Morphemes and their definition
Viewed structurally words appear to be divisible into smaller units which are called morphemes. Morphemes do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words. The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. Morphemes cannot be segmented into smaller units without losing their constitutive essence, i.e. association of a certain meaning with a certain sound pattern. Morphemes can have different phonetic shapes, e.g. in such words as ‘please, pleasure, pleasant’ the same morpheme ‘pleas-‘ has different phonetic shapes and these various representations of the morpheme are called allomorphs, or morphemic variants.
Classification of morphemes (semantic and structural). Free and bound morphemes.
Structurally morphemes fall into three types: 1) free morphemes; 2) bound morphemes; 3) semi-bound, or semi-free, morphemes.
Free morphemes are those that coincide with the stem or a word-form. For example, the root-morpheme youth- of the adjective youthful is a free morpheme as it coincides with one of the forms of the word youth.
A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Affixes are bound morphemes for they always make part of a word, e.g. the suffixes –ment, -ness in the words government, kindness, or the prefixes un-, il- in the words unreal, illegal.
Some root morphemes also belong to the class of bound morphemes. They are as a rule roots which can be found in a small number of words such as goose- in gooseberry or –ceive in conceive, or for example, the word telephone consists of two bound roots of Greek origin – tele- and –phone.
Semi-bound morphemes can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme, e.g. the morphemes well, half, proof are free morphemes coinciding with the stem and the word-form in the word utterances to sing well, half a loaf, the proof of the pudding, on the other hand they occur as bound morphemes in the words well-educated, half-known, waterproof.
Semantically all morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots, or radicals, and affixes. The latter in their turn fall into prefixes, which precede the root in the structure of the word, and suffixes, which follow the root, e.g. dis-advantage, re-write, teach-er , cur-able etc.
Types of words: simple, derived, compound and compound-derived.
According to the number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphic and polymorphic ones. Monomorphic, or root-words, consist only of one root-morpheme (little, doll, baby, make).
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Root words mostly belong to the original English stock or to earlier borrowings, such as house, room, book, work, port, street, pen. Modern English has been greatly enlarged by the type of word-building called conversion, e.g. to hand< a hand, to can< a can, to pale < pale (adj.), a go< to go etc.
Polymorphic words according to the number of root-morphemes are classified into a) monoradical, containing one root-morpheme and b) polyradical, consisting of two or more roots.
Monoradical words fall into:
1) radical-suffixal words, such as acceptable, acceptability;
2) radical-prefixal words, such as unbutton, reread;
3) prefixo-radical-suffixal words, such as disagreeable, misinterpretation.
Words which consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes) are called derived words, or derivatives, and are produced by the process of word-building known as affixation or derivation.
Derived words are numerous in the English language successfully competing with root words.
Polyradical words fall into:
1) polyradical words consisting of two or more roots with no affixational morphemes, such as bookstall, lampshade;
2) polyradical words containing at least two roots and one or more affixational morphemes, such as safety-pin, handwriting.
This wide-spread word structure is a compound word consisting of two or more stems, i.e. part of the word formed by a root and an affix /affixes. In English words roots and stems can often coincide, e.g. dining-room, bluebell, mother-in-law etc. words of this type are produced by the word-building process called composition.
Such words as ‘pram, flu, doc, M.P., H-bomb’ are called shortenings, contractions or curtailed words and are produced by the way of word-building called shortening, or contraction.
Root-words, derivatives, compounds and shortenings represent the main structural types of modern English words and conversion, derivation and composition are the most productive ways of word-building.
Classification of compounds.
According to the relations between the ICs compound words fall into two classes: 1) coordinative compounds and 2) subordinative compounds.
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In coordinative compounds the two ICs are semantically equally important. There are three groups in coordinative compounds:
a) reduplicative compounds which are made up by the repetition of the same base, e.g. pooh-pooh, fifty-fifty;
b) compounds formed by joining the phonetically variated rhythmic twin forms, e.g. chit-chat, zig-zag, walkie-talkie, dilly-dally, riff-raff, ping-pong;
c) additive compounds which are built on stems of the independently functioning words of the same part of speech, e.g. actor-manager, queen-bee.
In subordinative compounds the components are neither structurally nor semantically equal in importance but are based on the domination of the head member which is as a rule the second IC, e.g. stone-deaf, age-long. The second IC preconditions the part-of-speech meaning of the whole compound.
According to the part of speech compounds represent, they fall into: 1) compound nouns, e.g. sunrise, housemaid; 2) compound adjectives, e.g. care-free, far-going; 3) compound pronouns, e.g. somebody, anybody; 4) compound adverbs, e.g. nowhere, inside; 5) compound verbs, e.g. to bypass, to mass-produce.
From the diachronic point of view many compound verbs of the present-day language are treated not as compounds proper but as polymorphic verbs of secondary derivation. They are called pseudo-compounds and are represented by two groups: a) verbs formed by means of conversion from the stems of compound nouns, e.g. to spotlight (>spotlight, n.); b) verbs formed by back-derivation from the stems of compound nouns, e.g. to babysit (>baby-sitter).
However synchronically compound verbs correspond to the definition of a compound as a word consisting of two free stems and functioning in the sentence as a separate lexical unit.
According to the means of composition compound words are classified into: 1) compounds composed without connecting elements, e.g. backache, school girl; 2) compounds composed with the help of a linking vowel or consonant, e.g. salesgirl, handicraft; 3) compounds composed with the help of linking elements represented by preposition or conjunction stems, e.g. son-in-law, pepper-and-salt.
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According to the type of bases that form compounds two classes can be singled out: 1) compounds proper that are formed by joining together bases built on the stems or on the word-forms with or without a linking element, e.g. door-step, street-fighting; 2) derivational compounds that are formed by joining affixes to the bases built on the word-groups or by converting the bases built on the word-groups into other parts of speech, e.g. blue-eyed < (blue eyes) + -ed, a turnkey< (to turn key) + conversion. Thus derivational compounds fall into two groups: a) derivational compounds mainly formed with the help of suffixes –ed and –er applied to bases built on attributive phrases, e.g. doll-faced, left-hander; b) derivational compounds formed by conversion applied to bases built on three types of phrases – verbal-adverbial (a breakdown), verbal-nominal (a kill-joy) and attributive (a sweet-tooth).
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