2. The morphological structure of the word. Morphemes and allomorphs. The morphological meaning of the word.

Morphology studies the composition of derived words.

A great many words have a composite nature and are made up of smaller units, each possessing sound-form and meaning. These are generally referred to as morphemes defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language units.

If viewed structurally, words appear to be divisible into smaller units which are called morphemes. Morphemes do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words. Yet they possess meanings of their own.

Morpheme – smallest non-segmentable meaningful unit of L.

Ex. to teach – teacher

drill - driller

Morphemes cannot be segmented into smaller units without losing their constitutive essence, i.e. two-facetness, association of a certain meaning with a given sound-pattern.

All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots (or radicals) and affixes. The latter, in their turn, fall into prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word (as in re-read, mis-pronounce, unwell) and suffixes which follow the root (as in teach-er, cur-able, diet-ate).

Words which consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes) are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word-building known as affixation (or derivation).

Identification of morphemes in various texts shows that morphemes may have different phonemic shapes.

Ex. please[pli:z] , pleasing [pli:z], pleasure [plez], pleasant[plez]

scholar – school

private – privacy

number – numerous

use [z] – use [s]

In such cases we say that the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other. All the representations of the given morpheme that manifest alteration are called allomorphs of that morpheme or morpheme variants.

Types of meaning of morphemes:

1. lexical meaning (roots, affixes)

Affixes: connotations (positive or negative)

Ex. spiderish hands (ish – negative)

wolfish smile

pig – piglet (diminutive)

2. part-of-speech meaning (not roots, only affixes)

Ex. owner

Speaker

3. distributional meaning (order of morphemes)

Ex. house-boat - плавучий дом

boat-house - навес, сарай для лодок

flower wall – цветочная стена

wall flower – 1)желтофиоль (садовая)2) шутл. дама, оставшаяся без кавалера (застенчивая или не пользующаяся успехом девушка, которая на танцах стоит у стены, наблюдая за танцующими)

4. Differential meaning (to distinguish one word from another)

Ex. redo – переделать

overdo – сверх, делать что-л. слишком усердно

Types of segmentability:

1. complete segmentability – you can easily split a word.

Ex. conversationalist

nature

native

2. conditional – semantically is not possible

Ex. re-ceive

de-ceive

ceive looks like a root, but it is not a root, segmentation is doubtful

ceive is pseudo morphene

3. defective segmentation – components never occur in other words or very seldom

Ex. en-hance

hance is a unique morpheme

ham-let

di-smay

straw-berry

cran-berry

rasp-berry