To truly understand how words are created or formed in a language, you need to, first of all, study their internal structures to uncover the elements that are combined, in the process of their formation among other things, like the culture of the people, etc.,. This then brings us to the concept of Morphology in linguistics.
What is Morphology?
Morphology is defined as the study of the internal structure of words in a language. It is the field of linguistics that is concerned with evaluating how words are formed in a language, by studying the elements that are combined to form them. Morphology is, in more simpler terms, the study of morphemes.
Now, words are not the smallest unit of a language. You might want to add that sounds are the smallest unit of a language, and you would not be totally wrong about that, however, sounds are in a different class of their own which are the fields of phonology and phonetics. In phonetics, phonemes—which represent sounds—are the smallest unit of meaning, while tone groups are the largest units of meaning.
Back to morphology now, morphemes are important in morphology because of the crucial role they play in the formation of words, hence, they are the smallest unit of meaning in language directly lower than words. The largest unit of meaning in language is a sentence.
What is a Morpheme?
Morphemes are defined as the smallest indivisible units of meaning in a language. What this means is that, not only are morphemes the smallest meaningful units in a language, but also that they can not be further broken down without losing meaning. To understand this better, you need to know how the grammatical rankscale works.
There is a general law that states that one or more of the units below, make up the units above on the rankscale. So, a sentence, which is the highest on the rankscale is made up of one or more clauses, a clause is made up of one or more phrases, a phrase is made up of one or more words, and a word is made up of one or more morphemes.
You can see that the hierarchy ends at the level of morpheme, which shows that it cannot be further broken down like the other units above or preceding it. The reason we can not further divide a morpheme is because when we do, it results in a loss of meaning. Take for instance, the morpheme: "boy", do you think it can be further broken down without rendering it completely meaningless?
Let us try it out: "bo" + "y", none of these elements make any sense in the English language, so they are meaningless proving that morphemes can not be further broken down, since they are indivisible. You might be wondering: "isn't "boy" a word?" Yes of course, it is a word and we will be getting to that shortly. There are two types of morphemes namely: free morphemes and bound morphemes.
Free Morphemes
Free morphemes are simply morphemes that can stand on their own and express meaning independently. That means, these morphemes do not need to be combined with any other element to be meaningful, as they can express meaning on their own. That is why it is said that all free morphemes are the equivalent of words, but not all words are free morphemes.
So there you have it, free morphemes are the same as words and the example I used earlier: "boy", proves that. Remember that one or more of the units below make up the units above, so a word can be made up of one morpheme, which has to be a free morpheme, or more than one morphemes, which often include a free morpheme and a bound morpheme.
Now the reason why it is said that not all words are equal to free morphemes, like all free morphemes are equal to words is simply because some words can be composed of more than one morpheme, as we already established earlier. Before we go into bound morphemes, here are some examples of free morphemes: I, kid, show, cut, late, etc.,.
Bound Morphemes
Bound morphemes are morphemes that, unlike free morphemes, are not capable of expressing meaning in isolation. This means that bound morphemes need to be attached to an independent element in order to be meaningful, or express meaning. Take for instance: in the word, "boys", there are two morphemes—"boy" and "-s". The second morpheme, "-s", is a bound morpheme and this is indicated by the hyphen that appears right before it, which shows where it has to be added to express meaning, and that is, at the end of an independent element like a free morpheme.
Because bound morphemes can not express meaning in isolation, they are known to perform grammatical functions hence they are divided into two: inflectional bound morphemes, and derivational bound morphemes.
Inflectional Bound Morphemes
Inflectional bound morphemes are bound morphemes that indicate grammaticality. For instance: the "-es", in the word: "washes", is an inflectional bound morpheme because it adds the grammatical attribute of third person singular to the verb. As in: He washes (not wash) his clothes on Saturdays. So inflectional bound morphemes account for the grammaticality of words.
Derivational Bound Morphemes
Derivational Bound Morphemes are bound morphemes that change the class of the words they are added to. Take for instance: adding the derivational bound morpheme: "-er", to the verb "teach", will lead to the formation of a noun: "teacher". So derivational Bound Morphemes simply perform the function of changing the class of words they are added to.
Morphological Parsing
This is the practical aspect of morphology. Morphology parsing has to do with the breaking down of words into the individual morphemes that they are made up of. That is, the process of reducing words to their morphemic components. Take for instance: the word, "national", can be parsed as:
National: {nation} + {-al}
Remember to place the morphemes in curly brackets when parsing them, and add hyphens to bound morphemes either in front or right behind them, depending on where they occur. For instance: in parsing, "international", we would have:
International: {Inter-} + {nation} + {-al}
"in", is a full word hence "inter" is a bound morpheme.
In doing morphological parsing, you need to be mindful of another categorization of morphemes. The are the following: Isolating morphemes, agglutinating morphemes, and synthetic morphemes.
Isolating Morphemes
Isolating morphemes exist independently and are made up of a single unit, so parsing them is relatively easy.
For instance: girl = {girl}.
Agglutinating Morphemes
Agglutinating morphemes are morphemes that can easily be identified from words just by looking at them.
For instance: ability = {able} + {-ity}.
Synthetic Morphemes
Synthetic morphemes are morphemes that, unlike agglutinating morphemes, can not be easily distinguished in words, and require an understanding of the word under analysis.
Take for instance: best = {good} + {-est}
So morphology has to do with the study of the elements that make up words known as morphemes. Morphemes are the lowest on the grammatical rankscale and are referred to as the smallest indivisible units of meaning in a language.
There are two types of morphemes: free morphemes, which are morphemes that can express meaning on their own, and bound morphemes which are morphemes that can not express meaning in isolation. Morphological parsing is the process of reducing words to the morphological elements they are comprised of. Understanding morphology will inform you on how words are formed in a language, to be able to form your own words following the same pattern.
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