.     MORPHEME

Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language. Morpheme is a meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word or a word element that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts.

Morphemes are commonly classified into:

1.                Free morpheme, which can occur as separate words.

2.                Bound morpheme, which cannot stand alone as words.

For example, helpfulness which has three morphemes, that is help, -ful, -ness. Each morpheme in the word helpfulness does not have the same status. The core, or starting point of this formation is help, while –ful and –ness are then added to form helpfulness. In this case, help is the free morpheme, which can stand by itself, while –ful and –ness are the bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone as a word.

A word can be analyzed as consisting of one morpheme (like luck) or two or more morpheme (like unluckily), each morpheme usually expresses a distinct meaning. When a morpheme is represented by a segment, that segment is a morph.

Identically, free morphemes are similar to roots (which will be studying following subfield), while the bound morphemes are indicated as affixes which do not belong to the lexical category.

In addition to serve as resources in the creation of vocabulary, morphemes supply grammatical tags to words, helping us to identify on the basis form of part of speech of words in sentences we hear or read. For example, in the sentence morphemes supply grammatical tags to words, the plural morpheme ending –s helps identify morphemes, tags, and words as nouns; the –ical ending underscores the adjectival relationship between grammatical and the following noun, tags, which it modifies.

C.    ROOT

Root is a word or word element (that is, a morpheme) from which other words grow, usually through the addition of affixes, prefixes and suffixes. A lexical morph—the smallest, indivisible, simple lexical component in a word—is called a root. In native vocabulary, root can usually appear as independent words. For that reason they are called free morphs. Complex words typically consist of a root morpheme and one or more affixes. The root constitutes the core of the word and carries the major component of its meaning, for example, unreadable, luckily, and considerable. Roots typically belong to a lexical category such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, or preposition. Unlike roots, affixes do not belong to a lexical category and are always bound morphemes. For example, the affix –er is a bound morpheme that combine with a verb such as drive, giving a noun with the meaning ‘one who drives’.

Morphologically simple words, which contain only a single root morpheme, may be compared to morphologically complex words which contain at least one free morpheme and any number of bound morphemes. Thus, a word like ‘desire’ may be defined as a root morpheme constituting a simple /single word. ‘Desirable’ by contrast, is complex, combining a root morpheme with bound morpheme –able. More complex word is ‘undesirability’ which comprises one root and three bound morphemes, i.e. un + desire + able + ity. Notice also how, in complex words of this sort, the spelling of the root may be altered to conform to the bound morphemes around it. Hence, ‘desire’ becomes ‘desir-’. Another example is ‘beauty’ will be transformed into ‘beauti-’ in the formation of ‘beautiful’.

D.    DERIVATIONAL MORPHEMES

In morphology, derivational morpheme is an affix that is added to a word to create a new word or a new form of a word. Derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category (part of speech) of a word. For example, affix –ful that is added to beauty change the word from a noun to an adjective (i.e beautiful). The form that is resulted from the adding of derivational morpheme is called a derivative.

Derivational morphemes are used to change the part of speech of words. Notice some following derivational changes below:

1.    Verb to noun by suffixing –ion, -age, -al, -ance/-ence, -(e)ry, -ment, -t, -tion/-sion, -ure, -ant/-ent, –er/-or/-eer, -(i)an/-arian, -ist, -ing. For example, ­elect – election, marry – marriage, arrive – arrival, allow – allowance, persist – persistence, bribe – bribery, arrange – arrangement, weigh – weight, deviate – deviation, enclose – enclosure, participate – participant, erase – eraser, govern – governor, auction – auctioneer, library – librarian, science – scientist, dance – dancing.

2.    Adjective to noun by suffixing –(i)ty, -ness, -th. For example, secure – security, useful – usefulness, warm – warmth.

3.    Noun to adjective by suffixing –(i)al, -ar, -ary/-ery, -ed, -esque, -ful, -(ic)al, -ish, -istic, -less, -ly, -ous, -y. For example, monument – monumental, fame – familiar, element – elementary, talent – talented, picture – picturesque, hope – hopeful, history – historic(al), style – stylish, character – characteristic, use – useless, friend – friendly, leisure – leisurely, fame – famous, silk – silky.

4.    Verb to adjective by suffixing –able/-ible, -ent, -ed, -ile, -ing, -ive, -(at)ory. For example, desire – desirable, sense – sensible, depend – dependent, frustrate – frustrated, host – hostile, astonish – astonishing, attract – attractive, congratulate – congratulatory.

5.    Adjective or noun to verb by suffixing –ize/-ise, -en, -fy, -ate. For example, real – realize, fright – frighten, sharp – sharpen, beauty – beautify, saliva – salivate. Other forms of derivative verb formed by prefixing –un, -dis, -re, -mis, -en, -be.  For example, do – undo, obey – disobey, tell – retell, lay – mislay, courage – encourage, moan – bemoan.

6.    Adjective to adverb by suffixing –ly. For example, rapid – rapidly, sincere – sincerely, total – totally.

E.     INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

In English Morphology, inflectional morpheme is a suffix that is added to a word to assign a particular grammatical property to that word.  In other words, inflectional morpheme is used only for grammatical purposes. Inflectional morphemes serve as grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison. Only English nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs—all open classes of words—take inflectional affixes. Inflectional always follow derivational ones if both occur in a word, which makes sense if we think if inflections as affixes on fully formed words. For example, the word antidisestablishmentarianism and compartmentalize each contain a number of derivational affixes, and any inflectional affixes must occur at the end: antidisestablishmentarianisms and compartmentalized.

The use of inflectional morphemes happens this way:

1.      Forms of nouns

Most countable nouns in English have two word forms, they are a singular and a plural. We have noted that –s is the regular suffix for forming a plural, like cat – cats, hero – heroes. Irregular suffixes express plurality include –i, -ae, -a (as in cacti, formulae, and phenomena); the suffix –(r)en that shows up in children, brethren, and oxen; and a very few others such as the –im in Kibbutzim and cherubim.

There are also some countable nouns that express their plural with no suffix at all, as in man – men, tooth – teeth, mouse – mice. However, there are also some whose plurals display not even a vowel change, like sheep, fish, trout, and deer.

2.      Forms of pronouns and determiners

Determiners deserve a mention here because some of them display singular–plural contrast and pronouns combine the singular–plural contrast with contrast unique to them, between subject and non-subject forms.

a.       Determiners

Let’s see table below:

Singular	Plural
This	These
That	Those

b.      Pronouns

Let’s see table below:

Subject pronoun	Object pronoun	Possessive adjective	Possessive pronoun
I	Me	My	Mine
You	You	Your	Yours
They	Them	Their	Theirs
We	Us	Our	Ours
He	Him	His	His
She	Her	Her	Hers
It	It	It	Its

And possessive meaning for the particular pronoun such as the man, a cat, etc, using apostrophe –‘s, for example, the man’s bicycle is broken.

3.      Forms of verbs

Inflectional verbs happen this way:

a.       Third singular pronoun in simple present (as in performs).

b.      Past tense (as in performed).

c.       Present progressive (as in performing).

d.      Perfect or passive participle (as in performed).

In English, there are more than 150 irregular verbs that do not use suffix –ed for past progressive and past participle. Nevertheless, they still have past tense and past participle form, e.g. freeze – froze – frozen. Moreover, there are also irregular verbs whose past tense and past participle form display not even a letter change, as in bet – bet – bet, hit – hit – hit, and bid – bid – bid.

4.      Forms of adjectives

Inflectional adjectives are used to express comparison degree. See table below:

Positive	Comparative	Superlative
Happy	Happier	Happiest
Untidy	Untidier	Untidiest
Cheap	Cheaper	Cheapest
Expensive	More expensive	Most expensive
Good	Better	Best

5.      Forms of adverbs

Just as well as inflectional adjectives, inflectional adverb is used in comparison degree, for example, soon – sooner – soonest, early – earlier – earliest, and quickly – more quickly – most quickly.

An inflectional morpheme does not have the capacity to change the meaning or the syntactic class of the word it is bound to and will have a predictable meaning for all such words. Thus, the present tense will mean the same thing regardless of the verb that is inflected.

The difference between inflectional and derivational morphemes is worth emphasizing. An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word, for example, both strong and stronger are adjectives. However, a derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word. The verb teach becomes the noun teacher if it is added affix –er. So, the suffix –er can be an inflectional morpheme as the part of an adjective and also a distinct derivational morpheme as part of a noun. Just because they look the same (-er) does not mean they do the same kind of work.

Whenever there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix attached to the same word, they always appear in different order. First the derivational is attached to the word, then the inflectional is added to produce new form, e.g. teach – teacher – teachers.

CHAPTER II

REFERENCES

Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew, 2002, An Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure, Janson: Edinburg University Press.

Malmkjaer, Kirsten et.al, 2010, The Linguistics Encyclopedia, London and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group.

Stabler, Edward, 2010, Linguistics, Campbell.