Part of Pure Linguistics - Morphology

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Good day my readers, how are you today? I hope you’re fine. Okay, now I wanna share to you about a pieces of Linguistics that is Morphology. 

  

There are some definitions about Morphology according from experts and website that I search in the google, like:

1.    Susan Dostert : Morphology comes from a Greek word meaning ‘shape’ or ‘form’ and is used in linguistics to denote the study of words, both with regard to their internal structure and their combination or formation to form new or larger units.

2.    Morphology relates to words structure through units of meaning (morphemes). Free morphemes are freestanding units of meaning-words like pillow and learn. Bound morphemes are units of meaning that are attached to free morphemes, like the suffix –s in pillows and the prefix re- in relearn. Morphology influences phonics, semantics/vocabulary and syntax. 

3.    Morphology examines and studies how words are structured internally. It also looks at the way words are formed and rules that go along with them. Morphology spans three primary approacches that embrace the difference of each model in different ways. These three approaches are:

1.    The item and arrangement approach – Morpheme

2.    The item and process approach – Lexeme

3.    The word and paradigm approach – Word-based

These are strongly associated, but do have their differences and are not unlimited in how they are applied to the new language. According to the morphology model, a student will have knowledge of a word when they become familiar with:

1.    The spelling of the word

2.    The pronunciation of the word

3.    The definition of the word

4.    The part of speech of the word

5.    The history of the word

6.    If the word is improper

7.    If the word out of date

8.    Examples of the word

9.    Any slang associated with the word

10. The root and stem of the word

With morphology, students who can analyze and identify a word in a second language; would have mastered the language to some degree. Rules in most languages determine how closely related words are. For example in the English language, native speakers may be able to relate to the words, cats, cat, and cat food. They intuitively make inference to the fact that cat is to cats as bird is to birds. In a similar instance, cat is to cat food as bird is to bird feed. The way that a student identifies both words; cat and cats as being related or similar is known as lexeme. On the other hand, bird and bird cage are different lexemes because they fall into different categories of word form. The student understands the rules in terms of precise patterns in which the word is formed in a sentence or phrase. 

All words are composed of one or more morphemes. A morpheme is considered the smallest unit of meaning. For instance, the word dogs contains two units that are meaningful: dog, which specifies a particular kind of animal, and -s, which indicates the notion of plurality. Although all morphemes are units of meaning, there are various kinds of morphemes.

-       Free and bound morphemes

Morphemes can be free or bound. If a morpheme is free, it can stand on its own; if it is bound, it must be attached to a free morpheme.

In the word walking, the morpheme walk is free because it can stand alone as a word. However, -ing is bound because it has to be attached to a lexical verb, in this case walk. In the examples below, the free morphemes are in italics and the bound morphemes in boldface:

      force-ful                                 dis-like

      miss-ed                                  pre-judge

      un-like-li-est                         mis-inform-ation

As the above examples illustrate, a word will typically consist of a single free morpheme, sometimes referred to as the base. The base, as Plag (2003: 11) states, is:

“The part of a word which an affix is attached to.”

However, some words may contain more than one base, and some bases are (arguably) a bound rather than a free morpheme. Compound words will always contain two bases. The word upon is composed of two prepositions: up and on. The word bookshelf contains two nouns: book and shelf. Many words of Latin origin have a base that is no longer a free morpheme. Consider the words perceive, receive, and conceive. Each of these words was borrowed whole into English from Anglo-French.

However, the words themselves contain the root -ceive, which has its origins in Latin capere meaning ‘to take.’ Thus, perceive means literally per ‘thoroughly’ _ capere ‘to take.’ Does this mean that perceive and the other words above should be analyzed as containing two bound morphemes? Certainly, per- is more recognizable as an independent morpheme in other English words such as perennial, which means ‘throughout the year.’ But for the average speaker of English, perceive, receive, and conceive are interpreted as containing a single free morpheme. Whatever meaning the individual parts of these words once had has been lost over time. Therefore, unless one is interested in analyzing the etymology of the individual parts of these words, they are best analyzed as containing one free morpheme.

There is also the issue of whether words such as the or more can truly stand alone. Matthews (1991: 11–12) questions the status of words such as these as free morphemes, since they are never used alone: the article the, for instance, is always associated with nouns. Nevertheless, unless one is willing to create an intermediate category for words such as these – a category on a continuum between free and bound morphemes – the words are best regarded as free morphemes.

-       Words

‘Word’ is a term in common everyday use but one which linguists cannot easily define. Is isn’t for example one word or two? And how about mother-in-law? It denotes one concept but is formed out of three recognisable ‘words’: mother, in and law. Linguists therefore prefer other terms, referring to morphs, morphemes and lexemes when talking about ‘words’.

-       Morpheme types

Morphemes are defined as the smallest meaning-bearing units in language. These are abstract units, realised in actual language by a morph, or if there are various ways of realising one morpheme by its allomorphs. If morphemes are free they will coincide with what we call a word, but morphemes can also be bound in which case they are less than a word (although they carry meaning). The free morphemes are generally also referred to as lexemes, and the bound ones as affixes. (Note that lexemes can be simple i.e. consisting of just one free morpheme or complex consisting of 2 or more morphemes of which at least one is free.) Affixes which come in front of a free morpheme are prefixes, and those which come after are suffixes. 

-       Inflection

Bound morphemes which carry grammatical (or functional) meaning are called inflectional affixes and their function is to create new forms of existing lexemes. In English these are always suffixes, i.e. there are no inflectional prefixes in English. It is generally claimed that there are only eight such inflectional affixes left in English, making Modern English an analytic language.

 

Example: Type of inflection	Grammatical category		Function / Meaning		Word class		Example
Declension	Number		Plural		Nouns		tree-s
Declension	Case		Possessive (genitive)		Nouns		John-’s
Conjugation	Number, Person, Tense		3rd. pers. sg.		Verbs		look-s
Conjugation	Tense		(Regular) simple past		Verbs		look-ed
Conjugation		(Regular) past participle		Verbs		look-ed
Conjugation		Present participle		Verbs		look-ing
Comparison	Comparison		Comparative		Adjectives		smart-er
Comparison	Comparison		Superlative		Adjectives		smart-est

-       Word classes

We tend to distinguish between open word classes, which include nouns, full verbs, adjectives and some adverbs, and more closed word classes to which pronouns, prepositions, determiners, modal (verb)s, auxiliaries, primary verbs, conjunctions, etc. belong. Theoretically, all of the lexemes in the English language can be assigned to one of these even if it is often difficult to carry out when they occur in isolation (i.e. without context) as many word forms can belong to more than one word class e.g. round can be a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb or a preposition.

The Difference Between Morphology and Syntax

There is no way to predict whether some piece of meaning is expressed by a morpheme or by a separate lexeme or both. There exist huge differences across languages. Some languages pack all kinds of meanings into the verb (Inuit, Mohawk), some keep everything separate (Chinese). Most languages are somewhere in between. Morphology is more or less important. However, even within one language itself the means to express something change. Adjectives in English have three forms: positive (normal form), comparative (form of simple comparison) and superlative (form of absolute comparison). Now look at the way they get formed.

Thus, the cutoff point between morphology and syntax is arbitrary. However, the two may show to behave differently in a given language so that the choice between morphological and syntactical means of expression has further consequences. We have seen, for example, that the comparative morpheme /er/ is a suffix—so it is added after the word. However, the comparative lexeme /more/ wants the adjective to its right. The latter is attributable to the general structure of English phrases. The complement is always to the right. Morphemes are exempt from this rule. They can be on the other side, and generally this is what happens.

For example, verb+noun compounds in English are formed by placing the verb after the noun: /goalkeeper/, /eggwarmer/, /lifesaver/ and so on. If these were two words, we should have /keeper goal/, /warmer egg/, and /saver life/. The reason why we do not get that is interesting in itself. English used to be a language where the verb follows the object (as is the case in German). It then changed into a language where the verb is to the left of the object. This change affected only the syntax, not the morphology.  French forms compounds the other way around (/casse-noix/ lit. cracker-nut = ‘nutcracker’, /garde-voie/ lit. guardway = ‘gatekeeper’). This is because when French started to form compounds, verbs already preceded their objects.

Summary:

Words in English have a particular structure: all have a base to which various kinds of prefixes and suffixes can be attached. English has many derivational prefixes and suffixes. These affixes can change the meaning of a word (e.g. happy/unhappy) or its part of speech (e.g. happy [adjective]/happiness [noun]). English also has a small number of inflections: -ed to mark the past tense on regular verbs, for instance, or -est to create the superlative form of an adjective. Unlike derivational affixes, inflections do not change the meaning or part of speech of a word, but instead mark various grammatical relations. There are various ways to study the meaning of words. Both lexicographers and semanticists have done extensive work in the area of lexical semantics. Lexicographers have developed a methodology for determining the meaning of words for purposes of creating dictionaries. Semanticists have developed various theories designed to study the meaning of words.

Conclusion :

So it is conclusive to say that morphology is an area of linguistics that is the study of the pattern in which words are formed within any language. It tries to form rules that are a representation of the knowledge of the students that speak the languages.  

Sebagai tambahan, readers dapat kunjungi youtube.com untuk lebih memahami tentang penjelasan tentang Linguistics - Morphology. Contoh link nya seperti di bawah ini yaa :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syjbhT45J14 

References:

http://blog.innovativelanguage.com/2009/07/14/linguistics-morphology/

http://vocablog-plc.blogspot.com/2011/01/word-games-to-target-five-language.html?m=1

http://blog.innovativelanguage.com/2009/07/14/linguistics-morphology/

Introducing_English_Linguistics_Charles F. Mayer

  

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