MORPHEME (Free and Bound Morpheme)

MORPHEME

L. Bloomfield says in his book, “Linguistics form which bears no partial phonetic – semantics resemblance to any other form is a simple form morpheme.” 

Charles F. Hockett says, Morphemes are the smallest individually meaningful elements in the utterances of a language.”

Then, Ramlan (1980:11) says, “Morpheme is the smallest element which cannot be divided into any other forms.”

Morpheme is the smallest element that cannot be divided into several elements and has a meaning. All the based form is Morpheme.

A morpheme can be defined as a minimal unit having more or less constant meaning and more of less constant form, “more and less” because, for example, linguists say that the word buyers is made up of three morphemes {buy}+{er}+{s}. The evidence for this is that each can occur in other combinations of morphemes without changing its meaning. We can find {buy} in buying, buys, and {er} in seller, fisher, as well as buyer.  And {s} can be found in boys, girls, and dogs.

The more combinations a morpheme is found in, the more productive it is said to be.

Note the terminology:  Braces, {  } indicate a morpheme. Square brackets, [  ] indicate a semantic characterization.  Italics indicate a lexical item.

1. Morphemes can vary in size: neither the number of syllables nor the length of a word can indicate what is a morpheme and what isn’t.  For example, Albatross is a long word but a single morpheme, -y (as in dreamy ) is also a single morpheme.

2. Just as linguists have had success dissecting phonemes into combinations of distinctive features, so they have viewed morphemes as made up of combinations of semantic features.  For example, we can analyze a word like girls in terms of both its morphological and its semantic structure:

Morphological: girls =  {girl} + {s}

Semantic: {girl} = [-adult; -male; +human, ...] + {s} = {PLU} = [plural]

3. Two different morphemes may be pronounced (and even sometimes spelled) the same way. For example, the –er in buyer means something like ‘the one who,’ while the –er in shorter means something like ‘to a greater degree than.’ The first –er  always attaches to a verb, while the second –er always attaches to an adjective. It makes sense to consider these two different morphemes that just happen to sound the same. (The first is called the agentive morpheme {AG} since it indicates the agent of an action; the second is called the comparative morpheme {COMP} since it indicates the comparative degree of an adjective.)

4. We can’t always hold to the definition of a morpheme as having unchanging form. For example, when we consider words like boys, girls, shirts, books, we conclude that –s is the plural morpheme (symbolized {PLU}.)  But what about words such as men or women?  Here plurality is indicated not by adding –s but by changing the vowel in the stem. Yet we still want to say that men is, morphologically, {man} + {PLU}, even though the form of {PLU} is quite different in this case.

In the same way, it seems sensible to say that went = {go} + {PAST}, just as walked = {walk} + {PAST}, even though in the first case {PAST} involves a morphological change in form  quite different from the usual adding of –ed.

5. Sometimes it is very difficult to identify morpheme boundaries.  For example, the word hamburger originally meant {Hamburg} = ‘a city in Germany’ + {er} = ‘originating from.’  But probably most people now understand the word as meaning {ham} = ‘ham’ + {burger} = ‘hot patty served on a round bun.’

LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES LEXICAL

Morphemes are those that having meaning by themselves (more accurately, they have sense). Grammatical morphemes specify a relationship between other morphemes. But the distinction is not all that well defined.

Nouns, verbs, adjectives ({boy}, {buy}, {big}) are typical lexical morphemes.

Prepositions, articles, conjunctions ({of}, {the}, {but}) are grammatical morphemes.

A WORD

Based on the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary(1995:1374), “Word is  a sound or group of sounds that expresses a meaning and forms an independent unite of a language.”  From the statement above, we can conclude that word is the smallest free element or we can also say that every free element is a word.  There are some criterions that can be used to identify a word:

1. A word might consists of one free morpheme. For example : sick, sleep, fall, etc. These are called simple words.

2. A word might consists of one free morpheme and minimum one bound morpheme. For example: unlock, unreal, dismiss, etc. These are called complex words.

3. A word might consists of one bound morpheme or more with one more bound morpheme with it. From example : unbreakable, unfaithfully, etc. These are also called complex words.

4. A word might consists of one free morpheme and one free morpheme or one bound morpheme. For example in Bahasa we find the word: matahari, hulubalang, syahbandar. These are called compound word.

Each basic form is morpheme but not every morpheme can be classified as word and not all morphemes can be made into basic form.

Free and Bound Morphemes

Free morphemes are those that can stand alone as words. They may be lexical morphemes ({serve}, {press}), or grammatical morphemes ({at}, {and}).  For example : run, read, far, etc.

Bound morphemes can occur only in combination—they are parts of a word. They may be lexical morphemes (such as {clude} as in include, exclude, preclude) or they may be grammatical (such as {PLU} = plural as in boys, girls, and cats).

ALLOMORPHS

When a single morpheme takes more than one form, as the {-s pl} morpheme does, each form is called an allomorph. Here is another example: the indefinite article a also occurs as an in certain circumstances. There is only one morpheme {a} with two allomorphs /e/ (or /\/) and /æn/. Most allomorphs are phonemic variants; that is, they are slightly different pronunciations of the same morpheme. In many cases, the choice of allomorph depends on where the morpheme occurs in the word. For instance, in the present tense verb talks the {-s present tense} allomorph is /s/, but in begs it is /z/. In many cases the choice of allomorph is determined by the presence of another morpheme. For instance, in the word pronounce the allomorph of {nounce} (which means something like “say”) is /nauns/, but in pronunciation it is /n\ns/ because of the morphemes at the end of the word. (Many of my students in fact mispronounce and misspell the word pronunciation as pronounciation. This is an unconscious simplifying of the morpheme into only one allomorph.) Another example is the change of stress in words like átom and atómic (the “´” indicates which syllable is stressed). Not only does the stressed syllable change when you add {ic}, but some of the phonemes change. The morpheme {atom} in fact has two allomorphs: /´æt\m/ and /\t´øm/. 

The phenomenon of allomorphy (that is, the existence of multiple allomorphs for a single morpheme) occurs for a large number of reasons. Sometimes the reason is phonological assimilation (as in cats and dogs). Sometimes allomorphs were created by phonological processes that took place in the past. For instance, {wolf} has the allomorphs /w¨lf/ and /w¨lv/ (in the plural wolves). The reason is that sometime around five hundred years ago /f/ became /v/ before the {-s pl} morpheme: hence we have variants like wife/wives and leaf/leaves. The process is no longer active, which is why we say the Toronto Maple Leafs, not the Toronto Maple Leaves. About the same period in history, /e/ and /´/ changed to /i/ in stressed syllables, although we still spell these vowels as if they were pronounced the old way (in words like see, flee, etc.). However, the change did not occur if the stressed syllable was followed by two more syllables, so we end up with morphemes like {supreme} with two allomorphs /suprim/ and /supr´m/ (supreme/supremacy). A similar process also explains the allomorphy in words like divine/divinity and pronounce/pronunciation. We could also call the vowel changes in the past tenses of some verbs allomorphs of the normal past tense inflection, as in the forms talk/talked and run/ran. So we would transcribe them something like {talk} + {-ed past tense} and {run} + {-ed past tense}.

ZERO ALLOMORPH

A further abstraction is the concept of the zero-realisation (no visible affix, but a specific meaning) in plurals such as fish and deer and past tense forms such as cut and put.

Some linguists recognize a zero morph where a morpheme is expected in the grammatical system but no morph is there. The absence of a relative pronoun in a letter I wrote (compare a letter that I wrote) is noted by postulating a zero relative pronoun.

The plural of sheep  is identical with singular sheep, though the plural of cow is cows; the plural noun sheep has been said to have a zero morph.

More controversially, a zero article has been postulated for plural nouns and for non-count nouns (e.g. sugar)

References:

E-Book of Morphology

E-book of Morphology – Universitas Sumatera Utara

E-book of Morphology - Handout for Psy 598-02, summer 2001