10 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, friendship, to activize, the prefixes im-, dis-, de- in the words impolite, to demobilize.

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.

MORPHEMIC TYPES OF WORDS

According to the number of morphemes words are classified into: