语言学精品课ppt-04(戴).ppt

Topic 4 Morphology Definition of morphology Morphology is a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed. 1. Morphemes 1.1. The definition Morphemes are the smallest meaningful elements of language. They can not be further cut. It is true that the word friendship consists of 10 letters, but these letters in isolation are meaningless. The possible smallest meaningful segments of the word are friend and ship. 1.2 Types of morphemes Free Morphemes can occur independently as words. Free morphemes can be further divided into lexical morphemes, which have specific meanings themselves, such as man, desk, tough, and grammatical morphemes, which do not have any concrete meaning by themselves but indicate relationship between lexical morphemes, such as she, but, off. Bound morphemes Bound morphemes are those elements of words that cannot stand independently. They have to be bound or connected to free morphemes（Master, 1996:4）There are two categories for bound morphemes: derivational affixes and inflectional affixes. English Morphemes  Bound Morphemes Free Morphemes Roots Roots1 Derivational Inflectional Lexical Grammatical ( Content Functional) Prefixes Suffixes Suffixes Prefixes dis- dislike, discontinuous un- uneasy, unconscious, unfavorable in- incorrect, inconvenient mis- misinform, mistake, misplace over- overdo, overhear, overpopulate be- belittle, en en- enlarge, em- embody Syntactic functions of derivational endings Changes meaning or part of speech of the stem. Indicates semantic relations within the word. Occurs with only some members of a class of morph