UNIT ONE: MORPHEMES

I. Definition – Characteristics.
1. Definition.
- A morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria:
+ It is a word or a part of the word that has meaning.
+ It can be divided into smaller meaningful part without violation of its meaning or
without meaningless remainders.
+ It recur in different verbal environment with a relatively stable meaning.
E.g: cur -> run
2. Distinguish.
a. Morphemes and phonemes
- Morphemes have meaning
- Phonemes don’t have meaning but they have distinctive features that help to
distinguish meaning.
b. Morphemes and Syllables
- The morpheme is the basic unit in morphology
- The syllable is the phonological unit
c. Morphemes and Words
- Words are made up of morphemes, morphemes are the constituents of words
3. Classification.
a. Bound morphemes & Free morphemes
- Free morphemes can be uttered alone with meaning.
- Bound morphemes cannot be uttered alone with meaning but must be used with
another morpheme.
b. Bases (Root) & Affixes.
- A base is a morpheme in the word that has principle meaning
+ Free base: Free morphemes
+ Bound base: can only be joined to other bound morphemes.
- An affix is a morpheme (usually bound morphemes) that happens before or
behind a base.
+ According to their POSITION:
 Suffixes: morpheme that happen before base
 Prefixes: morpheme that happen behind base
+ According to their FUNCTION:
 Inflectional affixes (inflection suffixes): perform grammatical function. The
only eight inflectional suffixes in English.
The noun plural morpheme {-S1}
The noun possessive morpheme {-S2}
The verb third person singular present tense morpheme {-S3}
The verb present participle morpheme {-ing1}
The verb past simple morpheme {-D1}
The verb past participle morpheme {-D2}
The adjective and adverb comparative morpheme {-er1}
The adjective and adverb superlative morpheme {-est1}
 Derivational affixes: perform lexical function. There are two kind
Class-changing derivational affixes: change the word class. E.g: -al
Class-maintaining derivational affixes: do not change the word class.
-> English prefixes are always derivational affixes. This never more than one
inflectional suffix in English words and it always come last.
derivational prefix – base – derivational suffix – inflectional suffix
4. Allomorphs
a. Definition
- An allomorph is any of the different forms of a morpheme.
E.g: It is believed that /iz/, /s/, /z/ are three allomorphs of the inflectional plural
morpheme {-S1} because:
1. They are in complementary distribution.
 /-s/ occurs only after the voiceless consonant
/-iz/ occurs only after the sibilant consonant
/-z/ occurs only after voiced sounds, including all vowels and voiced
consonants expect /z/, /ʒ/, and /ʤ/
2. They all have the same meaning, either lexical or grammatical:
/-s/, /-iz/, /-z/ all refer to “plurality” and all mean ‘more than one’
b. Selection of allomorphs.
- Phonologically condition: the conditioning factor is the phonetic nature of their
preceding phoneme
- Morphologically conditioned: the selection is determined by the specific
morpheme or morphemes forming the context
c. Types of allomorphs.
- Additive allomorphs: something is added to a word
E.g: lived, cars, .....
- Replacive allomorphs: a sound is used to replace another sound in a word
E.g: drink -> drunk, break -> broke, ...
- Subtractive allomorphs: something is deleted from a word
- Suppletive allomorphs: there is a complete change in the shape of the word
E.g: go -> went, bad -> worse, .....
- The zero allomorph: the is no change in the shape of the word.

*BOUND MORPHEMES
- audi- -> hear (audition, audio, auditory)
- cide -> killing (suicide, homicide, infanticide)
- ora -> speak/ mouth (orally, oral, orator)
- aqua -> water (aquarium, aquaplane, aquaduct)
- mor(t) –> dead/death (immortal, mortal)
- corp -> body/ an unit (corps, corpse, corporation)
- ten -> hold (tenant, tenacious, tenable)
- pend -> hang (suspender, pendulum, pendant)
- man -> hand (manicure, manual, manuscript)
- ject -> throw/shoot (project, eject)
- vise/vis -> see (vision, revise, visual)
- dict -> say (contradict, predict, dictionary)
- gress -> go (regress, digress, progress)
- vene -> come (intervene, contravene)
- cur -> go (occur, recur, currency, current)
- spect -> look (spectator, prospect, perspective)
- pose -> place/put (oppose, propose)
- rod -> gnaw (erosion, rodent)
- port -> carry (transportation, transport)
- rupt -> break (erupt, corrupt, interrupt)
- ann -> year (anniversary, annual)
- gamy -> marriage (polygamy, bigamy)
 UNIT TWO: DERIVATION AND INFLECTION
I. DERIVATION
1. Definition
- Derivation is the formation of new words by adding affixes to other words or
morphemes.
II. INFLECTION
1. Definition
- Inflection is the process of adding an affix to a word or changing it in some other
way according to the rules of the grammar of a language
2. Various kinds of inflection.
a. Noun inflection
- Almost all English nouns have two form: the plain form & the inflected form
- A four-form inflectional noun paradigm
b. Verb inflection
- A five-form inflectional paradigm
c. Adjective inflection and Adverb inflection
- A three-form inflectional paradigm
III. HOW TO DISTINGUISH DERIVATION AND INFLECTION
- Ghi định nghĩa
- Ghi công thức
- Cho ví dụ
1. Derivation
A BASE (ROOT) + DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES -> NEW DERIVED WORDS
2. Inflection
A STEM + INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES -> INFLECTED FORMS OF ONE
AND THE SAME WORD.
*BOUND MORPHEMES
- anti -> against (antidote, antihero, antibody)
- circum -> around (circumstance, circumlocution)
- co, col, com, con -> together/jointly (co-operation, compilation, collide)
- contra- -> against (contradict, contravene)
- de -> do the opposite of (deforestation, deactivate)
remove .....from (dehorn, deflower)
reduce (decrease, decline)
- dis -> absence of/ do the opposite of (disappear, discount)
lack of/not (dishonest, disadvantage)
- in/il/ir/im -> not (irregular, impossible, insecure)
- in/im -> in/ on (inside, implant)
- inter -> between/each other (interview, intervene)
- intra -> within (intrapersonal, intrastate)
- ob/op -> against/opposite (obstacle, oppose)
- pre -> before (pre-war, precaution)
- post -> after (postpone, post-war)
- pro -> forward (progress, propose, proposal)
- retro -> backward (retrogress, retroactive)
- semi -> half/ partly (semicolon, semicircle, semi-final)
- sub -> under/ below the normal (submarine, subway)
- super -> over/ beyond the norm (superpower, superman, supervision)
- un -> not (unlikely, untrue)
- un -> reverse of/do the opposite of (undress, untie, unfold)
 UNIT THREE: IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENTS IN
MORPHOLOGY
I. Definition.
- Immediate Constituents are any of the two meaningful parts forming a larger
linguistic unit
II. Recommendation on IC Division
1. If a word ends in an inflectional suffix, the first cut is between this suffix and the
rest of the word
2. One of the IC’s should be a free form
3. The meaning of the IC’s should be related to the meaning of the word.

UNIT FOUR: WORDS

A. DEFINITION
- A word is the smallest linguistic unit which can occur on its own in speech or
writing
- The simplest word has many aspects
+ It has a sound form because it is a certain arrangement of phonemes
+ It has its morphological structure
+ It may occur in different word forms
+ Have different syntactic functions and signal various meaning
B. CHARACTERISTICS
I. Indivisibility
II. Internal stability (Internal cohesion/ Uninterruptability) and Positional
Mobility
C. CLASSIFICATION
I. According to their STRUCTURE
1. Simple word: consist of a single free base
2. Complex words: contain at least one bound morpheme as an immediate
constituent
- Complex words-FB (free-base)
- Complex words-BB (bound base)
3. Compound words have at least two free bases with or without bound
morphemes.
- The features of compound words:
+ The phonological features: The primary-secondary pattern
+ The syntactic features:
 Order: không đổi
 Indivisibility
+ The sematic feature: Compound words have idiomatic status.
- The types of compounds
+ Derivational compounds
 noun base + noun base + -er: honeymooner, footballer, left-hander
 adj base + noun base + -ed: blue-eyed, short-sighted, black-haired
 noun base + noun base + -ed: heart-shaped, bow-legged, moon-shaped
 number base + noun base + -ed: two-eyed, five-colored
+ Repetitive compounds
 Reduplicative compounds: tip-tip, drip-drip, blah-blah, hush-hush, fifty-fifty
 Ablaut compounds: chit-chat, see-saw, ping-pong, dilly-dally
 Rhyme compounds: lovey-dovey, pell-mell, mumbo-jumbo
II. According to WORD FORMATION
1. Coinage
- Coinage is the creation of totally new words by
+ inventing names of new products: nylon, aspirin
+ using specific brand names: Vaseline
+ changing proper names of individuals or places to common nouns: sandwich,
robot, lazy Susan.
2. Borrowing
- Borrowing is the process by which words in a language are borrowed from
another.
- from French: champagne, garage, rouge
- from German: kindergarden
- from Italian: opera, cantata, concerto
- from American Indian language: shampoo
3. Blending
- Blending is the fusion of two words into one, usually the first part of one word
with the last part of another
- smog, motel, brunch, slanguage, bit, spam (spiced ham), eusian, webinar
4. Clipping
- Clipping is the process of cutting off the beginning of the end of a word, or both,
leaving a part to stand for the whole
- exam, advert, lab, tricycle -> trike, bike, television -> telly, vacuum cleaner ->
vac, telephone -> phone
5. Acronymy
- Acronymy is the process whereby a word is formed from the initials or the
beginning segments of a succession of words.
- radar, sonar, snafu, scuba, NATO, WHO
6. Conversion
- Complete conversion is the process of shifting a word from one word class to
another without adding an affix.
+ Lexical verb -> noun
+ adj -> noun
+ noun -> lexical verb
+ adj -> lexical verb
+ auxiliary verb -> noun
+ phrase -> noun
+ phrase -> adj
+ affix -> noun: ism
+ non-count noun -> count noun
+ count noun -> non-count noun
+ proper noun -> common noun
- Approximate conversion:
+ Voicing of final consonants (noun -> verb): advice -> advise, thief –> thieve
+ Shift of stress:
7. Affixation
- Affixation is the process by which an affix is added to a base to form a new word.
8. Back-formation
- Back-formation is the process of deriving words by removing what is thought to
be a suffix from an existing word.
- Tạo ra verb từ noun
- emote, ethuse, televise
- peddler -> peddle, hawker -> hawk, stoker -> stoke
9. Compounding
- Compounding is the process of combining two or more existing words to form a
new one