English morphemes and their types

The types and the number of morphemes are established according to the morphemic segmentability of words. Three types of morphemic segmentability of lexemes are distinguished: complete, conditional and defective.

Complete segmentability is characteristic of great many words the morphemic structure of which is transparent enough, as their individual morphemes clearly stand out within the lexeme. Complete segmentability reveals morphemes proper which constitute he word, e. g. movement, famous, illegal, boyishness, justice. The component parts of the given words have both form and meaning and according to the definition are classified as morphemes proper.

Conditional morphemic segmentability characterizes words whose segmentation is doubtful for semantic reasons. In words like retain, contain, detain the initial parts may be singled out being recurrent in other words (rewrite, decode). The semantic analysis shows, however, that the meaning of the morpheme re- in the lexeme rewrite is “to do anything once more, anew” while the sound cluster re- in the lexeme retain does not have any lexical meaning. On the other hand, the sound cluster –tain is easily singled out from the words retain, detain, contain, obtain but it does not reveal any lexical meaning as well. The singled out constituents are meaningful only being components of the lexemes. Morphemes that can be singled out structurally but lack lexical meaning are called pseudo-morphemes. Pseudo-morphemes possess differential and distributional meaning.

Defective morphemic segmentability is the property of words whose constituent morphemes seldom or never recur in other words. Here belong unique morphemes. A unique morpheme is isolated and understood as meaningful because the constituent morphemes display a more or less clear denotational meaning. There is no doubt that in the nouns streamlet, ringlet, leaflet, booklet, etc. the morpheme –let has the denotational meaning of diminutiveness and is combined with the morphemes steam-, ring-, leaf-, book- each having a clear denotational meaning. Things are entirely different with the lexeme hamlet. The morpheme –let retains the same meaning of diminutiveness, but the sound cluster ham- that is left after the isolation of the morpheme –let does not recur in any other English word with anything like the meaning it has in the word hamlet (a small village). The same is exemplified by the lexeme pocket which may seem at first sight non-segmentable. However, comparison with such words as locket, hogget, lionet, cellaret, etc. leads to the isolation of the morpheme –et having a diminutive meaning, the more so that the morphemes lock-, hog-, lion-, cellar-, etc. recur in other lexemes (lock – locky, hog – hoggery, lion – lioness, cellar – cellarage). The left morpheme pock- is not found in any other English word but has the status of a morpheme with a denotational meaning as it is the lexical nucleus of the lexeme. Besides, it possesses a differential and distributional meaning and must be classified as a unique morpheme.

Thus, the three types of segmentability of English words (complete, conditional and defective) bring about the three main types of English morphemes (morphemes proper, pseudo-morphemes and unique morphemes).

Morphemes can be classified semantically and structurally.

Semantically morphemes fall into roots and affixes (prefixes and suffixes). Roots and affixational morphemes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt. The root-morphemes are the lexical centres of the lexemes, the basic constituent part of a word without which the unit is inconceivable, e.g. help less, hand y, re fill, wid en, etc. The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a word; it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. Besides, it may possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster, e.g. agree in ‘ to agree, to disagree, agreement, disagreement, disagreeable ’.

Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes. A prefix precedes the root-morpheme (to re write, to be gulf, un predictable, mis heard); a suffix follows the root-morpheme (London er, kind ness, fortun ate, just ice, child hood).

Structurally morphemes fall into free, bound and semi-free (= semi-bound) morphemes.

A free morpheme is defined as one that coincides with the stem or a word-form. A great many root-morphemes are free morphemes, for example, the root-morpheme friend- in the lexeme friendship is qualified as a free morpheme because it coincides with one of the forms of the noun friend.

A bound-morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a lexeme. Affixes are bound morphemes, for they always make part of a lexeme, for example the suffixes –ness, -ship, -ize, -ous, -ment, -ence, etc. or the prefixes un-, dis-, de-, mis-, be-, etc. (readiness, comradeship, to organize, unnatural, to misunderstand, to decipher).

Many root-morphemes also belong to the class of bound morphemes which always occur in morphemic sequences, i.e. in combinations with roots or affixes. All unique and pseudo-morphemes are bound morphemes. Such are the root-morphemes theor- in theory, theoretical, theorist, etc., barbar- in barbarism, barbarian, etc.

Semi-bound morphemes are those that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme. For example, the morpheme well and half on the one hand occur free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the word-form in utterances like sleep well, half an hour, on the other hand they occur as bound morphemes in lexemes like well-known, half-eaten.

According to the number of morphemes lexemes are classified into monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphic or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, long, bed. All polymorphic words fall into monoradical (or one-root words) and polyradical words, i.e. words which consist of two or more roots. Monoradical words are subdivided further into three groups:

1. Radical-suffixal words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and one or more suffixal morphemes, e.g. acceptable, acceptability, blackish, reasonable, dictation;

2. Radical-prefixal words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and a prefixal morphemes, e.g. rearrange, unbutton, mislead, discharge, ensure;

3. Prefixo-radical-suffixal words, i.e. words which consist of one root-morpheme, a prefixal and a suffixal morpheme, e.g. disagreeable, misinterpretation, unreasonable, irrespective, re-organization.

Polyradical words fall into two types:

1. Polyradical wordsthat consist of two or more roots with no affixational morphemes, e.g. book-stand, eye-ball, lamp-shade, hand-bag.

2. Words which contain at least two roots and one or more affixational morphemes, e.g. safety-pin, wedding-pie, class-consciousness, light-mindedness, pen-holder.

These are essentially the main morphemic types of lexemes in English. The study of morphemic structure is rather the static analysis which results in establishing the number, the type and the meaning of morphemes that constitute lexemes.

The procedure generally employed for the purposes of segmenting words into the constituent morphemes is the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on a binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents (ICs). Each IC at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. For example the word friendliness is first segmented into the IC friendly- recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking, friendly, unfriendly and the –ness found in a countless number of nouns, such as happiness, sadness, kindness, selfishness, etc. The IC –ness is at the same time a UC of the noun, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. The IC friendly is next broken into the ICs friend- and –ly recurring in friendship, unfriendly, on the one hand, and wifely, brotherly, on the other hand. These ICs are both UCs of the word friendliness.

The morphemic analysis according to the IC and UC may be carried out on the basis of either root principle or affix principle. According to the affix principle the segmentation of words is bases on identification of an affixational morpheme, e.g. the identification of the suffix –less leads to the segmentation of such words as useless, hopeless, merciless, etc., into the suffixational morpheme –less and the root-morphemes within the word-cluster. The identification of the root-morpheme –agree- in the words agreement, agreeable, disagree makes it possible to split the words into the root –agree- and the affixational morphemes –ment, -able, dis-.