Morphology is a branch of Linguistic

1. MORFOLOGIA DEL INGLES POR
CARLOS OROZCO TELLO
UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL ECUADOR
FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA, LETRAS Y CIENCIAS DE LA
EDUCACIÓN
QUINTO SEMESTRE DE INGLES
QUITO-ECUADOR

2. MORPHOLOGY
It is the identification, analysis, and description of the structure of a given language's
morphemes and other linguistic units, such as root words, affixes, parts of speech,
intonations and stresses, or implied context. In contrast, morphological typology is the
classification of languages according to their use of morphemes, while lexicology is the
study of those words forming a language's wordstock.
While words, along with clitics are generally accepted as being the smallest units of
syntax, it is clear that in most languages, if not all, words can be related to other words by
rules that collectively describe the grammar for that language. For example, English
speakers recognize that the words dog and dogs are closely related, differentiated only
by the plurality morpheme "-s", only found bound to nouns. Speakers of English, a
fusional language, recognize these relations from their tacit knowledge of English's rules
of word formation. They infer intuitively that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; and, in similar
fashion, dog is to dog catcher as dish is to dishwasher.

3. Lexemes and word forms
The distinction between these two senses of "word" is arguably the most important one in
morphology. The first sense of "word", the one in which dog and dogs are "the same word", is
called a lexeme.
Inflection vs. word formation
Given the notion of a lexeme, it is possible to distinguish two kinds of morphological rules. Some
morphological rules relate to different forms of the same lexeme; while other rules relate to different
lexemes. Rules of the first kind are inflectional rules, while those of the second kind are rules of
word formation. The generation of the English plural dogs from dog is an inflectional rule, while
compound phrases and words like dog catcher or dishwasher are examples of word formation.
Informally, word formation rules form "new" words (more accurately, new lexemes), while inflection
rules yield variant forms of the "same" word (lexeme).
FUNDAMENTAL
CONCEPTS

4. TYPES OF WORD FORMATION
There is a further distinction between 2 kinds of morphological word formation:
derivation and compounding. Compounding is a process of word formation that
involves combining complete word forms into a single compound form. Dog
catcher, therefore, is a compound, as both dog and catcher are complete word
forms in their own right but are subsequently treated as parts of one form.
Derivation involves affixing bound (i.e. non-independent) forms to existing
lexemes, whereby the addition of the affix derives a new lexeme. The word
independent, for example, is derived from the word dependent by using the
prefix in-, while dependent itself is derived from the verb depend.

5. WHAT IS AN AFFIX
Affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new
word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or
inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound
morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable
affixes. Affixation is, thus, the linguistic process speakers use to form
different words by adding morphemes (affixes) at the beginning
(prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words
EXAMPLES OF AFFIXES
Prefix un-do
Suffix Look-ing

6. WHAT IS A SUFFIX
A suffix is a group of letters placed at the end of a word to make a
new word. A suffix can make a new word in one of two ways:
INFLECTIONAL (grammatical): for example, changing singular to
plural (dog > dogs), or changing present tense to past tense (walk >
walked). In this case, the basic meaning of the word does not
change.
DERIVATIONAL (the new word has a new meaning, "derived" from
the original word): for example, teach > teacher or care > careful

7. INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES
suffix grammatical change
example
original word
example
suffixed word
-s plural dog dogs
-en plural (irregular) ox oxen
-s
3rd person singular
present
like he likes
-ed
past tense
past participle
work
he worked
he has worked
-en
past participle
(irregular)
eat he has eaten
-ing
continuous/progressiv
e
sleep he is sleeping
-er comparative big bigger
-est superlative big the biggest

8. DERIVATIONAL SUFFIXES
suffix making
example
original word
example
suffixed word
-ation
nouns
explore
hesitate
exploration
hesitation
-sion
persuade
divide
persuasion
division
-er teach teacher
-cian music musician
-ess god goddess
-ness sad sadness
-al arrive arrival
-ary diction dictionary