语素和形态学.doc

Morphology ABSTRACT:?Morphology studies the internal structure of words and their alteration through the combination of morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest element in a language capable of creating a distinction in meaning. There are bound morphemes (e.g. -s, -ed, -ing) and free morphemes (e.g.?go,?stop,?run). Definition of Morphology Morphology is the study of word formation in a particular language. It focuses especially on the internal structure of the?words?and their alteration through the addition of?prefixes?and?suffixes. The Morpheme We have noted elsewhere (Language) that language is a set of symbols used to transmit meaning. But just what is the smallest element of meaning in a language? Most people tend to think of a word as being the smallest element. Is this the case? Well, consider the following words. dog?? dogs walk? walked sad??? sadly run???? running If you were to look up these words in a dictionary you would not find them listed as eight separate words. You would find only four listings of the words in the first column, i.e.?dog,?walk,?sad?and?run. The words in the second column would be shown within each listing as a variation of the listed word. For example, the word?dog?is used to mean a domesticated animal belonging to the same family as the fox, wolf and jackal. The word?dogs?would then be shown as the plural of dog, i.e. meaning more than one. Grammatically, then, words can be divided into smaller elements. In the example just discussed, one such element is?dog?and the other element is -s, which can be added to dog to make it?plural. These smaller elements are known as?morphemes. Other examples of the morpheme -s?being added to other morphemes to make them plural include: cat-s hat-s rat-s In the earlier example of?walk?and?walked, the morpheme -ed?is used here to indicate the?past tense, i.e. that something happened before the present time. Other examples include: thank-ed work-ed play-ed The example of?sad?and?sadly?indicates how the mor