Being a English Teacher you must have knowledge about Morphology in linguistics.We will discuss about that in this Article.
“Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words for identify the basic units that make up words”.
The word “Morphology” was originally invented by the great German poet and philosopher Goethe. It was borrowed by a linguist August Schleicher who believed that the language should be described by analogy with living organisms. It describes not only the formal properties of words and their constituent morphemes (sound structure, sequence), but also those grammatical meanings, which are expressed in words or morphological values.In modern sense it has three specific functions: categorizes words according to their function (noun, adjective, verb, adverb, etc.); studies variations of its forms, that is, their inflections; and explains the processes involved in the derivation and composition of words.
You must learn the process of Morphology in Linguistics
Process morphemic
The following will be discussed morphological processes with respect to affixation, reduplication, composition, conversion, and internal modifications.
Affixation:
- Prefix: affixes are affixed in the face of basic forms: comforting
- Infix: affixes are affixed in the middle of the basic forms: finger
- Suffix: affixes that is embedded behind the basic forms: section
Reduplication
Reduplication is a morphological process that repeats the basic form. For example, tables mean ‘many tables’. That is derivational to form new words.
Composition
Composition is the process of merging morpheme base with morpheme basis, whether free or bound. For example, a cat’s whiskers’ a plant ‘bulls eye’ fried eggs without the crushed ‘, and the eyes of the heart
Conversion, Modification
The process of word formation of a word into other words without changes segmental elements
- For example, in Arabic morpheme KTB basic frameworks ‘write’.katab ‘ writes of men’
- Maktub ‘already written’
- maktaba ‘bookstore’
Morphophonemic
It is a change and process in the form of morphological events in process morphology. For example, the prefix me – turned into mem.
Distinction between morphology and syntax:
Morphology explains the internal structure of words and word formation process while syntax describes how words combine to form phrases, sentences and phrases.
Classification of morphemes:
Classification of morphemes
The classification takes into account morpheme following features:
- the role of the morpheme in a word
- the value of the morpheme
- their place in the structure of the word
- the origin of the morpheme
Some types of morphemes:
Free morpheme
It is a morpheme that without the presence of another morpheme can appear in substitutions. In English for example, the form of home, eat, run, home, and both are included in the free morpheme. We can use these morphemes without having to first combine it with another morpheme.
Bound morpheme
This is a morpheme which does not have the potential to stand alone and which need presence of another morpheme to form speech. For example: beautiful, unsuccessful, confusing etc.
Segmental morphemes
Segmental morpheme is a morpheme formed by segmental phonemes, like the morpheme {seen}, {was}, {brush}, and {air}.
While the suprasegmental morphemes are formed by linguistic items, such as stress, tone, duration, and so on.
