MORPHEMES. CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEMES

Words consist of morphemes. The term 'morpheme' is derived from Greek morphe — 'form' + -erne. The Greek suffix -erne has been adopted by linguists to denote the smallest unit (cf. phoneme, sememe). The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. Morphemes cannot be segmented into smaller units without losing their constitutive essence, i. e. two-facetedness — association of a certain meaning with a certain sound-pattern. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words but not independently. Morphemes may have different phonetic shapes. In the word-cluster please, pleasing, pleasure, pleasant the root morpheme is represented by the phonetic shapes: [pli:z-] in please, pleasing; [ple3-] in pleasure; [plez-] in pleasant. All the representations of the given morpheme are called allomorphs or morpheme variants.

Morphemes may be classified from the semantic point of view and from the structural point of view.

Semantically morphemes fall into two types: 1) root-morphemes and 2) non-root morphemes.

Root-morphemes (or radicals) are the lexical nucleus of words. For example, in the words remake, glassful, disorder the root-morphemes -make, glass- and -order are understood as the lexical centres of the words. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster, e.g. the morpheme teach- in to teach, teacher, teaching.

Non-root morphemes include inflectional morphemes (or inflections) and affixational morphemes (or affixes). Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms, whereas affixes are relevant for building various types of stems'. Lexicology is concerned only with affixational morphemes. Affixes are divided into prefixes and suffixes. A prefix is a derivational morpheme preceding the root-morpheme and modifying its meaning (pronounce — mis-pronounce, safe — un-safe). A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the root and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class (cf. -en, -y, -less heart-en, heart-y, heart-less).

Structurally morphemes fall into three types: 1) free morphemes; 2) bound morphemes; 3) semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes.

A free morpheme is defined as one that coincides with the stem or a word form. For example, the root-morpheme friend- of the noun friendship is naturally qualified as a free morpheme because it coincides with one of the forms of the word friend.

A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Affixes are bound morphemes for they always make part of a word. For example, the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ize in the words darkness, friendsh ip, to activize, the prefixes im-, dis-, de- in the words impolite, to demobilize.

Some root-morphemes also belong to the class of bound morphemes. These are, as a rule, roots which are found in quite a limited number of words andnever independently or pseudo-roots, i.e. root-morphemes which have lost most of the properties of "full" roots. Such are the root-morphemes goose- in gooseberry, -ceive in conceive. Combining forms, or morphemes borrowed namely from Greek or Latin in which they existed as free forms, are considered to be bound roots. For example, the word tele-phone consists of two bound roots, whereas the word

cyclic — of a bound root and an affix.

Semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes are morphemes that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme. For example, the morphemes well and half on the one hand occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the word-form in the utterances to sleep well, half an hour, on the other hand well and half occur as bound morphemes in the words well-known, half- done.

2. TYPES OF MEANING IN MORPHEMES

In morphemes different types of meaning can be singled out depending on the semantic class morphemes belong to. Root-morphemes possess lexical, differential and distributional types of meaning. Affixational morphemes have lexical, part-of-speech, differential and distributional types of meaning. Both root-morphemes and affixational morphemes are devoid of grammatical meaning.

Lexical meaning. The lexical meaning of root-morphemes differs from that of affixational morphemes. Root-morphemes have an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morphemes in the language. The lexical meaning of affixational morphemes is, as a rule, of a more generalizing character. For example, the suffix -en carries the meaning 'the change of a quality'. Verbs formed with the help of this suffix express the idea that someone or something has more of a quality than it had previously. If, for example, a river deepens, it becomes deeper than it was before, and if a person is deafened, he has lost temporarily the power of hearing.

As in words lexical meaning in morphemes may also be analyzed into denotational and connotational components. The connotational component of meaning may be found not only in root-morphemes but in affixational morphemes as well. Endearing and diminutive suffixes, such as -ette (kitchenette, leaflette); -ie(y) (dearie, girlie); -ling (duckling, wolfling) bear a heavy emotive charge. The affixational morphemes with the same denotational meaning sometimes differ only in connotation. For example, the morphemes -ly, -like, -ish in the words womanly, womanlike, womanish have the same denotational meaning of similarity but differ in the connotational component (cf. the Russian equivalents: женственный — женский — 6a6ий). Stylistic reference may also be found in morphemes of different types. For example, the affixational morphemes –ine (chlorine)',-oid (rhomboid) are bookish.

Differential meaning. Differential meaning is the semantic component that serves to distinguish one word from all others containing identical morphemes. In words consisting of two or more morphemes, one of the constituent morphemes always has differential meaning. For example, in the word bookshelf the morpheme – shelf serves to distinguish the word from other words containing the morpheme book-: bookcase, bookstall.

Distributional Meaning. Distributional meaning is the meaning of the order and arrangement of morphemes making up the word. It is found in all words containing more than one morpheme. For example, the word singer is composed of two morphemes sing- and -er both of which possess the denotational meaning — 'to make musical sounds' and 'the doer of the action'. A different arrangement of the same morphemes *ersing^\ would make the word meaningless.

Part-of-speech meaning. In most cases affixational morphemes are indicative of the part of speech to which a derivational word belongs. For example, the affixational morpheme -ment (movement) is used to form nouns, while the affixational morpheme -less (careless) forms adjectives. Sometimes the part-of-speech meaning of morphemes predominates. For example, the morpheme -ice in the word justice se rves principally to transfer the part-of-speech meaning of the morpheme just- into another class and namely that of the noun.

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