Morphology

 MORPHOLOGY

I. Morphology:

 Morphology is the study of internal construction of words in which the words are analyzed into word elements.

II. Morphemes:

 Word elements which are separated from a word are called morphemes. These elements act as minimal units of meaning or grammatical function include forms used to indicate tenses or plural.

*Free and Bound Morphemes:

Free morphemes can stand alone by themself as a word such as words new and tour.

Bound morphemes can't stand alone and must be accompanied by another form. For example, re-, -ist, -ed, -s, ...

*Lexical and Functional Morphemes:

Morphemes that carry the meaning or content of the message that we are conveying are called Lexical morphemes.

Morphemes that support the grammar functions of a sentence are called Functional morphemes.

*Derivational Morphemes:

Morphemes that have the ability to change the meaning and form of the original words are called Derivational morphemes.

*Inflectional Morphemes:

Morphemes that are used to indicate the grammatical function of a word from confirm if a word is plural or singular, past tense or not are called Inflectional morphemes.

III. Morphological Description:

*Derivational morphemes can chnage the grammatical function of a word while Inflectional morphemes never change the word's grammatical function.

*Whenever Derivational suffix and Inflectional suffix are used together. They alway form in an order where Derivational suffix is used first then Inflectional suffix will be added later. For example:

Teachers => Teach + "er" Derivational suffix + "s" Inflectional suffix

IV. Morphs, Allomorphs and Special Cases:

In some case, Inflectional suffix use to confirm plural form can have exceptions to some words such as plural of sheep is sheep, plural of man is men, ... It is called Morphs.

Like allophones are the variations of phoneme, morpheme also has it own variation called allomorphs. 

V. Other languages: