2016م - 1444هـ
Ling-Ling-Morphology







Morphology

Morphology is the study of word formation, of the structure of words.

Some observations about words and their structure:

1. some words can be divided into parts which still have meaning

2. many words have meaning by themselves. But some words have meaning

only when used with other words

3. some of the parts into which words can be divided can stand alone as

words. But others cannot

4. these word-parts that can occur only in combination must be combined in

the correct way

5. languages create new words systematically

What linguists infer from these observations:

• The meaningful parts into which words can be divided—e.g., boldest can be

divided into bold+est--are called the morphemes of the language. These are

considered the basic units of meaning in a particular language.

• Words that have meaning by themselves—boy, food, door—are called lexical

morphemes. Those words that function to specify the relationship between one

lexical morpheme and another—words like at, in, on, -ed, -s—are called

grammatical morphemes.

• Those morphemes that can stand alone as words are called free morphemes

(e.g., boy, food, in, on). The morphemes that occur only in combination are called

bound morphemes (e.g., -ed, -s, -ing).

• Bound grammatical morphemes can be further divided into two types:

inflectional morphemes (e.g., -s, -est, -ing) and derivational morphemes (e.g., -

ful, -like, -ly, un-, dis-).

• Processes of word-formation can be described.

Morphemes

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