Introduction to Linguistics
Handout 3
MORPHOLOGY
Terminology:
 word: a complete linguistic unit that is meaningful on its own and can be freely reordered into
new phrases and sentences. A word may be simple (containing only one morpheme) or
complex (containing more than one morpheme). + see the difference bw lexeme and syntactic
word in Professor Varga’s lecture material

morpheme: the smallest meaningful linguistic unit. Some morphemes are identical with
words, but many morphemes are smaller than words.

morpheme boundary: a boundary between two morphemes, represented by - or by + (morpheme, morph+eme).

bound/free morpheme: a morpheme that cannot stand alone, but must be attached to
something else is a bound morpheme. A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand alone,
that is a complete (monomorphemic) word; an independent morpheme.

bound lexical morpheme: cranberry, remit, receive (submit, deceive)


open class: a class of words to which new members may freely be added.
closed class: no members easily added to it, eg. prepositions and determiners.

inflectional morpheme: a morpheme whose presence in the structure is mandated by the
structure of the sentence in which that word appears. No new lexical item is created (looked,
books)

derivational morpheme: a morpheme that is added to one word to create another word, often,
but not necessarily a word of a different lexical class. A new lexical item (unhappyness,
piglet)

productive morpheme: a morpheme which may be added regularly to any root of the
appropriate class. English -s is the productively plural morpheme in English.
 root/prefix/suffix/affix/infix:
-root: a lexical morpheme (usually free, in English) which is the base to which grammatical or
derivational morphemes are added to form a complex word. Most roots can themselves be used as
uninflected base forms, but not all uninflected base forms are roots.
-prefix: a bound morpheme added before a root, or at the beginning of a word.
-suffix: a bound morpheme added after a root, or at the end of a word.
-infix: an affix added within a single morpheme.
-affix: a prefix, suffix, or infix.



paradigm: the set of morphologically related forms derived from a root. Generally these are
the forms derived by inflection.
environment: the particular grammatical context in which a sound, morpheme, or word
appears.
allomorph: one of the alternative forms of a morpheme. In some cases, any allomorph may
be used in free variation; in others, certain allomorphs must be used in particular
environments, in conditioned variation.

zero allomorph: an allomorph of a morpheme that is not pronounced, an allomorph whose
form is zero.

conditioned variation: variation dependent on the phonological or morphological
environment (the opposite of free variation).
free variation: variation that is independent of the phonological or morphological
environment.


portmanteau morpheme: morpheme that contains more than one meaningful unit, but cannot
be analyzed into separate elements.

suppletion: fully/partially suppletive forms: refers to elements of a morphological paradigm
which are irregular, in that they do not contain the expected roots or affixes, or that they are
are pronounced unexpectedly. In cases of full suppletion, the expected base form of the
paradigm is usually missing: there is no trace of be in were or of good in well. In partial
suppletion, we can generally see some trace of the root, but either it or its affixes do not have
the expected form (buy-bought).
Exercises:
1. Analyze the following English sentences and phrases by segmenting them. Identify each morpheme
as bound or free, lexical or grammatical. Some words are hard to divide into morphemes - discuss any
problem you encounter.
a. Yesterday Ophelia picked wildflowers in the churchyard.
b. He told me that Desdemona had married a Moor.
c. Aren't you going to show me your newest quiver?
d. My horse! My horse! My kingdom for a horse! (Richard III, V, iv, 7)
2.Consider each of the following groups of words, and answer the questions below about each group.
a. badness, fairness, goodness, wellness
b. incorrigible, incongruous, indefinite, inflexible
c. cowardly, daily, fatherly, lonely, lovely, womanly
d. democracy, idiocy, jealousy, monarchy, photography, victory
i. Is there any morpheme that occurs in all the words in the group? If so, what is it?
ii. Tell the meaning of that morpheme.
iii. If you can, tell what class of words the morpheme you found is added to, and what the class of
words formed by its addition is. Discuss any problems you have arriving at these answers.
3.Draw tree structures and the equivalent labeled bracketings of the following English words and
compounds, labeling as many nodes in the trees as you can. If there are two possible ways to draw a
tree, show the alternative trees and present an argument in favor of the one you choose.
a. greener, kissed, driver, buildings, cowardly, unkindness,
antidisestablishmentarianism
b. churchyard, blackbird, babysit, California history teacher
replays,
anti-Trotskyite,
4. Analyzing morphological structure: complex verbs in Swahili ( a Bantu language of East Africa).
Ninasoma.
‘I am reading.’
Alisoma.
‘He/She read.’
Anasoma.
‘He/She is reading.’
Nitasoma.
‘I will read.”
Tunasoma.
‘We are reading.’
Tutasoma.
‘We will read.’
Nilisoma.
‘I read.’
Ninasema.
‘I am speaking.’
Further data:
Tulisema.
Atasema.
Watasema.
Nilikisoma.
‘We spoke.’
‘He/She will speak.’
‘They will speak.’
‘I read it.’
Anamfukuza.
Ananifukuza.
Tulimfukuza.
Walitufukuza.
‘He is chasing him.’
‘He is chasing me.’
‘We chased him.’
‘They chased us.’
Translation from Swahili: Tulisoma; Ninamfukuza; Nitamfukuza; Anatufukuza.
Translation from English: He will read; They read; I will speak; He is speaking; We are chasing him.
5.Based on the data below try to form the placement rule of the English infix ’fucking’.
absofuckiglutely
*Massfuckingachusetts
Massafuckingchusetts
*absolutefuckingly
morphofuckinglogical
fucking Julius Caesar
antidisestablishmentfuckingtarianism
Julius fucking Caesar