3. Traditional classification of morphemes: positional and functional (semantic) criteria. Roots and affixes. Lexical (derivational, word-building) and grammatical (functional, word-changing) affixes.

In traditional grammar, the study of the morphemic structure of the word is based on two criteria: the positional criterion - the location of the morphemes with regard to each other, and the semantic (or functional) criterion - the contribution of the morphemes to the general meaning of the word.

1. According to the semantic criterion morphemes are divided into root-morphemes (roots) and affixal morphemes (affixes). Roots express the concrete, “material” part of the meaning of the word and constitute its central part. Affixes express the specific part of the meaning of the word: they specify the meaning of the root. Affixal specification may be of two kinds: of lexical or grammatical character. So, according to the semantic criterion affixes are further subdivided into lexical, or word-building (derivational) affixes, which together with the root constitute the stem of the word, and grammatical, or word-changing affixes, expressing different morphological categories, such as number, case, tense and others. With the help of lexical affixes new words are derived, or built; with the help of grammatical affixes the form of the word is changed.

The lexical morphemes are those that express full lexical meaning of their own and are associated with some object, quality, action, number of reality, like: lip, red, go, one and so on. The lexical morphemes can be subdivided into lexical-free and lexical-bound morphemes. Lexical-free are used in speech independently. The lexical-bound ones are never used independently; they are usually added to some lexical-free morphemes to build new words like- friend-ship, free-dom, teach-er, spoon-ful and so on. Thus lexical-bound morphemes are those that determine lexical meanings of words but resemble grammatical morphemes in their dependence on lexical–free morphemes. The lexical-bound morphemes are means to build new words.

The grammatical morphemes are those that are used either to connect words in sentences or to form new grammatical forms of words. The content of such morphemes are connected with the world of reality only indirectly therefore they are also called structural morphemes, e.g., shall, will, be, have, is, -(e)s, -(e)d and so on. The grammatical morphemes have two subtypes: grammatical-free and grammatical-bound. The grammatical-free ones are used in sentences independently (I shall go) while grammatical-bound ones are usually attached to some lexical-free morphemes to express new grammatical form, like: girl's bag, bigger room, asked.

2. According to the positional criterion affixes are divided into prefixes, situated before the root in the word, e.g.: underestimate, and suffixes, situated after the root, e.g.: underestim-ate.

Prefixes in English are only lexical: the word underestimate is derived from the word estimate with the help of the prefix under-.

Suffixes in English may be either lexical or grammatical; e.g. in the word underestimates -ate is a lexical suffix, because it is used to derive the verb estimate (v) from the noun esteem (n), and –s is a grammatical suffix making the 3rd person, singular form of the verb to underestimate. Lexical affixes are primarily studied by lexicology with regard to the meaning which they contribute to the general meaning of the whole word. In grammar word-building suffixes are studied as the formal markers of the words belonging to different parts of speech; they form lexical (word-building, derivational) paradigms of words united by a common root, cf.: to decide - decision - decisive – decisively.

Grammatical suffixes in English have certain peculiarities, which make them different from inflections in other languages: since they are the remnants of the old inflectional system, there are few (only six) remaining word-changing suffixes in English: -(e)s, -ed, - ing, - er, - est, - en; most of them are homonymous, e.g. -(e)s is used to form the plural of the noun (dogs), the genitive of the noun (my friend’s), and the 3rd person singular of the verb (works); some of them have lost their inflectional properties and can be attached to units larger than the word, e.g.: his daughter Mary’s arrival. That is why the term “inflection” is seldom used to denote the grammatical components of words in English.

Grammatical suffixes form word-changing (or morphological) paradigms of words, which can be observed to their full extent in inflectional languages, such as Ukrainian e.g.: стіл – стола – столу – столом - про стіл; morphological paradigms exist, though not on the same scale, in English too, e.g., the number paradigm of the noun: boy - boys.

The morphemic structure of the word can be analyzed in a linear way; for example, in the following way: underestimates - W= {[Pr +(R+L)]+Gr}, where W denotes the word, R the root, L the lexical suffix, Pr the prefix, and Gr the grammatical suffix.

Besides prefixes and suffixes, some other positional types of affix are distinguished in linguistics: for example, regular vowel interchange which takes place inside the root and transforms its meaning “from within” can be treated as an infix, e.g.: a lexical infix (different parts of speech)– blood – to bleed; a grammatical infix – tooth – teeth (plural of the noun). Since infixation is not a productive means of word-building or word-changing in modern English, it is more often seen as partial suppletivity. Full suppletivity takes place when completely different roots are paradigmatically united, e.g.: go – went.

4. The "allo-emic" theory in morphology: morphs, allomorphs and morphemes.

When studying morphemes, we should distinguish morphemes as generalized lingual units from their concrete manifestations, or variants in specific textual environments, which are called “allo-morphs”.

The so-called allo-emic theory was developed in phonetics where phonemes, as the generalized, invariant phonological units, are distinguished from their concrete realizations, the allophones. For example, one phoneme is pronounced in a different way in different environments, cf.: you [ju:] - you know [ju]; in Ukrainian, vowels are also pronounced in a different way in stressed and unstressed syllables, cf.: се[и]ло -села. The same applies to the morpheme, which is a generalized unit, an invariant, and may be represented by different variants, allo-morphs, in different textual environments. For example, the morpheme of the plural, -(e)s, sounds differently after voiceless consonants (bats), voiced consonants and vowels (rooms), and after fricative and sibilant consonants (clashes). So, [s], [z], [iz], which are united by the same meaning (the grammatical meaning of the plural), are allo-morphs of the same morpheme.