Nominal Morphology
Seminar 1
Conf. univ. dr. Ionela NEAGU
MORPHEMES AND SYLLABLES
The traditional term for the most elemental unit of grammatical form is morpheme. A single word may be composed of one or more morphemes. (V. Fromkin, R. Rodman, An Introduction to Language, 1974)
Morphemes could be shown in writing, for instance by using hyphens:
The tradition-al term for the most element-al unit of gramma-tic-al form is morph-eme. A single word may be compos-ed of one or more morph-eme-s.
but it is not conventional to do so. The smallest grammatical unit which has meaning and which is marked in writing is the word.
inflectional morphemes - show a grammatical function: past tense -ed (worked), the plural -s (girls).
derivational morphemes - change the grammatical category of a word: by adding -al the nouns element and tradition become the adjectives elemental, traditional. A morpheme at the end of words is called a suffix.
A morpheme like un-, meaning not, placed in front of the word to make untraditional, unconditional, is called a prefix. The general term which includes both suffixes and prefixes is affix.
Central to a syllable is a vowel sound, either on its own - e.g. I [ai] - or opened and/or closed with a consonant - e.g. tie [tai].
syllable - a unit of sound
morpheme - a unit of grammar which has meaning
e.g. singer [sià Â]+[âÂÂ] - two syllables & two morphemes - (sing)+(er):
sing - free morpheme (it can stand alone as a verb)
-er - bound morpheme (it is always a suffix, never a word, and its meaning is to create a noun from a verb, to signify a person who performs the action of the verb - singer is the one...