Transcript Document

OBJECTIVES
You will understand:
1.
2.
The different kinds of morphemes
The patterns and rules of word formation
You will be able to:
1.
Apply your basic understanding of morphemes and word
formation to your teaching
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
INTRODUCTION
•
When we form words in any language we take pieces of words,
or meaning units, and put them together to form complete
words.
•
The smallest meaningful linguistic unit used in building words
in any language is called a morpheme. The study of
morphemes and of the use of morphemes to build words is
called morphology.
•
In this module and the next module we will look at the
different kinds of morphemes and the patterns and rules of
word formation. We will also tie this knowledge into what we
can do in the language classroom to help our students
understand the word-building patterns behind the English
words they are learning.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
A. Identify the morpheme that each of the words in the groups
below have in common. What does the morpheme mean?
i. Unfair, unwise, uninteresting, unable
ii. Disability, dismantle, displeasure, disinterest
iii. Dryness, quickness, brightness, illness
iv. Songs, boys, apples
v. Worker, teacher, dancer
vi. Proudly, quickly, hurriedly, surprisingly
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
B. Identify the meanings of two morphemes in each of the
following words (the word may have more than two morphemes):
i. Automobile
ii. Bicycle
iii. Microscope
iv. Independent
v. Considerate
vi. Supernatural
vii. Prototype
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
FREE VERSUS BOUND MORPHEMES
•
There are three different ways that we can categorize or
divide up morphemes. The first way is to divide morphemes
into free morphemes or bound morphemes. Free morphemes
do not need to be attached to any other morphemes. In other
words they can constitute a complete word, or they can stand
alone as a complete word. Examples of free morphemes are:
bug, pen, to, a, under, over, lamp, and book.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
FREE VERSUS BOUND MORPHEMES
•
Bound morphemes, on the other hand, can never appear
independent of another morpheme. They must always be
attached to one or more morphemes. Examples of bound
morphemes are: mis, ly, ed, s, er, and un. Let’s look at word
to see how this works. In the word ‘proudly’, there are two
morphemes—‘proud’ and ‘ly’. ‘Proud’ is a free morpheme
because it can stand alone as a complete word. ‘Ly’ is a bound
morpheme because it must always be attached to another
morpheme in order to make sense.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Each language is different in terms of the number of bound
versus free morphemes that it has. Languages that have a
large percentage of free morphemes are called isolated
languages. Chinese is a good example of this—the majority of
morphemes in Chinese are free. Languages that have a lot of
bound morphemes are called agglutinative languages.
Languages also differ, then, in terms of which concepts are
expressed through free morphemes and which through bound
morphemes. For example, in English, we express the concept
of ‘small’ through the free morpheme ‘small’. We put it in
front of a word to convey ‘smallness’, as in the ‘small ball’ or
the ‘small house’. In Spanish, on the other hand, the concept
of ‘small’ is expressed by a bound morpheme ‘etta’. So we
have the word ‘casa’ for ‘house’ and ‘casetta’ for ‘small
house’.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
2. FREE VERSUS BOUND MORPHEMES
Divide the words below into their morphemes. Indicate if each
morpheme is free (F) or bound (B).
i. Nevertheless
ii. Indescribable
iii. Glasses
iv. Freezing
v. Blackened
vi. Energetic
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
LEXICAL VERSUS GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES
•
Free morphemes can be divided into two groups—lexical
morphemes and grammatical morphemes.
•
Lexical morphemes are free morphemes that primarily
convey meaning. Examples of lexical morphemes include: cat,
plant, build, lamp, light and so on.
•
Grammatical morphemes are free morphemes that serve a
grammatical function (articles, prepositions, pronouns).
Examples of grammatical morphemes include: a, an, the, to,
from, he, she, it and so on.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
3. LEXICAL VERSUS GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES
Determine if the following words are lexical or grammatical:
Lexical
Grammatical
bake
of
pen
and
which
fish
my
who
phone
red
fire
if
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
DERIVATIONAL VERSUS INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES
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Bound morphemes can also be divided into two groups—
derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes.
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Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes that change
the meaning of the stem of the word or change the word class
of a word. The following are examples of derivational
morphemes: ‘ful’ changes nouns to adjectives, ‘ly’ changes
adjectives to adverbs, and ‘ness’ changes adjectives to nouns.
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Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that indicate
the syntactic relation between words and function as
grammatical markers. The following are examples of
inflectional morphemes: ‘s’ makes a count noun plural, and
‘er’ makes adjectives and adverbs into comparatives.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
4. DERIVATIONAL VERSUS INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES
Determine if the following bound morphemes are derivational or inflectional.
Derivational
Inflectional
ment
hood
ed
est
tion
s (3rd person singular)
en
un
pre
ing (present participle)
tri
ize
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Complete Question 5A or 5B in your Task Journal.
•
Task Journals can be submitted via email to
[email protected] (preferred) or printed and handed in.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute