2.  Morphology is the study of
the patterns of word formation in a particular lan
guage.
 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,
or intonation/stress.

3.  A meaningful linguistic unit consisting of
a word (such as ”dog”) or a word element (such
as the ”-s”at the end of ”dogs”) that can't be
divided into smaller meaningful parts.

4. Morphemes have four defining characteristics:
- They cannot be subdivided.
For example, we could break the morpheme "cat" down into the "c" sound, the "a" sound, and the "t" sound.
But none of these sounds by itself conveys any meaning
- They add meaning to a word.
We could begin with "cat" and add the morpheme "-s" (meaning 'plural') to get "cats." Here we've changed the
meaning of the word from 'one cat' to 'more than one cat.'
- They can appear in many different words.
For example, the latin morpheme “duc” (meaning 'lead,draw,pull‘ can be used in different words such as
“reduce”, “deduce” or “seduce”.
- They can have any number of syllables.
The word "hurricane" is a single morpheme with 3 syllables.

5. Morphemes are commonly classified into free
morphemes :
- Which can occur as separate words. (Ex. “dog”)
And bound morphemes:
- Which can't stand alone as words. (Ex. “-ing”)

6. - A root word is a word without any word parts added
to the beginning or end.
- There are 3 different forms of affixes:
- Prefixes: placed before a root word.
- Sufixes: placed after a root word.
- Infixes: placed in the middle of a root word.
Examples

7. Note:
There are times when the root word must be changed when a suffix is added.
When a root word ends in a silent "e", the e is dropped before adding a suffix.
(ex.) un + bake + ed becomes ”unbaked”
When a root word ends in a consonant, the consonant is "doubled" before
adding a suffix beginning with a vowel.
(ex.) re + run + ing becomes rerunning

8. A morph is simply the phonetic representation of a
morpheme - how the morpheme is said. This
distinction occurs because the morpheme can remain
the same, but the pronunciation changes.
Cats - '-s' morpheme is pronounced /s/
Dogs - '-s' morpheme is pronounced /z/
Houses - '-s' morpheme is pronounced /ɪz/
These various pronunciations are the morphs of the
morpheme '-s'.

9. Allomorphs are the varieties of a morpheme, which is
closely related to the morph. The morph is just how
you pronounce the morpheme, the allomorph is the
variation in pronunciation.
So, the morpheme '-s' (plural) has three allomorphs
with the morph /s/, /z/, and /ɪz/.

10.  A morphological process is a means of changing
a root to adjust its meaning to fit its syntactic
and communicational context.
Derivation
Affixation
Morphological
Inflection
Processes
Compounding

11. Derivation
Affixation is the process of Affixation
forming a new word by the Morphological
Inflection
addition of Processes
Compounding
a morpheme (or affix) to an
already existing word.
There are 2 different ways to do it:
• Inflection takes as input a word and outputs a form of
the same word appropriate to a particular context:
– e.g. buy -> bought
• Derivation takes as input a word and output a different
word that is derived from the input word:
– e.g. buy + er -> buyer

12. Takes as input a word and outputs a form of the same word appropriate to a
particular context: – e.g. buy -> bought.
* These words don’t use to appear in dictionaries.
INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES CAN BE OF:
• Tense:
Indicates the relative time at which the situation described by the sentence occurred: - e.g. “-ed” in
“talked”, “-s” in “talks”, “-en” in “taken”.
• Number:
•(e.g. singular, plural, dual) “Cats”, “Boxes”
• Aspect:
Indicates the state of completion of the situation – e.g. perfective, progressive, experiential, etc.
“talking”, “cleaning”, “reading”.
• Degree:
Often comparative (hotter) forms and superlative (hottest) forms are expressed
• Case (or Possession): case (e.g. nominative, accusative, etc.) “-’s” in “the girl’s doll”,
“hers”, “him”, etc.

13. Derivation takes as input a word and output a
different word that is derived from the input word:
– e.g. buy + er -> buyer
This type of morpheme often change the meaning of
the word or the part of speech (word class) or both.
Often create new words. They usually come in
dictionary. EXAMPLES:
Kind – Unkind
Able – Enable
Dark - Darkness

14.  Compounding is the combination of two already
existing words:
Rain + Bow = Rainbow
Over + Come = Overcome
Red + Head = Redhead
Word + Formation = Word-formation
 Sometimes compounds can be spelled as just
one word, or with an hifen.

15. COINAGE
Coinage is the word formation process in
which a new word is created with no influence
of any other word. Examples:
Aspirin
Google
Zipper
Kerosene
Muggle

16. BORROWING
A word from one language that has been
adapted for use in another. Examples:
Salsa
Bungalow
Tobacco

17. BLENDING
A word formed by merging the sounds and
meanings of two or more other words or word
parts. Examples:
Motorcade (Motor + Cavalcade)
Emoticon (Emote + Icon)
Smash (Smack + Mash)

18. CLIPPING (or BACKFORMATION)
A word formed by dropping one or
more syllablesfrom a polysyllabic word, such
as cell from cellular phone. Examples:
Celebs (from Celebrities)
Hippo (from Hippopotamus)
Info (from Information)
Intro (from Introduction)

19. CONVERSION
Assigns an already existing word to a new
word class (part of speech)
or syntactic category. Examples:
Henry downed a pint of beer.
Melissa went to town and did a buy.
I eared her language.

20. ACRONYMS
Words which are formed from the initial
letters of other words. Examples:
LOL (Laughing Out Loud)
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space
Administration)

21.  http://grammar.about.com/
 http://vocablog-plc.blogspot.pt
 http://pt.scribd.com
 http://en.wikipedia.org
 www.sil.org
 http://nicedefinition.com
 www2.hawaii.edu
 www.usingenglish.com
 www.studyzone.org
 www.readingrockets.org
 www.ruf.rice.edu
 darkwing.uoregon.edu
 www.encyclopedia.com
 i.ytimg.com
 a.tribalfusion.com
 dictionary.reference.com
 buckhoff.topcities.com
 webspace.ship.edu
 languagelink.let.uu.nl
 gsteinbe.intrasun.tcnj.edu
 www.cs.bham.ac.uk
 cla.calpoly.edu
All rights reserved to: Laura Martins; Marcio Ferreira and Paula Sousa