Morphology

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 379.

There are two basic divisions in morphology :

(1) lexical morphology (word formation)
(2) inflectional morphology (grammar, conjugation/declination)

• Morphology is concerned with the study of word forms. A word is best defined in terms of internal stability (is it further divisible?) and external mobility (can it be moved to a different position in a sentence?).

• A morpheme is the smallest unit which carries meaning. An allomorph is a non-distinctive realisation of a morpheme.

• Morphology can further be divided into inflectional (concerned with the endings put on words) and derivational (involves the formation of new words).

• Affixation is the process of attaching an inflection or, more generally, a bound morpheme to a word. This can occur at the beginning or end and occasionally in the middle of a word form.

• Morphemes can be classified according to whether they are bound or free and furthermore lexical or grammatical.

• Word formation processes can be either productive or lexicalised (non-productive). There are different types of word-formation such as compounding, zero derivation (conversion), back formation and clipping.

• For any language the distinction between native and foreign elements in the lexicon is important. In English there are different affixes used here and stress also varies according to the historical source of words.