Morphology

English is a Proto-Indo-European language. In the English language, the term Morphology comes from the Greek word. Morph means ‘shape’ or ‘form’ and Ology means ‘study’ or ‘science’. Morphology is a branch of linguistics that studies the internal structure of a word and the process or the rules by which words are formed.

Morpheme

The morpheme is the smallest unit of a language that has a meaning or a grammatical function. Such as ‘teacher’ here we get ‘teach’ and ‘er’. Same as teach + ing, teach + able, and teach + ability. Here teach, er, ing, able, and ability are the morphemes that have a grammatical function and a meaning. Teach and ability has a meaning and er, ing, and ability have a grammatical function.

Based on the definition Morphemes are divided into 2 large groups. One is Free or Independent Morpheme and the other is Bound or Depended Morpheme.

Free Morpheme

Free Morpheme can occur alone as a word and it has a meaning on its own. For example, teach, cook, read, walk, talk, etc.

There are 2 classifications of Free Morpheme.

1. Lexical or content or referential Morpheme: lexical morphemes are free morphemes that have semantic content or meaning. Those meanings refer to a theme or quality of something or state of something or a name of action. This morpheme is also called open class. Because we can change it from noun to verb or verb to adjective. In English, all the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs belong to lexical morphemes.

2. Functional or Grammatical Morpheme: prepositions, conjunctions, articles, auxiliary verbs, pronouns, demonstratives are called functional or grammatical morphemes. They have their own meaning and function but we can’t change the word class that’s why it is a closed class.

Bound Morpheme

Bound Morpheme can’t occur alone or stand alone as a word but it has to come with a free morpheme. And also they don’t have their own meaning on their own. For example er, ing, ed, es, s, est, etc. It's a part of a word. It must be attached with a free morpheme in order to have a meaning. All the affixes (affix = prefix + suffix) are bound morphemes. Affix [marginal] doesn’t set with the closed class morphemes they set with the open class morphemes. In the English language, we have affix but we don’t have infix which occurs in the middle of the word. In English morphology based on the position or location, there are 2 types of affixes and those are prefix and suffix. All the affixes are terminal. Prefix occurs in a word a single time but suffix occurs in a word multiple times. Such as the word ‘unlikeliness’ here we have a prefix ‘un’ but 2 suffixes ‘ly’ and ‘ness’.

Based on the function of English Bound morphemes there are 2 categories.
1. Inflection
2. Derivation

Inflectional morpheme

Inflectional affixes are those bound morphemes that serve a grammatical function. Inflectional morpheme doesn’t change the meaning and the word class. But they only change the grammatical function of the word. This morpheme is terminal. Terminal means after inflectional morpheme we can’t add any morpheme. There are 8 inflectional morphemes.
1. Plural [s/es]
2. Possessive [‘s]
3. 3rd person [s]
4. Continuous tense [ing]
5. Past tense [ ed/d/t]
6. Past perfect tense [en]
7. Comparative degree [er]
8. Superlative degree [est]
All of them must be attached to a free morpheme. In English morphology, inflectional morphemes are always suffixes. Because those are being used at the end of the word.

Derivational morpheme

Derivational morphemes are those morpheme which are added to the free morpheme and they change the word class and the meaning of the word. The list of a derivational morpheme is vast. Derivational morphemes can be both suffixes and prefixes.

Root/Base

The root is the morpheme that carries the principal or basic concept or idea or meaning in a word. The end part of a word can’t be analyzed. The free morphemes are considered as the root of a word. For example in the ‘examination’ ‘examine’ is the root or ‘unhappiness’ ‘happy’ is the root.

Stem

The stem is the part of the word where inflectional suffixes are added. Such as ‘teachers’ here ‘teach’ is the root and ‘teacher’ is the stem. If we cut down the stem ‘teacher’ we get root ‘teach’.


[N: B — There are some morphemes in the English language which play a dual role in the word. They are inflectional morphemes but sometimes they can be considered as derivational morphemes.]