Different kinds of morphemes

In the Zapotec data, we found some morphemes (including ñee ‘foot,’ ʒike ‘shoulder,’ and ʒigi‘ chin’) which can occur as independent words in their own right. Others (including ka–‘plural,’–be ‘his,’–tu‘ your (plural),’and–du ‘our’) only appear as part of a larger word, and never as a complete word on their own. Morphemes of the first type (those that may occur as complete words) are said to be FREE, while morphemes of the second type (those that may not) are said to be BOUND.

In the examples in (13), trust, believe, spare, and palate are all examples of free morphemes, because they can occur alone as complete English words. The morphemes dis–, un–, -able, -ing, -ly, etc. are all bound, because they only occur as part of a larger word. The word chairman is an interesting example, because it contains two free morphemes.

Consider the words trusted, trusting, trusty, distrust, mistrust, and trust worthy. Intuitively it is obvious that all these words are “related” to each other in some way, and that this relationship is based on the fact that they all contain the morpheme trust. Trust is in some sense the “core” or “nucleus” of each of these words; it provides the basic element of meaning which all of the words have in common. The other morphemes in these words are in some sense “added on” to this core.

We refer to the morpheme that forms the core of a word as the ROOT. Other morphemes, which are added on to a root and modify its meaning in a consistent way, are referred to as AFFIXES. So, the related words above all contain the same root (trust)but different affixes (-ed, -ing, etc.). It is not always easy to distinguish between roots and affixes, but there are three criteria (or “rules of thumb”) that can help:

a     An affix is always bound, but a root is often free. If a particular morpheme occurs in isolation as a word, it must be a root.

b     A root normally carries LEXICAL MEANING, i.e. the kind of meaning you would look up in a dictionary or the “basic” meaning of the word (e.g. trust, man, chin). An affix, on the other hand, frequently carries only GRAMMATICAL MEANING, such as ‘plural,’ ‘third person,’ ‘past tense,’ etc.

c     An affix is always part of a CLOSED CLASS, meaning that there is only a limited (and typically small) number of other morphemes that could be found in the same position in the word. Roots, on the other hand, normally belong to an OPEN CLASS, meaning that there is a very large number of other morphemes of the same type. Moreover, new roots can be borrowed or invented quite freely, whereas new affixes enter the language only rarely.

An affix which occurs before the root is called a PREFIX, while an affix which occurs after the root is called a SUFFIX. We write affixes with a hyphen showing the relative position of the root. In the Zapotec data, we saw one prefix (ka– ‘plural’) and four suffixes: -be ‘his,’-luʔ ‘your (singular),’-tu ‘your (plural),’ and-du ‘our’.

Returning to the word chairman, we can now see that it contains two roots. Words of this type are called COMPOUND words.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

أكاديمية التطوير الإداري تنظّم دورة في اللغة الفارسية لعدد من ملاكات العتبة العباسية المقدسة

استعدادًا لافتتاحه.. المشرف على قسم الشؤون الطبية يجري جولة في مركز السيد جعفر الحلي للخدمات الطبية.

الهيأة العليا لإحياء التراث تقيم الدورة العلمية التخصصية لكتاب في رحاب العقيدة

سماحة السيد الصافي يؤكد ضرورة تنمية الموارد المالية لدائرة التقاعد الوطنية وتعظيمها

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

العلاج بالماء البارد.. باحثون يكشفون فوائده الصحية

من دون صالة رياضية.. عادة بسيطة لتحسين الصحة وخسارة الوزن

لصحة القلب وتفادي السرطان.. استهلك هذا النوع من الطعام

دراسة تحذر من خطر شرب القهوة في أكواب البلاستيك

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

إنجاز طبي تاريخي.. جراحة قلب بلا شق في الصدر

اليابان.. مراحيض توفر فحص للحالة الصحية عبر "تحليل البراز" !

اختراق واسع لمنصة "إنستغرام".. ونشر بيانات على "الدارك ويب"

علماء يحذرون: هكذا سيفنى كوكب الأرض

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Morphological aspect

Constituent structure

A typology of word structure

Analyzing position classes

Representing word structure

Morphemes Definition of “morpheme”

Analyzing word structure

Mirror in nominal morphology

Appendix 2: Hapax legomena from the Cobuild corpus

Appendix 1: 20th century neologisms from the OED

Morphological Productivity Structural Constraints in English Derivation Conclusion

Verbal derivation and the separation hypothesis