Morphology

Definitions

Morphology: the study of the structure and the form of words, and all the components that make up words. Morphology lends to vocabulary building.

Morpheme: the smallest unit of meaning in a word

Morphemic analysis: analyzing a word’s structure to predict its meaning

Free morphemes: Morphemes that can stand alone as words themselves

Bound morphemes: Morphemes that cannot stand alone as words. Bound morphemes include units such as prefixes and suffixes.

• Morphemes can be either root words or affixes of words
  • Root: a morpheme that can stand alone with its own meaning, a free morpheme
  • Affixes:
    • Suffix: a bound morpheme that appears at the end of a word and changes its meaning, ex: (-s), (-ed), (-ly), (-er)
    • Prefix: a bound morpheme that occurs at the beginning of a word and changes its meaning, ex: (re-), (ex-), (de-), (un-), (be-)
    • Affixes can be distinguished as either derivational or inflectional
      • Derivational morphemes: morphemes that change the meaning of the root, such as making it mean the opposite (ex: “happy” becomes “unhappy,” which means not happy, when the prefix “un” is added on) or changing it’s part of speech or classification (ex: the word “read” is a verb, but when the suffix “-er” is added to it it becomes “reader,” a noun)
        • These can be either prefixes or suffixes and can effect the pronunciation of a root
      • Inflectional morphemes: these are eight suffixes in the English language, each one only working with a specific class of words (nouns, verbs, etc), the sound of these morphemes are often determined by the last sound in a word

Shedd, 2008e

Inflectional Morphemes of the English Language

Welby, 2002

Why It’s Important

• Morphology influences spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension
• If a student knows the meaning of separate morphemes they are able to separate them in a word and use their knowledge about each separate morpheme to put together a full meaning for an unfamiliar word
• Knowledge of morphemes makes decoding easier by allowing students to break words into recognizable chunks to speed their decoding skills. A child may recognize a word from their speaking vocabulary previously not encountered in reading this way. (Strickland & Snow, 2002)
• Large words can be more easily understood by simply breaking them down into smaller morphemes or combinations of morphemes. Through exposure to language many of these morpheme changes become intuitive.
  • ex: “multigeneration” breaks into the morphemes "multi-", "generat(e)", "-ion" which can be defined individually to create the full meaning of the word
  • Morphology Tree for the adjective "multigeneration"
    • Here, the suffix "-ion" combines with the verb "generate" to create the noun "generation", then the adjective prefix "multi-" adds to the beginning of generation to make the adjective "multigeneration"

                              from Curzan & Adams, 2006

• Specifically for spelling, morphology assists greatly in spelling knowledge development by allowing students to combine the knowledge of root word spellings with common affix spellings.
  • magic – magician
  • sign – signature
  • grace – gracious
  • perform – performance
• A child can understand a lot about the meaning of a word just by breaking it down into its morphemes, identification of a root word, identification of prefixes and suffixes that change a word’s meaning, specify a number, specify a tense or word class, or define it as a descriptor.
• New words are often formed using combinations of morphemes
  • Compounding- combinations of free morphemes 
  • Prefixing- placing a bound morpheme at the beginning of an existing word, which can be either one free morpheme or a combination of free and bound morphemes
  • Suffixing- placing a bound morpheme at the end of an existing word 

• “When you learn one word you learn ten.”
  • One root combined with many other morphemes can create countless new words
    • courage – courageous, courageously, encourage, discourage, discouragingly
    • relate – relates, related, relating, unrelated, relation, relations, relative, relatives, relationship, relationships, relational, correlate, correlates, correlated, correlational, correlative
    • struct – construct, constructed, constructing, constructions, reconstruct, reconstructed, reconstructing, reconstruction, instruction, instructions, instructional, destruction, destructible, indestructible, destructive, destructively, destructor, obstruct, obstruction, obstructed, structure, structural, structured, structuring, … (94 words in all)
    • under – underneath, understanding, understood, misunderstanding, misunderstand, misunderstood, undercover
    • cover – covered, covering, uncover, uncovered, uncovering, discover, discovered, discovering, recover, recovering, undercover

Shedd, 2008e

Curzan & Adams, 2006

Resources

Curzan, A., & Adams, M. (2006). How english works: A linguistic introduction. New York: Pearson Education, Inc.

Shedd, M. (2008). More letter-sound knowledge, vocabulary, and morphology. Presentation for TE 301 (e), East Lansing, Michigan.

Strickland, D., & Snow, C. (2002). Preparing our teachers: Opportunities for better reading instruction. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press.

Welby, P. (2002). Morphology: Study of the internal structure of words. Retrieved on April 7, 2008, from http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~welby/201/morph-outline.pdf