Morphology-Linguistic

Morphology

Morphology is the identification,analysis and description of the structure of words.

Morphemes

A Morpheme is roughly defined as the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. For example,the word boy cannot be broken down into any further unit of meaning

• b
• o
• y

We say that boy is made of only one morpheme.
But the word Antigovernment can be broken down into

• Anti: against
• Govern: to rule/administrate
• -ment: noun suffix

There for,we say that Antigovernment is made of three morphemes.

Affixation

Affixes are our workhorse morphemes-the tools we use again and again to ussemble new words,there are several kinds of affixes.

1. Suffixes are morphemes that attach to the end of a word. Example:-ion in motion and -ate in invertigate.
2. Prefixes attach to the beginning of a word. Example: re- in redo and un- in unthinkable
3. Infixes although english generally does not have infixes. An exception in english might be- bllody- example: Absobloodylutely
4. Circumfixes are affixes that surround the word,attaching to the beginning and end of the word. Example: a- -ing in a fliying or a- -ing in a caroling.

Inflection

Inflection in morphology is a type of morphology that deals only with the grammatical function of the word. In other words,it marks the grammatical categories. For example you'd add -ing when you want to put a verb in the progressive aspect. English only has eight inflectional morphemes,all of which are suffixes.

1. -s (after a noun) indicate plurality
2. -'s indicates the possesive case
3. -s (after verb) indicates the third-person singular
4. -ing indicates the progressive aspect or participles
5. -en indicates the perfect aspect in some irreguler verbs
6. -ed indicates the past tense
7. -er indicates comparatives
8. -est indicates superlatives