WORD STRUCTURE

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 597.

The wordis an independent unit of language. The word is composed of morphemes of different types: root morphemes and affixational morphemes. Morphemes are not independent. Morpheme can be defined as the smallest indivisible meaningful two-facet language unit. The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphe- form + eme- smallest unit.

Root-morpheme is the semantic nucleus of a word with which no grammatical properties of the word are connected. It has a very general lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words such as teacher, teach, teaching, teachable.

Affixational morphemes are subdivided into inflections and derivational affixes. Inflections are used to form different word-forms such –s,-‘s, -s' in teacher, or –s, -ed in play. Derivational affixes are used for building new words, they are subdivided into prefixes and suffixes such as – ness, in goodness, -er in teacher, -less in helpless, -ment in movement, dis- in discover un- in untidy etc.

The stemis that part of the word which remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. If we take the paradigm ask asks asked asking, we can find the stem ask-, if we take the paradigm singer, singers, singer's singers', the stem will be singer-. The stem is different from the root morpheme, because the stem always belongs to a definite part of speech, we can speech of verb stem in the example ask- and we can speak of noun stem in the example singer-. As for root morpheme in teach, teacher, teaching, teachable we have root morpheme teach used in verb stem teach, noun stems teacher and teaching and adjective stem teachable. There are three structural types of stems: simple, derivedand compound. Simple stem consists of one root-morpheme, derived stem consists of one stem and a derivational suffix of prefix and compound stem consists of two stems.

According to the number of morphemes words can be classified into monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphicor root-words consist of only one root-morpheme e.g. dog, give, make small etc. All polymorphic words fall into two groups derived words and compound words. Derived words are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes e.g. cooperate, supernatural, retrospective, kingdom, freedom, friendship, worker, revolution, movement, hopeful, manly, comical, afternoon, overlook, undertake. Compound wordscontain at least two root morphemes, or two stems with or without derivational morphemes e.g. lamp-shade, eye-ball, door-step, looking-glass, pen-holder, saleswoman, handicraft, Anglo-Saxon, wedding-ring, aircraft-carrier.