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 [siŋ]+[∂] - 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...