Morphology

The study of the internal structure of words.

The study and description of how words are formed in
language. The form and structure of words in a language, especially
the consistent patterns of inflection, combination, derivation and
change, etc., that may be observed and classified.
Morphology is the study of the words and their structure. Morphology
focuses on the various morphemes that make up a word
MORPHEME

A meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word, such as man, or a word

element, such as -ed in walked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful
parts. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a
language.

A useful definition of morphemegood enough for most purposesis a minimal

and indivisible morphological unit that cannot be analyzed into smaller units.

This broad definition is adequate for most general discussions, but its possible
to get more specific.

Is a set of allomorphs that have the same set of features.

Is the smallest unit of a word that has meaning, so basically it referring to

prefixes, suffices, and root words which all have their own independent
definitions.

TYPES
In linguistics, we would further classify morphemes as either as PHONEMES (the
smallest units of grammar recognizable by sound) or GRAPHEMES (the smallest
units of written language). For our purposes, we will focus on graphemes.

1. Root, stem, base, and stem extender.

ROOT
Root is the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it.
Roots can be free morphemes and bound morphemes. Roots which are capable of
standing independently are free morphemes while bound morphemes are roots
which are incapable of occurring in isolation (Katamba, 1994: 41).
The free morphemes include lexical morphemes and function words. Nouns,
adjectives, verbs, prepositions and adverbs are parts of lexical morphemes, and
articles, demonstratives, pronouns and conjunctions are parts of function words.
Although roots can be free morphemes, not all roots are free. Thus, the kinds of
roots incapable of occurring in isolation are called bound morphemes. In English,
the example of the morphemes is latinate affixes like mit (as in permit, remit,
commit, admit), -ceive (as in perceive, receive, conceive), pred- (as in predator,

predatory, predation, depredate) and sed- (as in sedan, sedate, sedentary,

sediment).
Affixes
Affix is a morpheme which only occurs when attached to some other morpheme or
morphemes such as a root or stem or base. There are three kinds of affixes which
are explained as follows:
Prefix is an affix attached before a root or stem or base like re-, un-, and in-.
Suffix is an affix attached after a root or stem or base like ly, -er, -ist, -s, -ing
and ed.
Infix is an affix inserted into the root itself.
Stems
Stem is part of word that is in existence before any inflectional affixes.
Example:
cats > stem : cat, inflectional affix: -s
workers > stem: worker, inflectional: -s
Bases
Base is any unit whatsoever to which affixes of any kind, inflectional affixes and
derivational affixes, can be added. All roots are bases. Bases are called stems only
in the context of inflectional morphology.
Example:
Boys> root: boy, stem: boy, base:boy, inflectional affix: -s
Boyish>root: boy, base:boy, derivational affix: -ish
Stem Extenders
Besides those elements, there is another kind of the structure building elements
called stem extender.

MORPH

a distinctive collocation of phones (as a portmanteau form) that serves as

the realization of more than one morpheme in a context.
A morph is a phonological string (of phonemes) that cannot be broken down
into smaller constituents that have a lexicogrammatical function.
Is the phonetic realization of that morpheme, or in plain English, the way it
sounds.

A LEXICON is the knowledge that a native speaker has about a language. This
includes information about.

the form and meanings of words and phrases

lexical categorization

the appropriate usage of words and phrases

relationships between words and phrases, and

Categories of words and phrases.

In general, a lexicon is a group of words that make up a language. For example,

each of the words in this sentence are just a few of the words that make up the
English lexicon. A lexicon can also be a branch of knowledge that stores all
known words of a particular subject.

ALLOPHONES

Is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language

Is an alternative sound for a letter or group of letters in a word
any of the variant forms of a phoneme as conditioned by position or
adjoining sounds: the relatively short (a) of mat and the relatively long (a)
of mad are allophones
any of several speech sounds that are regarded as contextual or environmen
tal variants of the samephoneme.