5 Morphology and Word Formation key concepts

words
 
and
 
morphemes
In traditional grammar, words are the basic units of analysis. Grammarians 
classify words according to their parts of speech and identify and list the 
forms that words can show up in. Although the matter is really very com-
plex, for the sake of simplicity we will begin with the assumption that we are 
all generally able to distinguish words from other linguistic units. It will be 
sufficient for our initial purposes if we assume that words are the main units 
used for entries in dictionaries. In a later section, we will briefly describe 
some of their distinctive characteristics.
Words are potentially complex units, composed of even more basic units, 
called morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that has 
grammatical function or meaning (NB not the smallest unit of meaning); 
we will designate them in braces—{ }. For example, sawed, sawn, sawing, 
and saws can all be analyzed into the morphemes {saw} + {-ed}, {-n}, {-ing}, 
and {-s}, respectively. None of these last four can be further divided into 
meaningful units and each occurs in many other words, such as looked, 
mown, coughing, bakes.
{Saw} can occur on its own as a word; it does not have to be attached 
to another morpheme. It is a free morpheme. However, none of the other 
morphemes listed just above is free. Each must be affixed (attached) to some 
other unit; each can only occur as a part of a word. Morphemes that must 
be attached as word parts are said to be bound.
Exercise
1. Identify the free morphemes in the following words:

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Morphology and Word Formation
kissed, freedom, stronger, follow, awe, goodness, talkative, teacher, 
actor
.
2. Use the words above (and any other words that you think are rel-
evant) to answer the following questions:
a. Can a morpheme be represented by a single phoneme? Give ex-
amples. By more than one phoneme? Give examples.
b. Can a free morpheme be more than one syllable in length? Give 
examples. Can a bound morpheme? Give examples.
c. Does the same letter or phoneme—or sequence of letters or pho-
nemes—always represent the same morpheme? Why or why not? 
(Hint: you must refer to the definition of morpheme to be able to 
answer this.)
d. Can the same morpheme be spelled differently? Give examples.
e. Can different morphemes be pronounced identically? Give examples.
f. A morpheme is basically the same as:
i. a letter
ii. a sound
iii. a group of sounds
iv. none of the above
3. The words district and discipline show that the sequence of letters 
d-i-s
does not always constitute a morpheme. (Analogous examples are