the smallest unit of meaning in a language (has meaning)

Ex: books, walked, cats, etc

Free and Bound Morphemes

 2 Main Types Morphemes:

• Free morphemes: These morphemes can stand alone as independent words 

Ex: book (n), run (v), happy (adj), quickly (adv)

• Bound morphemes: These morphemes cannot stand alone and are usually attached to other forms (e.g., re-, -ist, -ed, -s). These are also called affixes (prefixes and suffixes).

Ex: redo, artist, walked, jumped, unhappy

4.Morphs, Allomorphs and Special Cases

• Phones as the actual phonetic realization of phonemes → we can propost morphs as the actual forms used to realized morphemes. 

• Allomorph is one of a closely related set of morphs (the realization are put in slashes /.../)

• Special cases :

• Change the root: e.g: chick -> chicken

• Remain the same: e.g: read -> read

• Replace the root: e.g: be -> am/is/are

• Stress: 'content (n) -> con'tent (v)

5.Other languages

6.Study Questions

1 How many morphemes are there in the word terrorists?

-> The word "terrorists" has three morpheme

2 What kind of morpheme is the suffix in slowly?

->The suffix in "slowly" is a derivational morpheme.

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.

-> "when" (conjunction)

"she" (pronoun)

"the" (article)

"in" (preposition)

"the" (article)

"me" (pronoun)

"if" (conjunction)

"I" (pronoun)

"or" (conjunction)

4

(i) List the bound morphemes in these words: fearlessly, happier, misleads,

previewer, shortening, unreconstructed

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

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

-> (i) fearlessly: -less, -ly

happier: -er

misleads: mis-, -s

previewer: pre-, -er

shortening: -en, -ing

unreconstructed: un-, -ed

(ii) The word deceive has a bound stem

(iii)The word sitting contains the allomorph of the past tense morpheme, which is -ed in its base form 

5

(i) Which word(s) in the following sentence would you put in a closed class?

Bob brought hot donuts to class.

(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.

-> (i) The closed class words are: Bob, brought, to.

(ii) The open class words are: put, shelf, near.

6 How many regular inflectional morphemes are there in English?

-> English has eight regular inflectional morphemes.

7 What are the inflectional morphemes in these expressions?

(a) Have you eaten yet?

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

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

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

(e) My parents’ parents were all from Scotland.

->(a) Have you eaten yet?

• eaten (past participle, -en)

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

• been (past participle, -en)

• waiting (present participle, -ing)

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

• younger (comparative, -er)

•  dresses ( singular verb)

•  latest (superlative)

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

• looked (past tense, -ed)

(e) My parents’ parents were all from Scotland.

• parents’ (possessive, -’s)

• parents (plural, -s)

8 What are the allomorphs of the morpheme “plural” in the following set of English words?

criteria, dogs, oxen, deer, judges, stimuli

-> criteria: no plural morpheme (irregular)

• dogs: -s

• oxen: irregular plural (no morpheme)

• deer: no plural morpheme (same form)

• judges: -s

• stimuli: irregular plural (no morpheme)

9 In Indonesian, the singular form translating “child” is anak and the plural form (“children”) is anakanak. What is the technical term used to describe this relationship?

-> Derivational

10 Provide equivalent forms, in the languages listed, for the English translations shown on the right below.

Ganda omuloŋgo (“twin”) – (“twins”) ____________

Ilocano tawtáwa (“windows”) – (“window”) ____________

Ilocano tálon (“field”) – (“fields”) ____________

Kanuri nəmkəǰi (“sweetness”) – (“sweet”) ____________

Tagalog bili (“buy”) – (“will buy”) ____________

Tagalog kain (“eat”) – (“Eat!”) ____________

->