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Linguistics

Notes morphemes such as the {-ly} in rapidly the [un-] in unemployment and the [er] in teacher have
definite semantic content. Hence the necessity of a more rationalistic division of morphemes.
Free and Bound Morphemes

A more acceptable and more satisfactory classification than the one mentioned above classifies
morphemes into free and bound forms.The whole classification can be represented in the following
manner:

Morphemes

Free Bound

Prefix Infix Suffix
(initial position) (middle position) (final position)

Derivational Inflectional Bound bases

Class-maintaining Class-changing

These will be defined and illustrated in the following discussion. Mor-phemes, as defined earlier, are
the minimum grammatical forms of a language. Some of them can occur alone, others cannot. Forms
which do not occur alone are bound morphemes, and those which occur alone are free mor-phemes.
Rat, cat, go, black, the, yet, but, and are free morphemes. Affixes to the words such as - ness, -less,
pre, up-, de-, con-, -er, -ment are all bound morphemes.
(a) Roots and Affixes: The root morpheme is that part of the word which is left when all the affixes
have been removed. Root morphemes may be bound or free, and are potentially unlimited in a
language, because languages go on creating new words or borrowing ‘loan-words’from other
languages. In a word like unfaithful, faith is the-root,the -un and the -ful are affixes; the un- is
a prefix, whereas the -ful is a suffix.
All affixes are bound morphemes, for they cannot occur alone. A word which consists of only
free root morpheme is called monomorphemic, e.g. cat, rat. The words containing more than
one root are called polymorphemic e.g. air-craft; they can co-occur with or without affixes;
they are often called compound words.
Root and affixes may be of any structure and length, though affixes generally tend to be shorter
than roots. The criterion of determining the root is its indivisibility into constituent morphemes
by matching its parts with the parts of other words in the language.
The affixes is the recurrent formative morpheme of words other than roots. Affixes are of three
types—prefix, infix and suffix. In the English words such as receive, remove, deceive, perform,
unfaithful, unemployment, re-, de-, per-, un-, are all prefixes. The prefixes are affixed before
the roots, and cannot occur inndependently; they are bound morphemes. The plural formative
-s, -en; the verb paradugn affixes-ing,-d,-ed, etc. the comparative and superlative ending of the
adjectives (-er, and -est) and so many other final position formatives such as -ness, -less, -ment
are called suffixes. The suffixes are affixes after the roots or after the root-suffix. Infixes are less
commonly found in Enbglish apart from one mode of analysis of plurals like geese, men. Infixes
are found in Cambodian, in Sudanese and in Sanskrit too.
(b) Inflection and Derivation: Both inflectional and derivational mor-phemes are suffixes; they
are bound morphemes following a root. Inflection and derivation are, therefore, the sub-
categories of suffixes. But they differ from each other. If one kind of suffix is affixed to a root we
cannot affix any other. Suffix e.g., in agreed and agrees, -d and -s are suffixes and do not
therefore, allow any further affixation of a suffix. Such affixes which do not allow further
affixation called inflections, or inflectional morphemes. The suffixes which may be followed by

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