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The Definition of Morphology


Morphology is the port of linguistics that deals with the study of words, their internal structure and partially their meanings. It is also interested in how the users of a given language understand complex words and went new lexical items. As morphology is concerned with word forms it is akin to phonology (which describes how words are pronounced), it also related to lexical studies as the patterns examined by morphology are used to create new words. Furthermore, it is also linked with semantics as it deals with the meanings of words.


Morphology is morphology is the smallest units that carry meaning or fulfill some grammatical function. The words “house” it self consists of one morpheme, and because it can stand by it self can be called a free morpheme. In the word “houses” there are two morphemes, “house”, which is free, and which is a bound morpheme. Because it cannot stand by it self as it would have no meaning. In the second example above the bound morpheme “s” was attached to house a free morpheme, which in this case can be also called a stem. Stem is what a bound morpheme is attached to.

Morphemes in morphology are the smallest units that carry meaning of fulfill some grammatical function. The word house it self consists of one morpheme, and because it can stand by it self it can house, which is free, and – s which is abound morpheme, because it cannot stand by it self as it would have no meaning. In the second example above the bound morpheme -s was attached to house – a free morpheme, which in this case can be also called a stem. Stem is what a bound morpheme is attached to. 

What is more, free morphemes can be subdivided, nouns, for example print, pretty, fire, go, girl. As there is no problem in adding new entities to this group of words they are treated an open class of words, functional morphemes, on the other hand, are closed classes of words, articles, prepositions, pronouns which do not carry any meaning on their own, but only fulfill a grammatical function. 

Not only free morphemes are subdivided, there is a similar situation with bound morphemes which are subdivided into derivational and inflectional morphemes. Derivational morphemes are those morphemes which produce new words, or change the functional of a word. It is achieved by means of prefixed or suffixes in case of English and infixes in other language, like Arabic inflectional morphemes do not create new words, but only show grammatical function of a word a good example of an inflectional language would be Latin which has numerous case endings for noun as well as endings for verbs and adjective (Kamil Widniesuski, (2007) 

Basically quirk, et al, discusses and explains derivational processes mostly presented the types of prefixes and suffixes applied in derivational. Since the theory of quirk, et al. relating to affixes is more complete, the writer preferred using it to analyze derivational processes in the textbook.
Title : The Definition of Morphology
Description : Morphology is the port of linguistics that deals with the study of words, their internal structure and partially their meanings. It is a...

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