Analysing

Morphemes
Analysing morphemes
You can do this in 2 ways
 By dividing it up with hyphens:

e.g. truth-ful-ness
 By using a tree diagram
N

truth - ful - ness

 Dividing with hyphens
 Divide into base form + morphemes
truth = one morpheme
truthful = base form + bound morpheme
truth-ful
truthfulness = base form + bound + bound
truth-ful-ness
Can you divide these words?
 Colourful
 Happiness
 Unbelievable
 Teacher
 Monster
 Rattlesnake
Can you divide these words?
 Colourful colour-ful
 Happiness happi-ness
 Unbelievable un-believ-able
 Teacher teach-er
 Monster monster
 Rattlesnake rattle-snake
 Constructing tree diagrams (1)
 Divide the word into its constuent morphemes e.g.
greed-i-ness
 Decide the root and its grammatical category :
greed = noun (N)
 Decide the grammatical category of all the new
words created by the other morphemes
greedy = adjective (A)
greediness = noun (N)
 Constructing tree diagrams (2)
 Write the divided word at the bottom of the page
greed-i-ness

 Write the grammatical N

category of the root
and join it to the word: greed

 Write the grammatical

category of all the
new words created by A N
the other morphemes greed-i greed-i-ness
and join them up
Now write the word and connect up all the
categories. Can you label the boxes?
 Well done!

Greed >

Greedy >

Greediness
Try this word - ‘specification’
 Can you divide it up with hyphens?

specif-ic-ation

specif- = ‘specify’ = root

What are the grammatical
categories ?

specif-ic-ation

specify = Verb
specific = Adjective
specification = Noun

 What will be the shape of the tree?

Well done! Now label it
Find the roots the following words
 unwholesome
 whole
 rulership
 rule
 underdeveloped
 develop
 overachiever
 achieve
 operational
 operate
 indispensable
 dispense
Build the tree from the root
 un-whole-some

whole
 Add the next word that is
created to the tree
 whole + some
this creates the new adjective wholesome

whole - some
 Add the next word that is
created to the tree
 un + wholesome
this creates the new adjective unwholesome
A
A

A
un - whole-some
Draw tree diagrams for the
following words
 rul-er-ship

 under-develop-ed

 over-achiev-er

 operat-ion-al

 in-dispens-able
Analysing compounds
 Compound nouns can be a single word
with two base forms:

e.g. windmill = wind + mill

rattlesnake = rattle + snake

 How do we analyse these ?

Drawing a tree of a 1-word
compound is easy
Windmill = noun
Wind = noun
N
Mill = noun

N N

wind-mill
 black bird + black-bird
black bird blackbird
is a noun phrase is a compound noun
NP N

N N N N

black bird black-bird

Analysing 2-word compounds
 Compound nouns can also be made up
of two words
e.g. coffee table

 In this case you have to decide which

word is the head and which word is the
modifier
 Where is the head in these
compounds

 coffee table  table

 swimming pool  pool
 car park  park
 dish washer  washer
 oven cleaner
 cleaner
 dish washer

dish washer = noun

washer = noun
wash = verb
-er = bound morpheme

wash = head

What shape is the tree?

Notice the label of the head
ACTIVITY
 Choose 10 words from any paragraph
and draw a tree diagram that
represents the morphological structure
of those words.