Page 286 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes The morphological analysis is the observation and description of the grammatical elements in a
language by studying their form and function, their phonological variants, and their distribution
and mutual relationships within larger stretches of speech. It may be either synchronic or diachronic,
or may be both synchronic and diachronic.
21.1 Morpheme

Minimal units of grammatical structure, such as the four components of un faith fulness, are called
morphemes. Telephones has three morphemes{tele}, phone , and {–s,} while telephone has two and
phone just one. Morphemes are customarily described as minimal units of grammatical analisys-the
units of ‘lowest’ rank out of which words, the units of next ‘highest’ rank are composed. So morphemes
are those distinct, minimal syntactical units which form words. They can also be defined as the minimal
units of meaning out of which meaningful words are composed in various ways.
A morpheme thus is a distinct linguistic form. It is a minimal unit of speech that is recurrent. It has a
grammatical function. It is semantically different from other phonemically similar or identical linguistic
forms, and is not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms. If we try to break or analyze a morpheme
into its constituents, it loses its identity, and we end up with a sequence of meaningless noises, e.g.,
nation (na+tion, or nati-on). Analyzling the morphemes leads us straight into the realm of phonology.
Morphemes may or may not have meaning, may or may not have a phonological representation,
[un-] has a negative meaning in unfriendly, unhealthy, unable, unemployed and many other words,
but is meaningless in under. {-er} has a constant meaning in teacher, heater, reader, writer, speaker,
pointer, leader, etc. But it would be difficult to pin down any constant meaning for spect in respect,
inspect, circumspect, for pro in protest, professor, prospective, process, proceed, etc. In plural words
like sheep, fish we have two morphemes in each words; the first morpheme in each case has a
phonological representation but the second one has no phonological representation and is called
zero morpheme. Morphologically the plural noun sheep is [sheep]+{ }, that is to say that the word
‘sheep’ is made up of two morphemes sheep plus a plural morpheme which is present in the meaning
but is not physically present in spelling or pronunciation.
Morphemes sometimes vary in their phonological manifestations. Pro, for instance, is pronounced
differently in profess and the noun progress. The plural morpheme is pronounced(s) in words like
cats, maps and snacks; [z] in dogs, hands, and ideas; (iz) in words like churches, judges, classes; but
it has no phonetic form at all in the plural nouns such as sheep, fish, etc. Then there are completely
idiosyncratic forms such as oxen, children, brethern. It is not always clear whether or not a given
sound sequence should be considered a morpheme. For instance, should animal be said to consist of
two morphemes anima (a) and (b) 1, or just one? Consider natural: it has two morphemes (nature)
and {-al}. Shouldn’t we then regard woman as a word having two morphemes {wo-} and {man}? A
sound sequence is a morpheme in some words; it is not in some others. Un clearly is a morpheme in
unnatural and unfaithful but it is not a morpheme in under or sun.
A morpheme may be monosyllabic as {man} and {a/an/the} or polysyllabic as {happy} and {nature}.
A morpheme has been called ‘a grammatical moneme’ by Martinet. Another synonym for the
morpheme is ‘glosseme’.
Morphemes are usually put into braces, i.e. curly brackets {} {the} {help} {-less} {boy} {-s.}
21.2 Morphs

Any phonetic shape or representation of a phoneme is a morph (Hockett). Each morph, like each
phone, or each person or each day, happens only once and then it is gone. To quote John Lyons,
“When the word can be segmented into parts, these segments are referred to as morphs.” Thus the
words shorter is analyzable in two morphs, which can be written orthographically as short and er,
and in phonological transcription /f t/ and / /. Each morph represents a particular morpheme,
but each morpheme does not have a morph. For example, the plural noun sheep has one morph, but
e
e
it has two morphemes [sheep] and [ ] went has one morph, but two morpheme [go] and [ed.]

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