Some Interesting Facts About Morphemes
Notes from yesterday's lecture:
Morpheme is smallest meaningful unit of language. Not related to number of syllables or letters.
Morphemes can be very small (top) or very large (category, vocabulary).
Words can be made of single morphemes, or multiple morphemes (un-happi-ly).
To determine if something is a morpheme, look for other words with same cluster serving same purpose. -ly is an adverb ending, lots of words use it this way, hence it's a morpheme. -gory (as in category) is repeated in other words (allegory, amphigory), but not to change the meaning or lexical category of a root, therefore not a morpheme.
To separate morphemes:
1. Find the base
2. Attach affixes in logical order to created new words. Eg: Recreational: create --> creation --> recreation --> recreational. Each step should get a real word.
Weird and upsetting invisible morphemes:
Because past perfect affixes are considered morphemes in English, all past perfect forms are considered to have an extra morpheme even if the past perfect form is the same as the present form and no affix is visible.
Eg: widespread: here "spread" is the past perfect form of "to spread," combining with "wide" to create an adjective. Because it's in the past perfect, it has three morphemes, not two! Another example: had run. "Run" here has two morphemes, because it's in the past perfect.
Morpheme is smallest meaningful unit of language. Not related to number of syllables or letters.
Morphemes can be very small (top) or very large (category, vocabulary).
Words can be made of single morphemes, or multiple morphemes (un-happi-ly).
To determine if something is a morpheme, look for other words with same cluster serving same purpose. -ly is an adverb ending, lots of words use it this way, hence it's a morpheme. -gory (as in category) is repeated in other words (allegory, amphigory), but not to change the meaning or lexical category of a root, therefore not a morpheme.
To separate morphemes:
1. Find the base
2. Attach affixes in logical order to created new words. Eg: Recreational: create --> creation --> recreation --> recreational. Each step should get a real word.
Weird and upsetting invisible morphemes:
Because past perfect affixes are considered morphemes in English, all past perfect forms are considered to have an extra morpheme even if the past perfect form is the same as the present form and no affix is visible.
Eg: widespread: here "spread" is the past perfect form of "to spread," combining with "wide" to create an adjective. Because it's in the past perfect, it has three morphemes, not two! Another example: had run. "Run" here has two morphemes, because it's in the past perfect.