Morphology 2nd Year 2nd Semester-2

MORPHEMES
System is also found in the way words are constructed from smaller parts.
Words are often defined as minimum free from, i.e. the smallest pieces of language which can
by themselves constitute a complete utterance. In the words ‘’ refill’’ and ‘’slowly’’ we know
perfectly what -re and -ly mean, but these do not constitute utterances or words.
The smallest meaningful element in language is called a morpheme. So -re and -ly are
both morphemes.Therefore, the smallest syntactic unit is the morpheme.
The |sleep |walk|ing |albatross | chant|ed| a| dream|y|lullaby.
The, albatross, a, lullaby are all single morpheme because none of them can be syntactically
split up further, chanted and dreamy, on the other hand, each consists of morphemes.
Morphemes such as albatross, lullaby which can occur by themselves as whole words are
known as free morphemes.
Those such as anti, ed, ly which must be attached to another morpheme are bound
morphemes. Bound morphemes are composed of two main parts : inflectional and
derivational morphemes. Let us examine the sentence below.
The owl looked up at the cloudy sky.
Both’’ looked’’ and ‘’cloudy’’ consist of one free morpheme followed by a bound morpheme.
Yet bound morphemes differ in nature. –ed on the end of ‘‘looked” is an inflectional
morpheme, since it provides further information about existing lexical item ‘‘look”; in
this case, indicating that looking occurred in the past. Other examples of inflectional
morphemes are the plural, ‘‘owls”, and the possessive as in Peter’s car.
However –y on the end of cloudy behave rather differently. It is a derivational morpheme,
i.e. one which creates an entirely new word .’’Cloud’’ and ‘’cloudily’’ behave quite
differently and fit into different slots of sentences. Other examples of derivational morphemes
are -ness as in ‘’happiness’’, -ish as ‘’distinguish’’ and –ment as in ‘’establishment’’. In most
cases, it is easy tell to difference between inflection and derivation. Above all, inflectional
endings do not alter the syntactic behavior of an item in any major way. The word still fits
into the same slot in the sentence. Derivational endings create entirely new words .In addition,
inflectional endings can be added onto derivational ones, but not vice-versa. That is, we find
words such as ‘’establishments’’( -establish-ment-s) and not ‘’establish-s-ment’’ different in
character. English has relatively few inflectional morphemes. These are on the whole easy to
identify, though they sometimes present problems of analysis.
ALLAMORPHS
Sometimes, a morpheme has only phonological form. But frequently it has a number of
variants known as allomorphs.
Allomorphs may vary considerably. Totally dissimilar forms may be allomorphs of the same
morpheme. ‘’Cats, dogs, horses, sheep, oxen, geese, lice, mice’’ all contain the English plural
morpheme.
An allomorph is said to be phonologically conditioned when its form is dependent on the
adjacent morpheme.
An allomorph is said to be lexically conditioned when its form seems to be a purely
accidental one, linked to a particular vocabulary item.
The English plural morpheme provides excellent examples of both phonologically and
lexically conditioned allomorphs. Let us have a look at some of these.
PHONOLOGICAL CONDITIONING
The study of the different phonemic shapes of allomorphs is known as (morphophonology )
sometimes abbreviated to morphology /-s/, /-z/, /-ɪz/ are all morphologically-conditioned
allomorphs of the English plural morpheme. That is, each allomorph occurs in a predictable
set of environments
/s/ occurs after most voiced phonemes as in dogs, lambs, bees
/s/ occurs after most voiceless phonemes as in cats, giraffes, and skunks
/ ɪz / occurs after most of sibilants (hissing and hushing sounds) as in horses, cheeses, dishes.
LEXICAL CONDITIONING
Words such as ‘’oxen, sheep, and geese, mice, lice’’ present a problem. Although they
function as plurals in the same way as cats, dogs, they are not marked as plurals in the same
way. Such lexically conditioned plurals do not follow any specific rule. Each one has to be
learnt separately.
Words such as oxen, sheep, geese, lice, mice can be identified as syntactically equal to the
cats and dogs type of plural because they fit into the same “slot” in a sentence.
‘’Oxen, sheep, mice, lice and geese’’ each contain two morphemes :
Ox + plural, sheep + plural, goose + plural…etc
But only ‘’ox’’ is easily divisible into two: ox+ /ən/ (-en)
Sheep can be divided into two if a zero suffix is assumed. A zero suffix is a convenient
linguistic fiction which is sometimes used in cases of this type. It is normally written / Ø /
(Sheep + / Ø /)
There is no obvious way to analyse “geese”. At one time, linguists suggested that the plural
vowel / i: / in / gi:s / which replaces the /u:/ in / gu:s / should be regarded as special type of
allomorph called a replacive.
/gu:s / + / i: / ← (/ u / )
Here the formula / i: /← (/ u: / ) means “ / i: / replace / u: / ”
But this is rather strained explanation. These days, most linguists simply accept that the form
/gi:s/ (geese) represents two morphemes :goose + plural and the two cannot be separated.And
a similar explanation is required for forms as “went”, “took” which represent :go + past tense
, take + past tense
WORD CLASSES
In every language, there are limited numbers of types of lexical items. These different kinds
of words are traditionally known as “parts of speech”, though in linguistic terminology the
label word class is more common. Words classes are conventionally given labels, such as
noun, verb, and adjective. Words are classified into word classes partly on account of their
syntactic behaviour, partly on the basis of their morphological form. That is, words from the
same word class are likely to fit into the same slot in a sentence and to be inflected in similar
ways. For example the word class traditionally known as “verb” can be reorganised as a verb
partly because it occurs after nouns (or phrases containing a noun), and partly because most
verbs have an inflectional ending -ed to indicate the past
e. g. Arabella detests snails.
Marianna smiled.
Careful analysis is needed, because in some cases, items which superficially appear to fit into
the same slot in a sentence turn out to be rather different in character. Consider the sentences:
Charlie ate mangoes.
Charlie ate well.
At first sight, we might wrongly assume that mangoes and well belong to the same word
class. But a less superficial analysis reveals that they behave somewhat differently overall. If
we try to alterg the sentences around, we could say:
Mangoes were eaten by Charlie.
What Charlie ate was mangoes.

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MORPHEMES

The owl looked up at the cloudy sky.

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