Ivan Alexandrovich

the Kazan school of linguistics;

was the first in world linguistics to investigate the morphological structure of the word;

introduced a number of linguistic terms, including a morpheme (in 1881), a phoneme, a lexeme, a syntagm etc. The Greek suffix –eme has been adopted to denote the smallest significant or distinctive unit.

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.