Name: Ma. Auxiliadora Jcome Ortega.

Course: 4th C2
Date: July 8th 2015
Subject: Linguistics
Morphemes
A meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word (such as dog) or a word element (such
as the -s at the end of dogs) that can't be divided into smaller meaningful parts.

A prefix may be a morpheme:

"What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?"
(George Carlin)

Individual words may be morphemes:

"They want to put you in a box, but nobody's in a box. You're not in a box."
(John Turturro)

Contracted word forms may be morphemes:

"They want to put you in a box, but nobody's in a box. You're not in a box."
(John Turturro)

Bound and free morphemes

Free morphemes:
o constitute words by themselves boy, car, desire, gentle, man
o can stand alone
Bound morphemes:
o cant stand alone always parts of words - occur attached to free
morphemes
cats: cat free morpheme
-s bound morpheme
undesirable: desire free morpheme
-un, -able bound morphemes
o affixes
o prefixes occur before other morphemes
unhappy, discontinue, rewrite, bicycle, bipolar

Name: Ma. Auxiliadora Jcome Ortega.

Course: 4th C2
Date: July 8th 2015
Subject: Linguistics

o suffixes following other morphemes

sleeping, excited, desirable
o infixes inserted into other morphemes
Bontoc, a language in the Philipines
fikas strong fumicas to be strong
kilad red
kumilad to be red
English
full word obscenities into another word
in+fuggin+credible
also+bloomin+lately
o circumfixes attached to another morpheme both initially and finally
German
Past participle of irregular verbs ge+lieb+t
Roots and Stems
omorphologically complex words consist of
a root + one or more morpheme(s)
o

root
a lexical content morpheme that
cannot be analyzed into smaller
painter , reread, conceive
may or may not stand alone as a word
read, -ceive
stem
a root morpheme + affix
may or may not be a word
painter both a words and a stem
-ceive+er only a stem
2

Name: Ma. Auxiliadora Jcome Ortega.

Course: 4th C2
Date: July 8th 2015
Subject: Linguistics

as we add an affix to a stem, a new stem and a new word are formed
root:
stem:
word:

believe
believe + able
un + believe + able

root:
stem:
stem:
stem:
word:

system
system + atic
un+ system + atic
un+ system + atic + al
un+ system + atic + al + ly

Morphemes and syllables

The terms morpheme and syllable should not be confused:
many morphemes are syllabic (i.e., contain at least one vowel) - cat
many others are non-syllabic (contain no vowels): -s 'more than one'