MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is a linguistic subdiscipline that studies the internal structure of words. It analyzes the
way small units of meaning called morphemes combine to form meaningful words. We have two
types of morphology:
•Inflectional morphology, which deals with changes in the form of words according to the
grammatical context;
•Derivational morphology, which deals with the processes of word formation through
affixation.
Before looking at each of these two aspects more in depth, let’s consider and define a few notions,
which are fundamental in understanding the various ways of changing or forming words.
Morphemes: First of all, a word can be formed by either one single morpheme or by two or more
morphemes. As aforementioned, a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning or grammatical
function, i.e. they can either carry semantic content (e.g. un- before an adjective to form the
opposite of a word; girl which carries the meaning of “young woman”) or grammatical function
(e.g. plural, past tense, gender).
According to the number of morphemes by which they are formed, words are classified into two
groups:
•Polymorphemic or complex words, made up of two or more morphemes (e.g. students,
completely, inadequate, played, smallest, careful);
•Monomorphmeic or simple words, made up of only one morpheme (e.g. play, girl, for, dog,
happy, house, hour, here).
Morphemes, morphs and allomorphs: The difference between a morpheme and a morph is that
the latter is the concrete realization of the former, which is an abstract entity. Consequently, we can
analyze words in two ways: in terms of morphs and in terms of morphemes.
Morphemes are usually written within curly braces {}. The lexeme is written in capital letters,
whereas the abstract features specified by the morphemes (e.g. tense, negative, adjective,
possibility, number, comparative, opposite) are written in normal letters. For example, the verb
played consists of two morphs, play + ed, which realize the morphemes {PLAY} + {past}.
Just as a phoneme can be realized in different ways, so can a morpheme. Thereby, we speak of
allomorphs to refer to the different phonetic or graphic variants of a morpheme. In English most
morphemes are phonologically conditioned, that is, they are influenced by the phonological
environment in which they occur. Here are some examples:
•The morph that indicates {past tense} in English is –ed. However, this morpheme can be
realized phonetically in different ways, depending on the preceding sound, e.g. raised [d],
looked [t] and decided 0 2
6 A
0 2
6 A
[ d]. Therefore, [d], [t] and [ d] are allomorphs of the same
morpheme, i.e. {past tense};
•The morph used to form the plural forms of nouns is –s, but it can have different phonetic
realisations according to the sound preceding it, e.g. cups, lamps [s], days [z] and beaches,
judges 0 2
6 A
0 2
6 A
[ z]. Thereby, [s], [z] and [ z] are allomorphs of the morpheme {plural};
•Sometimes a phonologically-conditioned allomorphs is also represented graphically, as in
the case of the morpheme meaning {not} or {opposite}, which can be rendered in different
ways according to the sound following it. For instance, in the words inaccurate,
inexpensive, illegal, impossible, imprecise, irresponsible, irresistible, irrational, the morphs
in-, im-, il-, ir- are all allomorphs of the morpheme {opposite}. This is a result of what is
called in phonetics assimilation;
