The morphological structure of the word. Morphemes and allomorphs. The morphological meaning of the word

Word is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of linguistic analysis.

The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphe “form ”+ -eme. The Greek suffix –eme has been adopted by linguistic to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit; it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units. A form in these cases a recurring discrete unit of speech. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of single morpheme.

Allomorphes are the phonemic variants of the given morpheme. The meaning remains the same, the sound can vary. e.g. il-, im-, ir-, are the allomorphes of the prefix in- (illiterate, important, irregular, inconstant).

According to the number of morphemes words are classified into:

1. monomorphic (root-words) consist of only one root-morpheme

e.g. small, dog, make

2. polymorphic are classified according to the number of root-morphemes into:

a. monoradical (one-root words):

1) radical –suffixal(корень-суффикс) (consist of one root-morpheme and one or more suffixal morphemes)

e.g. acceptable, acceptability, blackish, etc.

2) radical-prefixal (consist of one root-morpheme and a prefixal morpheme)

e.g. outdo, rearrange, unbutton, etc.

3) prefixo-radical-suffixal (consist of one root, a prefixal and suffixal morphemes)

e.g. disagreeable, misinterpretation, etc.

Derived words are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes.

b. Polyradical (words which consist of two or more roots):

1) polyradical words which consist of two or more roots with no affixational morphemes

e.g. book-stand, eye-ball, lamp-shade, etc.

2) words which contain at least two roots and one or more affixational morphemes

e.g. safety-pin, wedding-pie, class-consciousness

Compound words are those which contain at least two root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant.

There can be both root- and derivational morphemes in compounds as in pen-holder, light-mindedness, or only root-morphemes as in lamp-shade, eye-ball, etc.

Types of morphological mgs:

1. lexical – it’s defined in the dictionary

2. p-of-sp – typical affixes, not roots. – er shoulder-surfer – подглядывающий номер телефона.

3. differential – to distinguish one word from another: re-do, over-do

4. distributional – shows the arrangement of morphemes in a word: skylight – light sky.

3. The main principles of morphemic analysis.Classification of morphemes.

The morphemic analysis may be carried out on the basis of two principles:

1. the root principle -the segmentation of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identificatio n of a root- morpheme within a set of words

e.g. the identification of the root-morpheme agree in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree makes it possible to split these words into the root agree and the affixational morphemes -able, -ment, dis-.

2. the affix principle - the segmentation of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of an affixational morpheme within a set of words.

e.g. the identification of the suffixational morpheme -less leads to the segmentation of words like useless, hopeless, merciless, etc., into the suffixational morpheme -less and the root-morphemes within a word-cluster.

As a rule, the application of one of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentation of words.

Classification of morphemes.

I. Morphemes may be classified:

a) from the semantic point of view

b) from the structural point of view

Semantically morphemes fall into two classes:

1. root-morphemes

2. non-root or affixational morphemes.

Roots and affixes make two distinct classes of morphemes due to the different roles they play in word-structure.

The root-morpheme - the lexical nucleus of a word, it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. It is the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster (teach: teacher, teaching)

Structurally morphemes fall into: