Linguistics – Morphology & Lexicography

Morphology

Definition: Study of the structure and formation of words.

Basic Unit: Morpheme – the smallest meaning-bearing unit.

1. Word Parts

• Root – core meaning unit (e.g., write in writer).
  • Types:
  • Etymological / Historical / Semantic Root – original source of meaning (tele- from Greek "far").
  • Morphological Root – form left after removing all affixes.
  • Monomorphemic – consists of one morpheme (book).
  • Polymorphemic – more than one morpheme (handbooks = hand+book).
• Stem – root + derivational affixes, before inflection (writer in writer’s).
• Affixes – bound morphemes attached to roots:
  • Prefix – added to the beginning (un-happy).
  • Infix – inserted inside a word (rare in English; fan-bloody-tastic).
  • Suffix – added to the end (kind-ness).

2. Types of Morphemes

• Free Morpheme – can stand alone (book).
• Bound Morpheme – must attach to another (-s, un-).

3. Word Formation Processes

A. Inflection

• Changes grammatical form, not word class or core meaning.
• Conjugation – verbs: tense, person, number (go → goes).
• Declension – nouns/adjectives: case, number, gender (boy → boys).

B. Derivation

• Changes word meaning or class (happy → happiness).

4. Special Alternations

• Allomorph – variant form of a morpheme:
  • Phonological – based on sound environment (cats /s/, dogs /z/, horses /ɪz/).
  • Suppletive – completely different root (go → went).
  • Morphological – internal change (man → men).
• Ablaut – vowel change (sing → sang).
• Suppletion – full form replacement (good → better).
• Morphophonemic Alternation – sound change triggered by morphology.

5. Reductions & Shortenings

• Apocope – loss of final sound (photograph → photo).
• Syncope – loss of medial sound (library → libry).
• Elision – omission of sound (I am → I’m).
• Contraction – merging words (do not → don’t).
• Clipping – shortened word (advertisement → ad).

6. Compounding

• Transparent – meaning is clear (toothbrush).
• Opaque – meaning not obvious (hogwash).
• Endocentric – head word present (blackbird — a bird).
• Exocentric – meaning outside head (pickpocket — not a pocket).
• Standard vs Frozen – flexible vs fixed compounds.

Lexicography

Definition: Study and practice of dictionary-making.

• Lemma – headword in a dictionary (run).
• Lexeme – abstract vocabulary item (run covers runs, ran, running).
• Lexicon – total vocabulary of a language.

Related Units in Linguistics