Morpholog

y
CALUB, Chelsea Alexis
CORPUZ, Allen Collins
Dela Cruz, Kyla Marie
GIRON, Trisha Mae
 Morph
ology
is a branch of linguistics that deals with forms and
structures of words in a language.
Two Categories of Words:

a. Content Words - these are words

that have clear lexical meaning. They are
considered as an open-class because new
words can be added into this category
through such processes as compounding,
derivation, inflection, coining, and
borrowing
Examples : room, happy, gray, search, enough
b. Function Words – these are words
that do not have clear lexical meaning
but do serve a functional purpose in
language. They are considered as
closed-class because we do not make
additions to this category.
Examples: of, he, the, and, have, nor
Morpheme is the smallest or minimal unit of
meaning .
boy (one syllable)
desire, lady, water (two syllables)
one morpheme
crocodile (Three syllables)
salamander (four syllables)
boy + ish
two morphemes desire + able
boy + ish + ness
three morphemes desire + able + ity
gentle + man + ly + ness
four morpheme un + desire + able + ity
un + gentle + man + ly + ness
more than four anti + dis + establish + ment + ari + an + ism
Free Morphemes are words that can
stand alone. They are not dependent on any
other morphemes to complete their meaning.
Examples:
• open-class content words – girl, fish, tree,
love
• closed-class function words – the, and, for, it

Bound Morphemes are words that

cannot be used by themselves and are
dependent on other morphemes to complete
their meaning.
 Two Categories of Bound Morphemes:
1. Affixes – a bound morpheme that can be added to the
front or to the end of a base (word).
a. Prefix – an affix that comes before the base
Examples: ante-, pre-, un-, dis-
b. Suffix – an affix that comes after the base
Examples: -ly, -er, -ism, -ness
c. Interfix – an affix that is inserted between two
morphemes
Examples: -i-, -o-
d. Circumfix – an affix made up of two separate parts
which surround and attach to a root or stem.
Example: en in enlight¬en
 Categories of Affixes:
a. Derivational – affixes that when added to a
word, creates a new word with a new meaning.
Examples: beauty + ful = beautiful
sing + er = singer
precise + ly = precisely

b. Inflectional – affixes that when added to the

end of a word, don’t change its meaning but they
change the person, number and tense of a word.
 The Eight Inflectional
Affixes in English
• Third Person Singular - S (example: Annakin kills younglings.)
• Past Tense - ED (example: Ron kissed Hermione.)
• Progressive - ING (example: Han is falling into the Sarlacc pit.)
• Past Participle - EN (example: The emperor has fallen and cannot
get up.)
• Plural - S (example: Vampires make the worst boyfriends.)
• Possessive - S (example: That’s Luke’s hand, isn’t it?)
• Comparative - ER (example: Picard is cooler than Kirk.)
• Superlative - EST (example: That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever
seen.)
2. Bound Roots – are roots that cannot be
used by themselves.

Example:
CEIVE in receive, deceive, and conceive