A Brief Note on Morphology

A Brief Note on Morphology

A Brief Note on Morphology

A Brief Note on Morphology

Morphology is the study of the grammatical units of a language and of their formation into words including inflection, derivation and composition. Broadly speaking, Morphology is the study of the patterns of word forms. It studies-

(i) How the words are formed,

(ii) Where they originate from,

(iii) What their grammatical forms are, 

(iv) What the functions of prefixes and suffixes in the formation of words are,

(v) On what basis the parts of speech are formed,

(vi) How the system of gender, number etc. function and

(vii) How and why the word forms change.

The morphological analysis is the observation and description of the grammatical elements in a language by studying their forms and functions. There are two main branches of Morphology: (1) Inflectional Morphology and (2) Derivational Morphology. 

Inflectional Morphology distinguishes different inflections of the same lexeme, whereas Derivational Morphology distinguishes different lexemes that are related to one another. But they both use the same range of morphological resources to do it. For example, ‘ing’ of ‘painting’ is inflectional in example no. (1)  and derivational in example no. (2) as given below:

(1) He was painting a picture.

(2 )We bought a painting.

In example no. 1 ‘painting’ is one of the four distinct forms of the lexeme “paint’ contrasting with –paint, paints and painted.

In example no. 2 ‘painting’ is a distinct lexeme. It is a noun. Its two inflected forms are ‘painting and ‘paintings’.

The main differences between Inflectional and Derivational Morphology are- 

(i)Inflectional Morphology relates the forms of the same lexeme, and Derivational Morphology relates distinct lexemes.

(ii) Inflections are distinct word classes with distinct rules of grammar (there are rules that mention singular and plural) whereas derivational morphology creates new lexemes which are grammatically indistinguishable from underived members of the same word classes (e.g. apart from their morphology grammar does not distinguish derived nouns like ‘painting. 

(iii) Inflectional Morphemes are always outside derivational one, e.g. the plural of ‘painting’ is ‘paintings’ not ‘paintsing’.

Inflectional Morphology is usually discussed in terms of ‘paradigms’ (Paradigm refers to a set of forms derived by the application of certain grammatical rules to lexical words). For example, the paradigm of the verb ‘break’ contains these forms: breaks, breaking and broken. Each of these forms is derived by the application of separate grammatical rules like- present tense form, past tense form and past participle form etc. Inflectional Morphology of English is discussed by describing the paradigms of all major grammatical categories. 0 0 0

A Brief Note on Morphology

N. B. This article entitled ‘A Brief Note on Morphology’ originally belongs to the book ‘Essays on Linguistics‘ by Menonim Menonimus. A Brief Note on Morphology

Books on Linguistics by M. Menonimus:

1. A Brief History of the English Language
2. Essays on Linguistics
3. My Imageries
4. Felicitous Expression: Some Examples
5. Learners’ English Dictionary

Books of Composition by M. Menonimus:

1. Advertisement Writing
2. Amplification Writing
3. Note Making
4. Paragraph Writing
5. Notice Writing
6. Passage Comprehension
7. The Art of Poster Writing
8. The Art of Letter Writing
9. Report Writing
10. Story Writing
11. Substance Writing
12. School Essays Part-I
13. School Essays Part-II
14. School English Grammar Part-I
15. School English Grammar Part-II..

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