Bolanle Elizabeth Arokoyo
Morphology Lecture Series #II
Our lecture today will be on the morpheme and types of morpheme. The first part will examine the morpheme.
The morpheme is the minimal meaningful unit of grammatical analysis. Yule (2006, p. 23) describes it as the minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.
The most basic component of grammatical analysis is the morpheme. It cannot be further broken down into smaller units. It is the minimal unit that is meaning bearing; i.e. the basic element of meaning.
The morpheme has both form and meaning. The morpheme, according to Bloomfield (1933, p. 24) is ‘a linguistic form which bears no parallel phonetic-semantic resemblance to any form’.
Any change in the form of the morpheme results in a corresponding change in meaning.
Words have internal structure that is made up of smaller units. This means that words are made up of one or more morphemes.
Morphemes therefore may constitute a word or part of a word. All simple words in languages are made of a morpheme. For example, the following words in Yorùbá are made up of a morpheme each.
1.
a. ilé ‘house’
b. àga ‘chair’
c. oko ‘farm’
d. ilá ‘okra’
Morphemes may constitute part of a word whereby you have morphemes combined into larger units and deriving complex words. Consider the following Igala words.
2. a. àm- ónú àmónú ‘kings’
PL king
b. àm- íye àmíye ‘mothers’
PL mother
These words are made up of combinations of morphemes in Igala.
A morpheme has a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. For example, the word returned has three minimal units; re-turn–ed with two meanings.
Every morpheme has a role to play in the construction where it occurs. The morpheme can be seen, therefore, as a semantic unit, an indivisible unit and a relational unit.
- Morpheme as a Semantic Unit
The morpheme is the minimal unit of meaning; every morpheme has a meaning.
A morpheme cannot be further broken down without the meaning being affected.
Every morpheme involved in the derivation of a word has a meaning to contribute. For example the Yoruba word àìlópin ‘eternal’ is made up of three morphemes each of which has contributed to the meaning of the word. Here are the morphemes that make up the word:
3. àì + ní + òpin àìlópin ‘eternal’
NEG have end
The Negative morpheme ai- is attached to the verb phrase lópin ‘have end’ to derive àìlópin which means something that does not have an end, that is endless, ‘eternal’.
2. Morpheme as an Indivisible Unit
A morpheme, no matter how long the syllables are cannot be further divided or broken down into smaller units. Any attempt to do this will render the morpheme meaningless.
A morpheme that also has similarities in shape to another morpheme cannot also be split without affecting the meaning. Establish is an English word made up of three syllables and a morpheme. It cannot be further broken down to smaller units. These Yoruba words ilé ‘house’, asọ ‘cloth’, àgùtàn ‘sheep’ cannot be further broken down into smaller units as they are made up of one indivisible unit. Trying to break up ilé ‘house’ into i-lé, asọ ‘cloth’ into a-sọ or àgùtàn into à-gùtàn will not be meaningful. The reason for the segmenting could be because there are vowel prefixes in the language. In these particular cases, the morphemes are indivisible.
3. Morpheme as a Relational Unit
Morphemes occur in relation with other morphemes in context. There are positions where particular morphemes can structurally occur hence the need for the classification of morphemes.
Bound morphemes occur with roots and stems along with other bound morphemes to form words. Roots are also compounded and then combined with bound morphemes to form words.
At the sentential level, morphemes occur in relation to one another. For example, verbs relate the action or event of nouns while the preposition shows the relationship between or among other participants.
Exercise
- What is a morpheme?
- With ample illustrations, classify the morpheme.
- Divide the following words into morphemes. List the free and bound morphemes separately. Describe any problematic morpheme.
exemplify unkempt wieldy
recognition omission selfish
unimportant computerize
N:B
1. We will continue with types of morpheme shortly.
2. Excerpts are taken from Arokoyo (2017).
References
Arokoyo, Bolanle Elizabeth. (2017). Unlocking morphology. Ilorin: Chridamel Publishing House.
Bloomfield, Leonard. (1933). Language. New York: Holt.
Yule, George (2006). The study of language: An introduction.London: Cambridge University Press.