Content introduction chapter about morphemes in english Types of morphemes in english chapter teaching morphemes in english Using morphemes in english conclusion summary references introduction

Types of morphemes in English

A "morpheme" is a short segment of language that meets three basic criteria:
1. It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.
2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments without changing its meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder.
3. It has relatively the same stable meaning in different verbal environments.
Free and Bound Morphemes
There are two types of morphemes-free morphemes and bound morphemes. "Free morphemes" can stand alone with a specific meaning, for example, eat, date, weak. "Bound morphemes" cannot stand alone with meaning. Morphemes are comprised of two separate classes called (a) bases (or roots) and (b) affixes.
A "base," or "root" is a morpheme in a word that gives the word its principle meaning. An example of a "free base" morpheme is woman in the word womanly. An example of a "bound base" morpheme is -sent in the word dissent.
Affixes
An "affix" is a bound morpheme that occurs before or after a base. An affix that comes before a base is called a "prefix." Some examples of prefixes are ante-, pre-, un-, and dis-, as in the following words:
antedate
prehistoric
unhealthy
disregard
An affix that comes after a base is called a "suffix." Some examples of suffixes are -ly, -er, -ism, and -ness, as in the following words:
happily
gardener
capitalism
kindness
Derivational Affixes
An affix can be either derivational or inflectional. "Derivational affixes" serve to alter the meaning of a word by building on a base. In the examples of words with prefixes and suffixes above, the addition of the prefix un- to healthy alters the meaning of healthy. The resulting word means "not healthy." The addition of the suffix -er to garden changes the meaning of garden, which is a place where plants, flowers, etc., grow, to a word that refers to 'a person who tends a garden.' It should be noted that all prefixes in English are derivational. However, suffixes may be either derivational or inflectional.
Inflectional Affixes
There are a large number of derivational affixes in English. In contrast, there are only eight "inflectional affixes" in English, and these are all suffixes. English has the following inflectional suffixes, which serve a variety of grammatical functions when added to specific types of words. These grammatical functions are shown to the right of each suffix.
-s noun plural
-'s noun possessive
-s verb present tense third person singular
-ing verb present participle/gerund
-ed verb simple past tense
-en verb past perfect participle
-er adjective comparative
-est adjective superlative
The morphemes are of two types. They are:
Free Morphemes
Bound Morphemes
“1. Free Morphemes
A morpheme that has individual meaning and can be formed independently is called a free morpheme. For example; free, get, human, song, love, happy, sad, may, much, but, and, or, some, above, when, etc.
All of the words have individual meanings and are free morphemes. Free morphemes can be categorized into two sub-types. They are: Lexical morphemes
Grammatical and functional morphemes
Lexical Morphemes
The lexical morphemes are those morphemes that are large in number and independently meaningful. The lexical morphemes include nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
These free morphemes are called lexical morphemes—for example, dog, good, honest, boy, girl, woman, excellent, etc.
Grammatical or Functional Morphemes
The grammatical or functional morphemes are those morphemes that consist of functional words in a language, such as prepositions, conjunctions determiners, and pronouns. For example; and, but, or, above, on, into, after, that, the, etc.
2. Bound Morphemes
A morpheme that doesn’t have any independent meaning and can be formed with the help of free morphemes is called a bound morpheme.
For example; less, ness, pre, un, en, ceive, ment. Bound morphemes can be categorized into two sub-classes. They are:
Bound roots
Affixes
Bound Roots
Bound roots are those Bound morphemes that have lexical meaning when they are included in other bound morphemes to form the content words. For example, -ceive, -tain, perceive, deceive, retain, contain, etc.”⁴
Affixes
Affixes are those bound morphemes that naturally attached different types of words and used to change the meaning or function of those words.
For example, -ment in payment, enjoyment, entertainment en- in enlighten, enhance, enlarge, ‘s in Joseph’s, Lora’s -ing reading, sleeping, singing etc.
Affixes can be categorized into five sub-classes according to their position in the word and function in a phrase or sentence. They are:
Prefixes
Infixes
Suffixes
Derivational
Inflectional
Prefixes
Prefixes are kind of bound morphemes included at the beginning of different types of words. For example in-, un-, sub- incomplete, injustice, unable, uneducated, subway, etc.
Infixes
Infixes are those bound morphemes included within the words. There are no infixes that exist in the English language.
Suffixes
Suffixes are those bound morphemes included at the end of different types of words. For example; -able, -less, -ness, -en, available, careless, happiness, shortening, etc.
Derivational Affixes
Derivational morphemes make new words by changing their meaning or different grammatical categories. In other words, derivational morphemes form new words with a meaning and category distinct through the addition of affixes.
Thus, the derivational morphemes ‘-ness’ changes the adjective of ‘kindness’, the noun ‘care’ becomes the adjective careless.
This is how derivational morphemes make new words by changing their meaning or grammatical category. Derivational morphemes can be categorized into two sub-classes. They are:
Class-maintaining derivational morphemes
Class-changing derivational morphemes
1. Class-Maintaining Derivational Morphemes
Class-maintaining derivational morphemes are usually produced in a derived form of the same class as the root, and they don’t change the class of the parts of speech. For example; -ship -hood, relationship, leadership, livelihood, manhood, etc.
In contrast to Class-maintaining derivational morphemes, Class-changing derivational morphemes usually produce a derived form of the other class from the root. For example, -er, -ish, -al, teacher, boyish, national, etc.
Inflectional Affixes
Inflectional morphemes are not used to produce new words rather indicate the aspects of the grammar function of the word.
For instance, inflectional morphemes indicate whether a word is singular or plural, past tense or not, and comparative or possessive forms. English has eight Inflectional morphemes, all of which are suffixes.
English Inflectional morphemes affixes:
Nouns:
Plural (-s): The courses.
Possessive: Jack‘s courses.
Verbs:
3rd person singular number non-past (-s):
Jack teaches English well.
He reaches the place on time.
Possessive (-ing):
He is writing.
She is singing.
Past participle (-en/ed):
He has written the book.
He worked
Adjectives:
Comparative: (-er): John is happier than before.
Superlative: (-est): He is the tallest person in the class.
“After learning all the definitions, types, and examples, you have gotten a clear picture of morphemes and, more specifically, a morpheme in linguistics. After all, this is how we can define morphemes.
A free morpheme is one that can stand by itself as a single word. In other words, it can exist independently without any obligatory association with other morphemes.”⁵ Examples include: open, boy, door, team, dance, teach, house, look, break, sad, come, when, if, to, for, teach, say, me, you, girl, car, native, name, cook, etc. Another name for free morphemes is the base word or stem word or root word. We can further subdivide Free Morphemes into two segments. Let consider this as we break down the concept of morpheme into comprehensible bits of knowledge.
These morphemes carry ‘content’ of messages we convey. In other words, lexical morphemes are content words. A content word is a word that is semantically meaningful; a word that has dictionary meaning. Examples of these words are nouns, adjectives verbs and adverbs. They are words that belong to the Open Class of the Parts of Speech or Word Classes in English. Bound Morphemes are the opposites of Free Morphemes. They are morphemes that cannot stand alone, that is, they cannot exist independently without being joined or added to another morpheme. Examples include: -ish, -ness, -ation, -tion, -ism, -al, -er, -s, -en, -ed, etc. When you look at the following words, they are combinations of both free and bound morphemes: foolishness, bookish, naturalisation, farmer, does, bags, taken, expected, etc.
Bound Morphemes are called Affixes in English. Affixes are also Bound Morphemes. The word ‘undressed’ has two affixes, ‘un’ and ‘ed’ joined to the free morpheme ‘dress’. The same thing goes for the word ‘carelessness’ which has two affixes, ‘less’ and ‘ness’ attached to the base or root word ‘care’.
There are two types of affixes in the English Language specifically. They are the Prefix and the Suffix or Postfix. Prefixes are affixes that come before the base word; they are attached to the frontal position of the root words while suffixes are attached at the final position of the root words. Infixes are attached in between the root words, but they do not exist in English. Other languages like Yoruba have Infixes or Interfixes. E. g.
Omokomo – omo-ki-omo (bad child)
Isekuse – ise-ku-ise (lewd conduct)
Iwakiwa – iwa-ki-iwa (bad behaviour)
Ayeraye – aye-re-aye (everlasting)
Ilenle – ile-ni-ile (bare floor)
alakala – ala-ki-ala (nightmarish dream)
However, some scholars consider words like therm-o-dynamics, therm-o-meter, bar-o-meter, etc. in English as containing the infix ‘o’, but like we said, it is not an established phenomenon in English.

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