Morpholo

gy
Morpholog
y
• J.W. von Goethe
• originally means the study of forms and
structures of living organisms.
• consists of the study of form, inner structure,
function, and the occurrence of a morpheme.
• name comes from Greek words “Morphos”
(shape or form)
WORD
• sound or a combination of sounds, or its
representation in writing or printing, that
symbolizes and communicates a meaning and
may consist of a single morpheme or of a
combination of morphemes.(Farlex Online
Dictionary)
WORD
• FREE FORM
• an element that can occur in isolation
and/or whose position with respect to
neighboring elements is not entirely fixed.
2 Types of Words
1. SIMPLE- words that can’t be broken down into smaller
meaningful units.

2. COMPLEX- can be analyzed into

constituents parts.
• FORMS:
1. closed form- words are melded together (e.g. firefly,
secondhand, softball, childlike, crosstown, redhead,
keyboard, makeup, notebook)
2. hyphenated form- (e.g. daughter-in-law, master-at-arms,
over-the-counter, six-pack, six-year-old, mass-produced)
3. open form- (e.g. as post office, real estate, middle class,
full moon, half sister, attorney general)
 Word Categories
• Content / Open-Class Morphemes
-open to the invention of arbitrary new items (includes major lexical
categories such as nouns, adjectives and adverbs).

• Function / Closed Morphemes

- are essentially closed to invention or
borrowing (includes prepositions, articles,
pronouns and conjunctions)
Allomorphs
 Nondistinctive realizations of a particular
morpheme that have the same function and
are phonetically similar.

 For example , the English plural morpheme

can appear as [s] in cats, [z] as in dogs, or
[‘z] as in churches.

 Each of these three pronunciations is said to

be the allomorph of the same morpheme.
Morpheme
s
 The smallest units of meaning, may be whole
simple words (e.g. man, run, big) or parts of
complex words (e.g. un-, faith-, and –ful in
infaithful)
2 Types of Morphemes

1. Bound 2. Free
Morphemes Morpheme
• must be attached to • can constitute a
another elements. word by itself.
 Words consisting of one or two
morphemes
one morpheme two three more than three

and - - -

boy boy-s

hunt hunt-er hunt-er-s

hospital hospital-ize hospital-iz-ation hospital-iz-ation-s

Gentle gentle-man gentle-man gentle-man-ness

Word Structure
1. Affixation
2. Structure without Affixes
a) Conversion
b) Ablaut
c) Stress shift
 In a morphologically complex
word, one constituent may be
considered as the basic one / the core
of the form (stem, root or base), with
the others treated as being added on
(affixes).
 Affixation
• morphological process whereby an affix is
attached to a root or stem.

3 Types of Affixes

1. PREFIXES – precede the stem

2. SUFFIXES – follow the stem

3. INFIXES – inserted within another form

 Other types of Affixes Structure without Affixes
• Reduplicative Affix Conversion or Zero-derivation
• its form duplicates all or • creates a new word without the
part of the stem. use of affixation by assigning
• Examples: an already existing word to a
• tatakbo new syntactic category.
• lalakad
• Full Reduplication • Example:
• repetition of the entire
word. Noun Derived verb
• Examples:
father father
• ora ᵑ ora ᵑ ship ship
• gyzel gyzel Verb Derived Noun
• Partial Reduplication condúct cónduct
• repetition of the first permít pérmit
consonant-vowel of the
root.
 Ablaut Stress Shift
• the replacement of • used in English to mark
a vowel with a the difference between
different vowel. related nouns and verbs.
• Examples:

Examples:
• sing to song Noun Derived verb
• sell to sale father father
• ball to bell ship ship
Verb Derived Noun
condúct cónduct
permít pérmit
Word Formation
1. Derivation
2. Inflection
3. Compounding
4. Coinage
5. Borrowing
6. Blending
7. Clipping
8. Backformation
9. Conversion
10. Acronyms
Derivation
• creates a new word by changing the
category.
• make new words from old ones.
• a new word is formed by adding a
morpheme that makes nouns out of
(some) verbs.
• Examples:
• hunt(v) + -er= hunter(n)
• serve(v) + -ice= service(n)
Properties of some derivational
affixes in English to give a noun
-ation is added to a verb finalization
finalize confirmation
confirm to give a verb
un- is added to a verb
untie
tie
unwind
wind
un-is added to an adjective to give an adjective
happy unhappy
wise unwise
-al is added to a noun to give an adjective
institution
institutional
universe
-ize is added to an adjective universal
concrete to give a verb
solar concretize
solarize
Compounding
• process involving the combination of
two already existing words to yield a
new word.
• examples:
dog + house = doghouse
(noun) + (noun) = noun
cry + baby = crybaby
(verb) + (noun) = noun
strong + box = strongbox
(adjective) + (noun) = noun
Inflection
• modifies a word’s form in order to mark the
grammatical subclass to which it belongs.
• vary (or inflect) the form of words in order to
express the grammatical features that a given
language chooses, such a singular/plural or
past/present tense.

• -s (Plural)
• -ed (Past)
• -ing (Progressive)
• -er (Comparative)
• -est(Superlative)
Other word formation
• Clipping
• process whereby a new word is created by
shortening a polysyllabic word.
ex.
prof – professor
ad – advertisement
phys-ed – physical education
pol-sci – political science
lo-bat- low battery
check-op- check operator
Coinages
• a new word is created either deliberately
or accidentally without using the other
word formation processes and often from
seemingly nothing.
• Examples:
aspirines linoleum
calatorheroin Muggle
band-aid Nylon
factoid Psychedelic
Frisbee Quark
Google Xerox
kerosene zipper
Kleenex Laundromat
Borrowing
• word from one language is borrowed
directly into another language.
• Examples:

algebra – Arabic murder – French

bagel – Yiddish near – Sanskrit
cherub – Hebrew paprika – Hungarian
chow mein – Chinese pizza – Italian
fjord – Norwegian smorgasbord – Swedish
galore – Irish tamale – Spanish
haiku – Japanese yo-yo – Filipino
kielbasa – Polish
Blending
• words that are created from parts of two already existing
lexical items.
• Examples:
1. biographical + picture → biopic
2. breakfast + lunch → brunch
3. chuckle + snort → chortle
4. cybernetic + organism → cyborg
5. guess + estimate → guesstimate
6. hazardous + material → hazmat
7. motor + hotel → motel
Clipping
• word is reduced or shortened without changing
the meaning of the word.
• Examples:
• advertisement – ad
• alligator – gator
• laboratory – lab
• mathematics – math
• public house – pub
• raccoon – coon
• reputation – rep
• situation comedy – sitcom
• Backformation
• process whereby a word whose form is similar to that
of a derived form undergoes a process of deaffixation.
• Examples:
Original Backformation
babysitter babysit
donation donate
gambler gamble
hazy haze
moonlighter moonlight
obsessive obsess
procession process
resurrection resurrect
sassy sass
television televise
Conversion
• a word of one grammatical form becomes
a word of another grammatical form
without any changes to spelling or
pronunciation.
• Examples:
Noun – Verb a) My grandmother bottled (verb) the juice
bottle – to bottle and canned (verb) the pickles.
can – to can b) My grandmother put the juice in a
eye – to eye bottle (noun) and the pickles in a can
host – to host (noun).
knife – to knife c) She microwaved (verb) her lunch.
microwave – to microwave d) She heated her lunch in the microwave
(noun).
e) The doctor eyed (verb) my swollen eye
(noun).
• Acronyms
• formed from the initial sounds or letter of a string of
words, such as the name of an organization or a scientific
expression
• Examples:
ASAP – as soon as possible
AWOL – absent without leave
laser - light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASDAQ - National Association of Securities Dealers Automated
Quotations
PIN – personal identification number
radar - radio detection and ranging
scuba - self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
TESOL – Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages
WASP – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
• Other sources
• It is sometimes possible to create new words from
names.
examples:
brand names accepted as generic terms
xerox – photocopy
kleenex – facial tissue
scientific terms
watt fahrenheit
curie kelvin
onomatopoeic words
buzz cuckoo
hiss sizzle
Eponyms Abbreviations
• new word is formed from
the name of a real of • word or phrase is shortened.
fictitious person. Intialisms are a type of
• Examples: abbreviation formed by the
• cardigan – James Thomas initial letters of a word or
Brudnell, 7th Earl of
Cardigan
phrase.
• cereal – Ceres • Examples:
• dunce – John Duns Scotusg • dept.-department
• uillotine – Joseph Ignace • A.M.-ante meridiem
Guillotin • i.e.-id est (that is)
• jacuzzi – Candido Jacuzzi • yd.-yard
• luddite – Ned Ludd
• malapropism – Mrs.
Malaprop
• mesmerize – Franz Anton
Mesmer
Calquing
Nonce Words
• a borrowed word or phrase is • new words formed through any
translated from one language to number of word formation
processes with the resulting word
another. meeting a lexical need that is not
• Examples:
expected to recur.
• beer garden – German – Biergarten • Examples:
• blue-blood – Spanish – sangre azul • cotton-wool – to stuff or close
(the ears) with cotton-wool.
• commonplace – Latin – locus commūnis
• touch-me-not-ishness – having a
• flea market – French – marché aux puces ‘touch-me-not’ character; stand-
• free verse – French – vers libre off-ish.
• twi-thought – an indistinct or
vague thought.
• witchcraftical – The practices of
a witch or witches; the exercise of
supernatural power supposed to
be possessed by persons in
league with the devil or evil spirits.
Power or influence like that of a
magician; bewitching or
fascinating attraction or charm.
 Labeled brackets
or
Tree Diagram
 used to present the structure of the entire word.
V
Example:
Af V
demoralize

N Af

Legend:
V-verb
N-noun
Af-affix
de moral ize
 Reference:
Contemporary Linguistics by O’Grady,
et al., 1989