Morphology (linguistics) facts for kids
Morphology is a part of linguistics, which is the study of language. It looks at how words are built using smaller pieces called morphemes. Think of morphemes as the smallest parts of a word that still have their own meaning. Different languages have different morphemes and different rules for how these pieces are put together.
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Free and Bound Morphemes
Words are the smallest parts of a sentence. Some words are made of just one morpheme. For example, in English, words like thank, dog, and slow are all single morphemes. A morpheme that can stand alone as a complete word is called a free morpheme.
Words can also be made from more than one morpheme. For instance, English speakers know that you can add the plural morpheme, -s, to dog to make dogs. The new word dogs means "more than one dog." Here, dog is a free morpheme. But the -s morpheme cannot stand alone as a word. It must attach to another word. Morphemes that must be attached to a word are called bound morphemes.
Bound morphemes can attach in different places:
- Prefixes attach to the front of a word (like un- in unhappy).
- Suffixes attach to the end of a word (like -ing in running).
- Infixes attach in the middle of a word (these are rare in English).
Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes
There are two main types of bound morphemes: inflectional and derivational.
Inflectional morphemes give us information about how a word is used in a sentence. They don't change the word's basic meaning or its part of speech. English doesn't have many inflectional morphemes.
- An example is the -ed suffix for verbs. It tells us the action happened in the past (like walk becoming walked).
- Another example is the -s suffix for nouns. It shows there is more than one of something (like cat becoming cats).
Derivational morphemes change the part of speech of a word or change its basic meaning. Most bound morphemes in English are derivational.
- For example, adding -ness to the adjective happy makes the noun happiness.
- Adding re- to the verb do makes redo, which means to do something again.
Examples of Morphemes in Words
Let's look at some English words and break them down into their morphemes.
English Word: "unthankful" This word has three morphemes:
| "un-" | "thank" | "-ful" |
|---|---|---|
| derivational bound morpheme | free morpheme | derivational bound morpheme |
| Makes the word it attaches to have the opposite meaning (like unhappy). | A verb that means: "to show gratitude for something." | Attaches to a noun and changes it into an adjective (like beautiful). |
English Word: "songwriter" This word also has three morphemes:
| "song" | "write" | "-er" |
|---|---|---|
| free morpheme | free morpheme | derivational bound morpheme |
| A noun that means: "a short piece of music with words." | A verb that means: "to create text or music." | Attaches to a verb and changes it into a noun meaning "one who does that action" (like teacher). |
English Word: "modernized" This word has three morphemes:
| "modern" | "-ize" | "-ed" |
|---|---|---|
| free morpheme | derivational bound morpheme | inflectional bound morpheme |
| An adjective meaning "of or relating to the present time." | Attaches to an adjective and changes it into a verb meaning "to make something (adjective)" (like standardize). | Attaches to a verb and shows that the action happened in the past tense. |
Images for kids
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Morpheme-based morphology tree of the word "independently"
See also
In Spanish: Morfología lingüística para niños
