A presentation about the classifications of morphemes.

1. MORPHOLOG
Y
(Linguistics)

2. Morphology in Linguistics
- The study of structure of the
words and word formation.
A. Word Structure
1. Morpheme
2. Free Morpheme (Lexical & Functional)
3. Bound Morpheme (Inflectional & Derivational)
4. Contractible Morpheme

3. Morphemes
- The smallest meaningful unit in
the grammar of a language.
A. Free Morpheme
• The type of morpheme that can
stand alone as words by
themselves
EXAMPLE
friend boy tree
*Free morphemes have two
categories

4. 1. Lexical Morpheme
• Referred also as OPEN CLASS
because we can add morphemes
to these words.
• These are nouns, verbs and
adjectives.
EXAMPLE
girl (n.) jump (v.) red (adj.)
boy (n.) look (v.) pink (adj.)

5. 2. Functional Morpheme
• Words that do not have clear
meaning but has grammatical
functions.
• These are conjunctions,
prepositions, articles,
auxiliaries and pronouns.
• Referred also as CLOSED
CLASS because it cannot be
added to other morphemes.
EXAMPLE
he she we but nor

6. B. Bound Morpheme
• These are AFFIXES that must
be attached to the word.
AFFIXES
a) Prefix - unclean
b) Infix - nowadays
c) Suffix - adjustment
*Bound morphemes have also two
categories, Inflectional and
Derivational morphemes

7. 1. Derivational Morpheme
• changes the part of speech of
the word when added to the
free morpheme but there are
some exceptions.
Example of Class Changing
pay (v.) - payment (n.)
pay (v.) - payer (n.)
Example of Class Maintaining
pink (adj.) - pinkish (adj.)
do (v.) - undo (v.)

8. List of Derivational Morphemes
• Prefixes – re-, pre-, un-, ex-,
mis-, co- etc.
• Suffixes - -ish, -less, -ly… etc.

9. 2. Inflectional Morpheme
• Morphemes that are used to
indicate aspects of the
grammatical function of a word.
EXAMPLE
boy’s boys
cleaned cleaning cleans
taken simplest
heavier

10. List of Inflectional Morphemes
-in English we have 8 Inflectional
Morphemes.
• Noun – Possessive noun (‘s),
Plural form (s).
• Verb – 3rd person singular (s),
Progressive verb (-ing), Past
tense (-ed), Past Participle (-en).
• Adjective – Comparative (-er),
Superlative (-est).

11. 4. Contractible Morphemes
- these are auxiliary modals such
as will, shall, have, had and would.
- these can be contracted in
informal style of language.
Example
I will – I’ll
They had – They’d

12. Root and Stem
• Root words are the basic part of
a word that carries meaning.
• Stem is when a root morpheme
is combined with affix
morpheme.
EXAMPLE
root: teach
affix : -er
stem: teacher

13. Bound Root
• These are root morphemes
which cannot appear on its own.
EXAMPLE
re-ceive dis-suade
Bound morphemes Bound root

14. Segmenting words into its
constituent morphemes.
EXAMPLE
repayment
re – pay – ment
prefix root suffix

15. Morphological Description
a) The difference between
Inflectional and Derivational
Morpheme?
• Inflectional morpheme never
change the grammatical
category of the word.
Old (adj.) older (adj.)
b) While Derivational Morpheme can
change the grammatical category
of a word.

16. Morphological Description
Identify the morphological
description of the sentence below.
The quick brown fox jumps over the
lazy dog.

17. Summing up
• Morphology is the study of word
structure and word formation.
• The smallest meaningful part of the
word is called morpheme.
• Morphemes have two classification
these are Free and Bound Morphemes.
• Free morphemes categories are Lexical
and Functional Morphemes.
• Bound morphemes includes Inflectional
and derivational morphemes

18. Thank You!
-Renedict 