Morphology in Linguistics: An Overview
Morphology in Linguistics
Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the structure and formation of words. It examines the components of words, how these components combine to create new words, their ability to change, and their classification into groups. Words are the fundamental elements used in syntax to construct sentences. They are the smallest units of language that can stand alone in a speech act and possess phonological independence, meaning they are a distinct group of sounds forming syllables around a stressed syllable.
Articles and Clitics
Some words, like articles and clitics, lack complete grammatical and phonological independence. These words, known as “bound forms,” must be phonologically grouped with the word preceding or following them, unlike “free forms” that have phonological independence.
Lexical Words and Grammatical Words
Lexical words, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, form open groups, meaning new members can be added, and existing ones can disappear. Grammatical words (lacking lexical content), such as determiners, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions, belong to closed groups. These function words indicate dependency relationships between words, forming constituents and establishing the hierarchical structure of sentences.
Derivational Morphology
Derivational morphology affects content words and involves the formation of new words using suffixes and prefixes. It’s considered an earlier stage of morphology.
Inflectional Morphology
Inflectional morphology applies only to grammatical function words linked to nouns (pronouns, articles, and determiners) and serves to indicate agreement with other words. These secondary or inherited inflectional marks (e.g., this, these) are closed or inherited.
Lexemes
Lexemes represent the common base for all forms and realizations of a lexical entry. Modifications are added to this base. The lexeme carries the lexical meaning of the word and is often accompanied by grammatical elements (inflectional morphemes: gender, number, tense). However, not all words have inflectional morphemes. Invariable words like adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions lack any variation. The remaining grammatical categories do support inflectional morphemes.
Paradigm: The set of possible variations or forms a word can take.
- Simple words: Single lexeme and morpheme, lacking derivatives.
- Complex words: Lexemes + derivational morphemes.
Morphemes
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units within a word. They are segments that appear repeatedly in different words and can be a whole word or part of a word with independent meaning.
- Monomorphemic words: Words with a single morpheme.
- Polymorphemic words: Words with more than one morpheme.
Morphemes that are independent words are called free morphemes. Morphemes attached to another morpheme are bound morphemes, also known as affixes.
Morphemes are classified by their position in the word and the type of meaning they contribute.
The Root or Lexeme
The root or lexeme is the primary morpheme that provides the lexical meaning of the word. It’s the part that repeats in words of the same family.
Theme
Theme is the segment that repeats throughout a word’s paradigm in all its inflected forms. In verbs, the theme is the root plus the thematic vowel (VT). The thematic vowel is not part of the root or inflectional ending but helps identify the inflection class (1st, 2nd, or 3rd conjugation). The absence or alteration of the VT in the verb paradigm can indicate inflectional forms. Verb themes always end in a vowel.
In nominal items (nouns and adjectives), the theme can coincide with the root or be a distinct segment.
- Simple words = root and VT (if any).
- Derived words = root + derivational affix.
In nouns, the theme is crucial for determining the inflectional paradigm and class. If a noun’s theme ends in an unstressed vowel, it forms the plural with -s. If it ends in a consonant, the plural is formed with -es. If it ends in a stressed vowel, the plural can be -s or -es.
Base
Base is the part of the word to which an affix is added to form a new word. It’s a broader concept than root and theme. “Theme” is used in inflectional morphology, while “base” is used in derivational morphology. The base can be simple (root) or complex (root + affixes).
Affixes
Affixes are morphemes added to roots and themes to create new words. They can also be inflectional morphemes marking gender, number, tense, person, etc., in nouns and verbs, but these are usually called endings. Affixes cannot form words on their own; they must be attached to a lexeme or complex base. All affixes are bound morphemes, but not all bound morphemes are affixes. They are identified by their form, function, and consistent meaning in the words they appear in.
- Prefixes: Placed before the base.
- Suffixes: Placed after the base.
- Infix: Inserted within the base, splitting it into two units.
- Interfix: A type of affix with no semantic, lexical, or grammatical function, placed between two morphemes. An exception to the rule that affixes are minimal meaning-bearing units. They do not alter the base.
- Circumfix: A discontinuous affix formed by a prefix and suffix that surround the base. They are mutually required (e.g., in parasyntetic word formation).
Morph: The phonological realization of a morpheme. Allomorph: Different realizations or variants of the same morpheme. The difference between a morph and a morpheme is that some morphemes can have multiple phonological realizations (morphs). A morpheme can have no phonological realization (a zero morph) or have meaningless morphs that don’t represent any morpheme, like interfixes.
Creation of New Words
All languages have internal mechanisms for creating new words, primarily through derivation and composition.