Classification of Morphemes

R.S. Ginzburg, A Course in Modern English Lexicology, §3. Classification of Morphemes [pp. 92-94]

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Two bases for morpheme classification

orphemes may be classified:

a) from the semantic point of view,

b) from the structural point of view.

a

Semantical classification

) Semantically morphemes fall into two classes: root-morphemes and non-root or affixational morphemes. Roots and affixes make two distinct classes of morphemes due to the dif­ferent roles they play in word-structure.

Roots and affixational morphemes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, -fill are understood as the lexical centresof the words, as the basic constituent part of a word without which the word is inconceivable.

The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a word, it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. Besides it may also possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster, for example the morphemeteach- in to teach, teacher, teaching, theor- intheory, theorist, theoretical,etc.

Non-root morphemes include inflectional morphemes or inflections and affixational morphemes or affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms, whereas affixes are relevant for building various types of stems—the part of a word that remains unchanged throughout its para­digm. Lexicology is concerned only with affixational morphemes.

Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes: a prefix precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixes besides the meaning proper to root-morphemes possess the part-of-speech meaning and a generalized lexical meaning.

b

Structural classification

) Structurally morphemes fall into three types: free mor­phemes, bound morphemes, semi-free (semi-bound) morphemes.

A free morpheme is defined as one that coincides with the stem or a word-form. A great many root-morphemes are free morphemes, for example, the root-morphemefriend — of the nounfriendship is naturally qualified as a free morpheme because it coincides with oneofthe forms of the nounfriend.

A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Affixes are, naturally, bound morphemes, for they always make part of a word, e.g. the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ize, etc., the prefixesun-, dis-, de-, etc. (e.g. readiness, comradeship, toactivize; unnatural, to displease, to decipher).

Many root-morphemes also belong to the class of bound morphemes which always occur in morphemic sequences, i.e. in combinations with roots or affixes. All unique roots and pseudo-roots are bound morphemes. Such are the root-morphemestheor- intheory, theoretical, etc.,barbar- inbarbarism, barbarian, etc., -ceive inconceive, perceive, etc.

Semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes are morphemes that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme. For example, the morphemewell andhalf on the one hand occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the word- form in utterances likesleep well, half an hour, on the other hand they occur as bound morphemes in words likewell-known, half-eaten, half- done.

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Relationship between the two classifications

he relationship between the two classifications of morphemes dis­cussed above can be graphically presented in the following diagram:

	structurally:	free	semi-free	bound
Morphemes
	semantically		roots		affixes

Speaking of word-structure on the morphemic level two groups of morphemes should be specially mentioned.

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Two special groups of morphemes

o the first group belong morphemes of Greek and Latin origin often called combining forms, e.g.telephone, telegraph,phonoscope, microscope, etc. The morphemestele-, graph-, scope-, micro-, phone- are characterized by a definite lexical meaning and peculiar styl­istic reference:tele- means 'far',graph- means 'writing',scope—'see­ing',micro- implies smallness,phone- means 'sound.' Comparing words withtele- as their first constituent, such astelegraph, telephone, tele­gram one may conclude thattele- is a prefix andgraph-, phone-, gram- are root-morphemes. On the other hand, words likephonograph, seismo­graph, autograph may create the impression that the second morpheme graph is a suffix and the first—a root-morpheme. This undoubtedly would lead to the absurd conclusion that words of this group contain no root-morpheme and are composed of a suffix and a prefix which runs counter to the fundamental principle of word-structure. Therefore, there is only one solution to this problem; these morphemes are all bound root-mor­phemes of a special kind and such words belong to words made up of bound roots. The fact that these morphemes do not possess the part-of-speech meaning typical of affixational morphemes evidences their status as roots.

The second group embraces morphemes occupying a kind of intermediate position, morphemes that are changing their class member­ship.

The root-morphememan- found in numerous words likepostman['poustmǝn],fisherman ['fɪʃǝmǝn],gentleman ['dʒǝntlmǝn] in compari­son with the same root used in the wordsman-made ['mænmeɪd] and man-servant ['mænˏsǝ:vǝnt] is, as is well-known, pronounced, differently, the [æ] of the root-morpheme becomes [ǝ] and sometimes disappears alto­gether. The phonetic reduction of the root vowel is obviously due to the decreasing semantic value of the morpheme and some linguists argue that in words likecabman, gentleman, chairman it is now felt as denoting an agent rather than a male adult, becoming synonymous with the agent suffix-er. However, we still recognize the identity of [mǝn] inpostman, cabman and [mæn] inman-made, man-servant. Abrasion has not yet completely disassociated the two, and we can hardly regard [mǝn] as having completely lost the status of a root-morpheme. Besides it is im­possible to say she is an Englishman (or a gentleman) and the lexical opposition of man and woman is still felt in most of these compounds (cf. thoughMadam Chairman in cases when a woman chairs a sitting and evenall women are tradesmen). It follows from all this that the mor­pheme -man as the last component may be qualified as semi-free.