Study Question

1/ How many morphemes are there in the word "terrorists"?

• The word "terrorists" has three morphemes:

  • "terror" (free morpheme)

  • "-ist" (derivational bound morpheme, meaning "a person who")

  • "-s" (inflectional bound morpheme, indicating plural)

2/ What kind of morpheme is the suffix in "slowly"?

• The suffix "-ly" is a derivational morpheme. It changes the adjective "slow" into the adverb "slowly."

3/ What are the functional morphemes in the following sentence? When she walked into the room, the doctor asked me if I had a sore throat or an annoying cough.

• In this sentence, the functional morphemes are:

  • "when"

  • "she"

  • "into"

  • "the" (x2)

  • "me"

  • "if"

  • "I"

  • "a" (x2)

  • "or"

  • "an"

4/ (i) List the bound morphemes in these words:

• fearlessly: "fear" (free), "-less" (bound derivational), "-ly" (bound derivational)

• happier: "happy" (free), "-er" (bound inflectional)

• misleads: "mis-" (bound derivational), "lead" (free), "-s" (bound inflectional)

• previewer: "pre-" (bound derivational), "view" (free), "-er" (bound derivational)

• shortening: "short" (free), "-en" (bound derivational), "-ing" (bound inflectional)

• unreconstructed: "un-" (bound derivational), "-re" (bound derivational), "construct" (free), "-ed" (bound inflectional)

(ii) Which of these words has a bound stem: consist, deceive, introduce, repeat?

• The words with bound stems are "deceive" and "introduce". The stems "ceive" and "duce" cannot stand alone as free morphemes.

(iii) Which of these words contains an allomorph of the morpheme “past tense”: are, have, must, sitting, waits?

• None of these words contain a past tense allomorph. However, "sitting" does involve an ongoing aspect (present participle "-ing"), and "waits" includes a present tense "-s" for third-person singular.

5/ (i) Which word(s) in the following sentence would you put in a closed class? Bob brought hot donuts to class.

• Closed class words (function words) include:

  • "to"

(ii) Which word(s) in the following sentence would you put in an open class? I put it on the shelf near you and him.

• Open class words (content words) include:

  • "put"

  • "shelf"

  • "near"

*6. How many regular inflectional morphemes are there in English?- 

- English has **8 regular inflectional morphemes**. These are:

  1. **-s** (plural)

  2. **-’s** (possessive)

  3. **-s** (3rd person singular present tense)

  4. **-ed** (past tense)

  5. **-ing** (present participle)

  6. **-en** or **-ed** (past participle)

  7. **-er** (comparative)

  8. **-est** (superlative)

7. What are the inflectional morphemes in these expressions?

(a) _Have you eaten yet?_

- **-en** (past participle of "eat")

(b) _Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?_

- **-ing** (present participle of "wait")

- **-en** (past participle of "be")

(c) _She’s younger than me and always dresses in the latest style._

- **-er** (comparative of "young")

- **-s** (3rd person singular present tense of "dress")

- **-est** (superlative of "late")

(d) _We looked through my grandmother’s old photo albums._

- **-ed** (past tense of "look")

- **-’s** (possessive of "grandmother")

- **-s** (plural of "album")

(e) _My parents’ parents were all from Scotland._

- **-s** (plural of "parent")

- **-’s** (possessive of "parents")