11. The morphemic structure of English words. Typology of morphemes. Structural and semantic classifications of morphemes.

Morphology is a branch of linguistics which studies the form, inner structure, function, and patterns of occurrence of a morpheme as the smallest meaningful unit of language.

The term morphology (Gr. morphé ‘form, shape’ and lógos ‘study’) was borrowed from biology by the German writer J. W. von Goethe in the 19th century; it was taken up by linguistics to designate the study of form and structure of living organisms as a cover term for inflection and word formation.

Theoretical foundations of morphology were laid in Aristotle’s grammars and Stoics’ works, who were the first to define four parts of speech (the noun, the verb, the conjunction, and the link), introduced the notions of case, gender system of nouns, the system of verbal tenses.

The fundamental principles of modern European grammars were established by Aristotle’s disciple Dionysus from Fracia (II c. BC), who singled out eight parts of speech (the noun, the verb, the participle, the link, the pronoun, the preposition, the adverb, and the conjunction).

In the 19th c. interest in morphology was stimulated by the development of approaches to world languages classification resulting in the study of general laws of structure and significant elements such as prefixes and inflections.

In the 20th c. the field of morphology has been narrowed to the study of the internal structure of words.

The structure of English words:

A morpheme (Gr. morphé ‘form, shape’) is one of the fundamental units of a language, a minimum sign that is an association of a given meaning with a given form (sound and graphic), e.g. old, un+happy, grow+th, blue+colour+ed.

Depending on the number of morphemes, words are divided into:

monomorphic are root-words consisting of only one root-morpheme, i.e. simple words, e.g. to grow, a book, white, fast etc.

polymorphic are words consisting of at least one root-morpheme and a number of derivational affixes, i.e. derivatives, compounds, e.g. good-looking, employee, blue-eyed etc.

Types of morphemes:

An allomorph (a morphemic variant) (Gr. állos ‘different’ and morphé ‘form, shape’) is a phonetically conditioned positional variant of the same derivational or functional morpheme identical in meaning and function and differing in sound only insomuch, as their complementary distribution produces various phonetic assimilation effects, e.g. please /pli:z/ pleasure /pleʒ/ pleasant /plez/.

Complementary distribution takes place when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment, e.g. in-competent, il-logical, ir-responsible, im-possible; cat-s, box-es; organis-ation, corrup-tion.

Contastive distribution characterises different morphemes occurring in the same linguistic environment, but signaling different meanings, e.g. –able in measurable and –ed in measured.

A pseudo-morpheme (a quasi-morpheme) is a morpheme which has a differential meaning and a distributional meaning but does not possess any lexical or functional (part-of-speech) meaning, e.g. re- and -tain in retain, con- and –ceive in conceive etc.

A unique morpheme is an isolated pseudo-morpheme which does not occur in other words but is understood as meaningful because the constituent morphemes display a more or less clear denotational meaning, e.g. ham- in hamlet (cf. booklet, ringlet), cran- in cranberry (журавлина), mul- in mulberry (шовковиця), -et in pocket etc.

Structural classification of morphemes:

free morphemes are morphemes which coincide with a word-form of an independently functioning word; they can be found only among roots, e.g. hero- as in heroism, event- as in eventful;

bound morphemes are morphemes which do not coincide with a separate word-form; they include all affixes, e.g. de- as in decode, -less as in fearless, -s as in girls; some root-morphemes, e.g. docu- as in document, horr- as in horrible, theor- as in theory etc;

semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes are morphemes which stand midway between a root and an affix; they can function as an independent full-meaning word and an affix at the same time, e.g. to speak ill of sb – to be ill-dressed / ill-bred / ill-fed;

Semi-prefixes: half-, mini-, midi-, maxi-, self-, by- etc.;

Semi-suffixes: -man, -like, -proof, -friendly, -oriented, -ware etc

Semantic classification of morphemes:

According to the role they play in the structure of words, morphemes fall into:

root (radical) morphemes – the lexical nuclei of words which are characterised by individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language; the root remains after the removal of all functional and derivational affixes and does not admit any further analysis, e.g teach- in to teach, teacher, teaching;

non-root morphemes represented by inflectional morphemes (inflections) and affixational morphemes (affixes).

According to the position in a word, affixational morphemes fall into:

prefixes – derivational affixes standing before the stem and modifying its meaning, e.g. ex-minister, in-sensitive, re-read etc.; about 51 in the system of Modern English;

suffixes – derivational affixes following the stem and forming a new derivative within the same part of speech (e.g. king-dom, book-let, child-hood etc.) or in a different word class (e.g. do-er, wash-able, sharp-en etc.);

infixes – affixational morphemes placed within a word, e.g –n– in stand.

According to their functions and meaning, affixes fall into:

derivational, e.g. suffixes: abstract-noun-makers (-age, -dom, -ery, -ing, -ism); concrete-noun-makers (-eer, -er, -ess, -let); adverb-makers (-ly, -ward(s), -wise); verb-makers (-ate, -en, -ify, -ize/-ise); adjective-/noun-makers (-ful, -ese, -(i)an, -ist), etc.; they are attached to a derivational base; they are the object of study of derivational morphology which investigates the way in which new items of vocabulary can be built up out of combinations of elements;

functional (inflectional), e.g. -s (plurality; 3rd person singular); ‘s (genitive case); -n’t (contracted negative); -ed (past tense; past participle); -ing (present participle); -er, -est (comparison); they are attached to a morphological stem; they are the object of study of inflectional morphology which deals with the way words vary in their form in order to express a grammatical contrast.

derivational affixes

encode lexical meaning;

are syntactically irrelevant;

can occur inside derivation;

often change the part of speech;

are often semantically opaque;

are often restricted in their productivity;

are not restricted to suffixation.