C H A P T E R I
INTRODUCTION
A.Background Of Study
Linguistics is the science of language it is the subject whose
practitioners devote their energy to understanding why human language is the
way it is . the study history, acquisition, structure and use of as the many languages as
possible. The work of linguists falls
into two main areas: language structure and language use.
Linguists
interested in language structure consider the formal properties of language,
including word structure (morphology), sentence structure (syntax), speech sounds and the rules and patterns
between them (phonetics and phonology), and meaning in language (semantics and pragmatics). Linguists also study the way that language
is used, and this can cover a very broad range of subjects, since language
enters almost every area of human activity. Examples include: psycholinguistics (the psychology of language acquisition and
use); historical linguistics and the history of languages; applied
linguistics (using linguistic knowledge to help in real-world situations like
language teaching); sociolinguistics, varieties of English, discourse analysis and conversation analysis (language use in social contexts); and
stylistics (the use of different styles in language).
Here
writer wants to discus more about morphology which is to be one of the branches
of linguistics. Why we learn morphology?, and how important is it?. By this
question writer makes this paper and the title is The Nature Of Morphology;
descriptive analysis.
B.
Purpose Of Study
Writer makes this paper for several
purposes, there are the purposes:
1.
to make the morphology understood among the English department students.
2.
to make English department students know the importance of morphology.
C.
Problem Identification
Problem identification needs to make
this paper understood easily among the readers o this paper.
1
What is the definition of Morphology ?
2. What is the the aims of
Morphology ?
3. What is
the branches of Morphology ?
C H A P T E R II
DISCUSSION
1.1 Morphology
The
study of morphology must have been prompted by the nineteenth century interest
in classifying language families across the world. This has led to other study
of how languages were differently structured both in broader and narrower ways,
from the general laws of structure to the study of significant elements such as
prefixes and inflections.
Morphology is an essential subfield
of linguistic. Generally, it aims to describe the structure of words and
patterns of word formation in a language. The traditional concern of morphology
is the identification of morphemes. Linguist interested in morphology look at
the parts that words are divided into and study the meaning of these individual
parts. The main aim of morphology is to assign meaning parts of words.
The term morphology is
generally attributed to the German poet, novelist, playwright, and philosopher
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who coined it early in the nineteenth
century in a biological context. Its etymology is Greek: morph- means
‘shape, form’, and morphology is the study of form or forms.
In biology morphology refers to the study of the
form and structure of organisms, and in geology it refers to the study of the
configuration and evolution of land forms. In linguistics morphology
refers to the mental system involved in word formation or to the branch of
linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are
formed.
Based on Oxford
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, AS Hornby,: morphology ; “study
of the morphemes of a language and of how they are combined to make
word” with another explanation Morphology
is the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words.
"Morpheme is “smallest meaningful part into which a word
can be divided: ‘Run-s’ contains two morphemes; and‘un-like-ly’ contains three
morphemes. Morphemes are the minimal meaningful which may constitute
words or parts of words.
e.g. re-, de-, un-, -ish, -ly, -ceive, -mand, tie, boy,
and like in the combinations receive,demand, untie, boyish, likely. The
morpheme arrangements which are treated under the morphology of a
language include all combinations that form words or parts of words.
Combinations of words into phrases and sentences are treated under the syntax.
It would be quite wrong to assume, however, that morphology and syntax
constitute airtight compartments in the structure of any language. This
is by no means true. In some languages there is constant overlapping of
structure, and in a few instances it seems almost impossible to draw a
line between word structure and phrase structure. Different
scholars have defined morphology at different levels of linguistic studies.
Prominent among these are grammar, phonology and semantics. This section offers
a detailed submission of these definitions. It also examines the nature of
morphemes.
1. Structural
Approach
Across board, all linguists agree that,
within words, meaningful parts can be perceived; any exercise that is aimed at
studying those meaningful elements within a word is said to be termed
morphology. Morphology therefore is the study of the meaningful parts of words.
The word ‘teacher’ for instance comprises two components namely teach (verb)
and –er (suffix). This is what morphology seeks to explain.
Oloruntoba-Oju (1994:71) defines morpheme
in terms of its placement among other units of grammar as “the smallest
meaning-bearing unit in a word”. Ayodele (2001:75) defines it as “the smallest
unit, which exhibits an internal structure and meaning of its own but which cannot
be further broken up”. An attempt to analyze the structure of this component
parts leads to morphology. Morphology thus deals with the internal structure of
word-forms. Lyons (1974:81) quoted in Odebunmi (2006:39) views morphemes as
“minimal units of grammatical analysis, the units of lowest rank out of which
words, the unit of next ‘higher’ rank are composed”. Bello (2001:92) coming
from the perspective of the status of morpheme in the units of grammar defines
it as “the smallest meaningful unit in the structure of a language”. By
smallest meaningful unit, she meant the unit which cannot be further broken up
without destroying or drastically altering its meaning. For example, though the
word “reality” can be further broken down into real and –ity (making two
morphemes), it cannot be further broken down without altering its meaning. This
shows the common difference between reality and realities: an attempt to
further break down the former results into producing an entirely different
meaning in the plural sense.
2. Semantic
Approach
Crystal (1976:193) defines a morpheme as
“the smallest bit of language which has a meaning”. As the smallest meaningful
unit of the grammar of a language, it cannot be broken down into any other
meaningful unit. It is the minimal unit used in building words in a language
which cannot be further split without altering its meaning. For example, “if
you add a morpheme to an utterance, or take away, by definition you alter the
meaning of the utterance”. For example, adding -tion to locate changes it to
location which with –s becomes locations. In attempting to classify morphemes
into types, Odebunmi (ibid) opines that the forms and the formations of passes
and disregarded can only be understood when defined in terms of their meaning
relations. In these two examples, pass and regard will be said to be free
morphemes for without them, –es, dis- , and –ed, are not capable of making any
sense.
3. Phonological
Approach
Bello (ibid: 93) describes morpheme in
terms of its phonological properties. In this sense, a morpheme could be said
to make up just a phoneme. For instance, each of the plural markers in English
(e.g. –s as in boy – boys) could be considered as morpheme. Thus, the /z/ in
boys counts as a morpheme. She stresses that if morphemes are the smallest
meaningful unit of any language and are made up of either single phonemes and
or more than one phoneme as the case may be, then a combination of phonemes
must conform to certain rules or possess given characteristics to qualify as
morphemes.
4. The Interface between the Approaches
Crystal (1976:193) agglutinates the three
criteria for defining morpheme. He believes it can be viewed from three major
angles. Firstly, it is a formal or physical unit; it has a phonetic shape. Secondly,
it has a meaning, and thirdly, it has a syntactic role to play in the construction
of a larger grammatical unit. We can illustrate this with the following
example:
These
bad boys wanted the room
These,
bad, the, room are all minimal, meaningful, syntactically relevant units.
‘Boys’ and ‘wanted’ have two morphemes each; remove -s from boy and we get a
distinct meaningful unit boy – in other words, the -s carries the number
(singular/plural) difference – and similarity, the -ed can be removed from
wanted to change the past tense into present.
State
the possible interrelationship between the different definitions of the
morpheme.
5. Morpheme as an Indivisible Unit
The morpheme may be conceived as the
smallest unit in the expression system that can be correlated directly with any
part of the content system. This feature of the morpheme in some other way
expresses the fact that the morpheme, no matter the number of syllables it
contains or the resemblance of parts of its components with some other segments
in the language, cannot be broken up without rendering it meaningless. The
words neighbour and labour are whole morphemes in their respective linguistic
state though they have the syllable –bour being identical in both. If divided into
parts we will only have fragments such as la + bour all of which are
meaningless.
However, neighborhood is not a single
morpheme though it does have meaning. We could from the word derive neighbor
and hood. The meaning of the word is related to the meanings of the two parts.
Morphemes thus share some relationship with some other elements in the
structure.
6. Morpheme as a Relational Unit
Morphemes may have demonstrable
relationships with other morphemes in a text. Indeed, our understanding of the
distribution of the morpheme as the sum of all the contexts in which it can
occur in contrast to where it cannot occur helps our full understanding of a
morpheme as it includes our knowing its meaning and distribution. A
comprehensive dictionary, for instance, does not only give the meaning of items
but also specify how and where they could be used in meaningful contexts. By
this, we mean that morphemes may have demonstrable relationships with other
morphemes in discourse. For example, prepositions, in the language, normally,
precede nouns or nominal groups while verbs will occur after nouns in complete
thoughts/expressions other than the questions (Bello 2001:94). It is in this
sense that we talk about the relationship that morphemes have with their
components as well as other components around them. Thus we explain
morphological process as the structural relationship that exists between
different morphemes when in combination. Morphemes enter into relationship on
the basis of addition, substitution and subtraction (Ayodele 2001:78). In other
words, a morpheme ‘free’ or ‘bound’ may be added to another in order to produce
a word, e.g. un + bend produces unbend; man + hood results in adulthood. This
type of addition is called affixation.
7. Morpheme as a Phonological Feature
Inflectional morphemes carry grammatical
properties which prepare them for the syntactic roles they play. In performing
these roles, some morphemes come under the strict influence of sounds which
surround them in particular environment in which they operate thereby resulting
in their being realized in different phonetic shapes. For example, the plural
morpheme –s has three different realizations depending on the phoneme(s) that
precede it. When preceded by a voiceless sound, it manifest phonemically as /s/
e.g. bats, parks, raps. In the environment of a voiced sound, the –s morphemes
become /z/ e.g. cools, pads, rags. It is realized as /iz/ when it follows the
morphemes /s/ e.g. bus + -es (buses). It is this type of phonologically
determined alternant that is referred to as an allomorph.
a. Types
and Characteristics of Morphemes
Morphemes, as elements which constitute a
word, are usually defined as the smallest grammatical unit. They are also said
to be so small that their constituents are referred to as elements, better put,
linguistic elements. In this unit, we shall attempt to consider some types and
characteristics of morphemes, and I shall give examples as well.
~ Free Morpheme and Bound
Morpheme
‘Run-s’ contains two
morphemes; and ‘un-like-ly’ contains three
morphemes…
‘Run’and ‘Like’ called Free Morpheme then –s in runs,and
un- then –ly in un-like-ly called bound
morpheme. Free morphemehas the characteristic that is independent as word
(run, like). While , bound morpheme is dependent ,can not stnd alone which is combine with another
morpheme(s) for being a word.
1.2 The Aims of Morphology
Morphology is an essential subfield of linguistics.
Generally, it aims to describe the structures of words and patterns of word
formation in a language The traditional concern of morphology is the
identification of morphemes. Linguists interested in morphology look at the
parts that words are divided into and study the meaning of these individual
parts. The main aim of morphology is to assign meaning to parts of words,
so for example:
This is divided into
two morphemes- one free morpheme (borrow) and one bound morpheme (-ing). Once a
linguist can tell that '-ing' is a bound morpheme, they know this will be the
case in all situations where that particular morpheme arises.
Specifically,
it aims to:
(i) pin down the principles for
relating the form and meaning of morphological expressions,
(ii) explain how the morphological
units are integrated and the resulting formations interpreted, and
The
study of morphology uncovers the lexical resources of language, helps speakers
to acquire the skills of using them creatively, and consequently express their
thoughts and emotions with eloquence."
Why
does Morphology so important? because it shows the structure, organization and
usage of every single constituent guiding people to use it correctly. Besides
it prescribes the correct organization and combination of language elements.
More specifically, English morphology is particularly important because native
speakers of English create new words constantly. It is important to know how to
change words to make them different parts of speech (verb, noun, adjective,
etc.) since English speakers tend to continually change words and add suffixes
and prefixes to create new words
1.3 Two Branches of
Morphology
For
English,morphology means devising ways of describing the properties of such
disparate items as a, horse, took, indescribable, washing machine, and antidisestablishmentarianism.
A widely recognized approach divides the field into two domains: lexical
or derivational morphology studies the way in which new items of
vocabulary can be built up out of combinations of elements (as in the case of in-describ-able);
inflectional morphology studies the ways words vary in their form in
order to express a grammatical contrast (as in the case of horses, where
the ending marks plurality).The distinction between words and lexemes provides the basis for the division of morphology into two branches: inflectional
morphology and lexical word-formation.
Inflectional
morphology deals with the inflectional forms of various lexemes. It has
something of the character of an appendix to the syntax, the major
component of the grammar. Syntax
tells us when a lexeme may or must carry a certain inflectional property, while
inflectional morphology tells us what form it takes when it carries that
inflectional property.
"Lexical word-formation, by contrast, is related to the dictionary. It describes the processes by which new lexical bases are formed and the structure of complex lexical bases, those composed of more than one morphological element. The traditional term is simply 'word-formation.
CHAPTHER
III
CONCLUTION
After we have learn about morphology above,we get the
conclution are Based on Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current
English, AS Hornby,: morphology ; “study of the morphemes of a language and
of how they are combined to make word ? by study morphology it shows the structure,
organization and usage of every single constituent guiding people to use it
correctly. Besides it prescribes the correct organization and combination of
language elements. More specifically, English morphology is particularly
important because native speakers of English create new words constantly. It is
important to know how to change words to make them different parts of speech
(verb, noun, adjective, etc.) since English speakers tend to continually change
words and add suffixes and prefixes to create new words
REFRENCES
Nida ,Eugene a. Morphology The Descriptive Analysis Of Words,2ndEd., University Of Michigan Press.1949
Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew.
An Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure, Edinburgh University Press, 2002.
Geert e.Booij, The
Grammar of Words: An Introduction toLinguistic Morphology,
2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2007
Hamawand, Morphology in English:
Word Formation in Cognitive Grammar. Continuum,
2011
David Crystal, The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003
Irwansyah,Dedi, Morphology Hand-out, Lampung,2011
Widdowson, G.H.
Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 2003
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