Reflection week 5

In week 5 we have been introduced to morphemes. Basically, the word “Grammar” in linguistics can be taken to mean the entire system of describing the structure of a language from its sound system to its meaning system or just the organization (form) of words (morphology) and arrangement of these words into sentences (syntax). From the lecture that I get for week 5, I found that morpheme is the minimal units of grammatical analysis/function. Thus morphology is the study of morpheme of a language. The morpheme is the unit that combines with other morpheme to form the next functional unit, the word. 

For example :

Happy (adj)                live (verb)                   please (verb)               man (noun) Unhappy (adj)            lively (adj)                  displease (verb)          manly (adj) Happiness (noun)       livelihood (noun)        pleasant (adj)              manhood (noun)

Under the topic morpheme, I have learned about :

1. free/bound morpheme 
2. allomorphs
3. zero allomorphs
4.   inflectional and derivational morphology. 
   

Two or more morphemes combined where one is the morpheme which can stand on its own, whilst the other added morphemes cannot stand on its own. For example, “happy” is the basic morpheme which can occur on its own but “un” is the added morpheme which cannot stand on its own. Such morphemes are called free and bound morphemes respectively. Thus in the above examples, “ happy”, live, please and man” are free morphemes, whereas all others, like “un, ness, ly, hood, dis, and ant” are all bound morphemes. 

Next is allomorph which refers to a variant of a morpheme. Such variance occurs due to the phonological conditioning of the surrounding sounds. For example the “[s]”morpheme in English which indicates plurality or third person singular present tense has three allomorphs. 

While zero allomorph is the term given to the unit involved when a morpheme changes status from one type of morpheme to another without any addition or subtraction of any of its parts. Zero allomorph is spoken of, therefore, in a situation where there is no overt change in the item.

An inflection is an affix used to change form and function only from the grammatical point with no change in part of speech of the word as seen below:

Walk{s} Walk{ed} Walk{ing}

                                           

While derivations (derivational morphology) is an affix used to change form and meaning from lexical point with a change in part of speech sometimes as seen below:

Universe (noun)                     ambition (noun)                      protect (verb) Universal (adjective)              ambitious (adjective)              protective (adjective) Universality (noun)                ambitiousness (noun)              protection (noun) University (noun)                                                                protectiveness (noun)

A morpheme can be a word whilst a word is not necessarily a morpheme but may consist of many morphemes. For example :

monomorphemic words         : I, we, you, go, ball, as, when, how dimorphemic words               : comes, manual, wherever, prettiest, household, forever polymorphemic words           : disinclined, uncompromising, indeterminable, uncivilized,                                                biodegradable

More information on:

1.      http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAMorpheme.htm

2.      http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/caneng/morpheme.htm