3. The morpheme. The principles of morphemic analysis. Types of morphemes. Structural types of words: simple, derived, compound words.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words but not independently.

Morphemes are subdivided into root - morphemes and non-root morphemes.

The root morpheme is the lexical center of the word. It is the semantic nucleus of a word with which no grammatical properties of the word are connected. Non-root morphemes include inflections and derivational affixes.

Inflection is an affixal morpheme which carries only grammatical meaning thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms (books, opened, strong-er).

Derivational morpheme is an affixal morpheme which modifies the lexical meaning of the root and forms a new word. In many cases it adds the part-of-speech meaning to the root (manage-ment, en-courage, fruit-ful).

Morphemes which may occur in isolation and function as independent words are called free morphemes (pay, sum, form). Morphemes which are not found in isolation are called bound morphemes (-er, un-, -less).

Morphemic analysis.

The segmentation of words is generally carried out according to the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based upon the binary principle, i.e. each stage of procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents (IC). Each IC at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referred to as Ultimate Constituents (UC). The analysis of word-structure on the morphemic level must naturally proceed to the stage of UC-s. Acc to IC and UC the division is based to 2 principles: 1)affix princp.,2)root principle.

Allomorphes are the phonemic variants of the given morpheme e.g. il-, im-, ir-, are the allomorphes of the prefix in- (illiterate, important, irregular, inconstant).

Monomorphic are root-words consisting of only one root-morpheme i.e. simple words (dry, grow, boss, sell).

Polymorphic are words consisting of at least one root-morpheme and a number of derivational affixes, i.e. derivatives, compounds (customer, payee, body-building, shipping).

Derived words are those composed of one root-morpheme and one more derivational morphemes (consignment, outgoing, publicity). Compound words contain at least two root-morphemes (warehouse, camera-man),

4. Productivity. Productive and non-productive ways of word-formation.

Productivity is the ability to form new words after existing patterns which are readily understood by the speakers of a language. Synchronically the most important and the most productive ways of word-formation are affixation (incoming, trainee, promotion), conversion (work – to work, garden – to garden), word-composition (simple: week-end; derived: letter-writer; compound: aircraft-carrier) and abbreviation (contraction). In the course of time the productivity of this or that way of word-formation may change. Sound interchange or gradation (blood - to bleed, to abide -abode, to strike - stroke) was a productive way of word building in old English and is important for a diachronic study of the English language. It has lost its productivity in Modern English and no new word can be coined by means of sound gradation. Affixation on the contrary was productive in Old English and is still one of the most productive ways of word building in Modern English. Non-productive affixes are affixes which are not able to form new words in the period in question. Non-productive affixes are recognized as separate morphemes.(-some, -ship, -th, -ful, -ly, -ous etc.)