Morphology is the study of investigating basic forms in language or the study of forms. A beeter way of looking at linguistic forms in different languages would be to use this nation of elements in the message, rather tha identifying only words. For example : in Swahili (spoken through out East Africa), the nitakupenda convoys what in English would haveto be represented as separate words like I wiil love you.
Ni -ta -ku -penda
I will you love
Morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical fungtion. It is a minimal unit which indicates the meaning. For example of elements are –s, -er, -ed, -ing, ect.
e.g : “reopened” consists of three morphemes, re-, open, -ed
re- : again
open : open
-ed : indicating past tense
1.3 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 :
un- dress -ed
prefix stem suffix
(bound) (free) (bound)
1.4 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.
1.5 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
1.6. morphology description
The difference between derivational and inflectional morphemes is worth emphasizing. For example, both old and older are adjectives. –er inflection, a derivational morphemes can change the grammatical category of a word “teach” becomes the noun “teacher”.
The child’s wildness shocked the teachers.
The : functional -ness : derivational teach : lexical
Child : lexical shock : lexical -er : derivational
-‘s : inflectional -ed : inflectional -s : inflectional
Wild : lexical the : functional
Lexical (child, teach)
free functional (and, the)
Bound derivational (re-, -ness)
Inflectional (-‘s, -ed)
1.7 problems in morphological description
English words in different morphemes are easily identifiable as saperate elements. In analysis of different language, the solution to some of this problems are clearer in some instances than in others. For example: law and legal. A full description of English morphology will have to take account of both historical influences and the effect of borrowed elements.
1.8 Morphs and Allomorphs
Morphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes. For example, the form cars consists of two morphs, car + -s, realizing a lexical morpheme (plural), so there are one morph used to realize the inflectional morpheme “plural”.
Allomorphs are a particular morphemes or a group of different morphs, all versionsof one morpheme. We can use the prefix “allo-“ (= one of a closely related set). For example, man + plural, we have a vowel change in the word (a becomes e) as the morphs that produces the so- called “irregural” plural form men.
1.9 Other languages
At morphology of other languages, we can find another forms and petterns realizing the basic type of morphemes. For example bellow is from English and Aztec (from Central America). In both cases are attached with a derivational morpheme to a stem then added an inflectional morpheme.
Stem derivational inflectional
Dark + en (make) + ed (past) = darkened
Mic (die) + tia (cause to) + s (future) = mictias (will kill)
Different pettern occur in other languages. In this examples, there seems to be repetation of the first part of the singular form. When the first part is bi- in the singular, the plural begins with this form repeted bibi-. The process involved here is technically known as reduplication (= repeating all or part of a form). Talon (field) singular becomes tatalon (fields) plural.
Kanuri is a language spoken in Nigeria. For example :
(excellent) karirte nemkarite (excellence)
(small) kura nemkura (bigness)
Derivational morpheme : prefix nem- noun from adjective.
Ganda is a language spoken in Uganda. Different languages also employ different means to produce inflectional marking on forms. For example :
(doctor) omusawo abasawo (doctors)
(woman) omukazi abakazi (women)
Inflectional prefix : omu- as a singular and aba- as a plural.
Ilocano is a language of the Philippines. We find different way of making plurals.
(head) ulo ululo (heads)
(road) dalan daldalan (roads)
The process involved here is technical known as reduplication (= repeating all or part of a form).
Tagalong is alanguage spoken in philippines.
Basa (read) tawag (call) sulat (write)
Bumasa (read!) tumawag (call!) simulat (write!)
Babasa (will read) tatawag (will call) susulat (will write)
If we assume that the first form in each column is some type of stem, then it appears that, in the second item in each column, an element –um- has been inserted after the first consonant, or more precisely after the syllable onset. It is an example of an infix. In the third example in each column note that the change in form involves in each case , a repetition of the first syllable. So, the marking of future referece in Tagalog appears to be accomplished via reduplication.