A. MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF WORDS
If we describe a word as an autonomous unit of language in which a particular meaning is associated with a particular sound complex and which is capable of a particular grammatical employment and able to form a sentence by itself , we have the possibility to distinguish it from the other fundamental language unit, namely, the morpheme.
A morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are they divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit.
- Such morphemes are called bound morphemes, in contrast to free morphemes, which do occur on their own. Some bound morphemes, for example un-, must always be attached before the central meaningful element of the word, the so-called root, stem or base, whereas other bound morphemes, such as -ity, -ness, or -less, must follow the root.
- Variants of a morpheme are called allomorphs; the ending -s, indicating plural in "cats," "dogs," the -es in "dishes," and the -en of "oxen" are all allomorphs of the plural morpheme.
Eg : Thus, -ion/-tion/-sion/-ation/ are the positional variants of the same suffix to show this they are taken together and separated by slight deference in sound form depending on the final phoneme of preceding stem. An allomorphs is defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environmentand characterized by complementary distribution. Thus, stems ending inconsonants take as a rule–ation (liberation);stems ending in pt, however, take-tion (corruption) and the final it becomes fused with the suffix. Allomorph will also occur among prefixes.
- Affixation à Affixes, word elements attached to words, may either precede, as prefixes (-an,(grammarian),-ant/-ent (servant), -arian (vegetarian); -ee (examinee); -er (porter); -ician (musician), ist (linguist); -ite (sybarite); -or (inspector) etc.) or follow, as suffixes (-age, -ance/-ence, -ancy/-ency,-dom,-hood,-ing, -ion/-tion/-ation, ism, ment,-ness,-ship, -th,-ty).
- Lexical : have a sense (meaning) in and of themselves, eg : Noun, verb, adjective
- Gramatical : they express some sort of relationship between lexical morphems, eg : preposition, articles and conjuction.
B. RULES OF FORMATION WORDS
Speakers of language know the morphems of language and the rules for word is shown as much by the errors made as by the nondeviant forms produced. Morphems combine the words. Many words form our internal dictionaries. No speaker of language knows all the words. Given our knowladge of the morphems of the language ant the morpholigical rules, we may guess the meaning of a word we do not know, sometimes we wrong.
Morphems can be combined in this way because there are morphological rules in every language that determine how morphemes combine to form new words.
Derivational Morphology
- Bound morphems like –ify and –ation are called derivational morphems. When they are added to root morphems or steams a word is derived. This method of word formation reflects the wonderful creativity of language.
- A derivived word may add additional meaning to the original word (such as the negative meaning of words prefixed by un-) and many form can change to new words. For the example :
Noun to Adjetive
|
Verb to Noun
|
Adjective to Verb
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Noun to Verb
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Adjective to Noun
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Verb to adjective
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boy + ish
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Clear + ance
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Exact + ly
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Moral + ize
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Tall + ness
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Read + able
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Health + ful
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Accus + ation
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Quite + ly
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Brand + ish
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Specific +ity
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Creat + ive
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Alcohol + ic
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Sing + er
|
|
Vaccin + ate
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Glori +ous
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Migrat + ory
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Inflectional Morphology
English has eight inflectional affixes, there are :
Inflectional Affix
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Root
|
Example
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Plural
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Noun
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Boys
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Possessive
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Noun
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Boy’s
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Comparative
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Adjective
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Older
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Superlative
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Adjective
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Oldest
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Present
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Verb
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Walks
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Past
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Verb
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Walked
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Past Prticiple
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Verb
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Driven
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Present Participle
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Verb
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driving
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C. SEMANTIC FEATURES OF WORDS
In
language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with
semantic or
pragmatic content (with literal or practical
meaning). The meaning of words is analyzed in several different ways in order to account for as many aspects of meaning as possible. First of all, words are analyzed in terms of their semantic features that is basic elements which enable the differentiation of meaning of words.
Semantic features
"HAPPY" "SAD"
+EMOTION +EMOTION
+POSITIVE -POSITIVE
"HAPPY" "THRILLED"
+EMOTION +EMOTION
+POSITIVE +POSITIVE
+EXCITEMENT
Semantic features can be used to describe differences between
antonyms, superordinates and their hyponyms, and near synonyms.
Man is [+HUMAN], [+MALE], [+ADULT]
Woman is [+HUMAN], [-MALE], [+ADULT]
Boy is [+HUMAN], [+MALE], [-ADULT]
Girl is [+HUMAN], [-MALE], [-ADULT]
D. SIGN LANGUAGE MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is the study of morphemes, which is the smallest meaningful unit of language. There are two different types of morphemes; free, which can be meaningful while standing alone, and bound, which must be attached to another morpheme in order to have any meaning. For example, a free morpheme would be the word 'boat'and a bound morpheme would be the /s/ in the word 'boats'. In sign language, morphemes are visual-manual, and include what is called parameters (parameters are equivalent to phonemes, they are just not spoken) (Sign Language Morphology, n.d.).
References
Greene, Amsel.1996. Pullet surprises, Glenview, IL : Scott, Foresman & CO
SA. Thompson. 1975. On the issue of productivity in the lexikon, Kritilikon Literrarum
Morphology the word of laguage
Linguistiscs foor non-linguistis
Internet:
http://books.google.co.id/books?id=F2yMNh3x5DsC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=sign+language+morphology&source=bl&ots=kefRgANoJ3&sig=-
