Blog #7: Morphology
Blog #7: Morphology
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| (Karen C.) |
We're going basic here, folks. Morphology is the study of words, and words are made up with morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest units in linguistics, and can take several different forms. The word "dog" is itself a morpheme, and if you were to make that specific word plural, it would be changed to dogs. "Dogs" is made up of two morphemes, the word "dog" and the suffix -s. We'll get into this in just a bit.
First, credit to the following sources: CrashCourse's "Morphology: Crash Course Linguistics #2," Richard Nordquist's "Definition and Examples of Morphemes in English," and "Morphology - Teaching Linguistics and English Language Learners" by Karen C., a blogger. CrashCourse is a YouTube page sponsored by CBS, and I have seen their educational videos in classrooms and even to study at home since about 2013. Nordquist is an often featured source here in this blog, and today his article breaks down morphemes in English. His article was one of the first search results on Google, after looking for "morphemes explained." Finally, Karen C.'s blog was a picky choice by myself, having looked over numerous articles and search results about "Morphology." It was a hidden gem, as her credentials are valid (more on that in Critical Analysis below).
Summary
Morphemes are a part of morphology, the study of words, as I noted earlier. If the word "dogs" is a set of two morphemes, how does that work exactly? Well, let's breakdown another example before explaining. Take the sentence, "Falling down rabbit holes." We can break down this sentence into almost syllables, but not exactly, such as "fall-ing down rabbit hole-s" ("Morphology: Crash Course Linguistics #2", 00:02:05). As CrashCourse reminds, morph means "shape or form" such as the way a morpheme (like -s) can be added to a root word, such as dog, and create a new word—dogs. Now, there are different types of morphemes. There is a free morpheme, which can stand by itself (think a root word, such as "rabbit" or "hole"), a compound morpheme that combines two free morphemes such as "doghouse."
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| (Karen C.) |
Going back to "dogs," the little -s at the end of the root word is called a suffix, which is a bound morpheme. A bound morpheme cannot function on its own, it has to be attached to a root word. Another example of a suffix as a bound morpheme would be in the word "understandable", with -able being the suffix/morpheme. Likewise, a word such as microwave, has a morpheme at the beginning of the word (micro-) that is called a prefix. With this terminology established, free morphemes are a subclass of open morphemes, which just means that free/open morphemes can continually be created or added. In comparison, bound morphemes are a subclass of closed morphemes, meaning these are a series of affixes (the term for prefixes and suffixes) that are set, they do not get changed, no new ones are added, and they really only function grammatically to alter the meaning of a word (Karen C).
So, to summarize, we have open/free morphemes, which can be root words and be newly added to the world dictionary, and we have closed/bound morphemes, which are affixes and are closed off from having new terms. Knowing this, there are some rules to morphology. Inflectional morphemes do not change the meaning of a given word, so adding the morpheme/suffix -s to the word carrot, makes carrots, a plural form suggesting there's more than one carrot. Yet carrots still refers to the same orange vegetable, it doesn't mean something new. Meanwhile, derivational morphemes do change a word's meaning somewhat or its grammatical category from an adjective to an adverb, for example. Take the root word "form", which is a verb. Now add the prefix "trans-" and you make transform, which is now a noun (Nordquist). That's how derivational morphemes function. Even with "transform", we can add yet another morpheme, the suffix "-al", and we get "transformational," which is now an adjective. The key thing to remember here is that derivational morphemes make "fundamental changes" to the meaning of a root word, while inflectional morphemes just add information/context (like how carrots means there's more than one carrot).
Critical Analysis
Crash Course is a fairly reliable source, sponsored by PBS even, and was created by acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author John Green. These videos, specifically "Morphology: Crash Course Linguistics #2," are generally educational and speak in simple terms, easy to understand and breakdown for students and other learners. Additionally, as a YouTube video, these posts are visually engaging and have images, sequences, and other visual elements that exemplify the topic, such as morphemes. However, if one is looking for a complex, in-depth analysis of morphology, this may not be the source for them.
Karen C. is a certified PreK-8 Elementary Educator with a Reading Specialist License, and she has been teaching for over 14 years in Northern Virginia. Given her degree, license, and profession, I feel she is qualified to write about morphemes and linguistics as a whole. As a blogger, her blog lacks the academic scholar status of other articles or journals that seem highly professional, but for a teacher's perspective, this is a solid choice. Her blog post specifically is about the basics of morphology, as well as free and bound morphemes. The post has some visual stimuli and images to help readers understand what a morpheme is. Once again, this is not an academic source, so one shouldn't expect a textbook's worth of information here.
ThoughtCo is a website that features only authors with PhDs in a specific content area to explain, write about, and discuss a given topic for educational purposes. Richard Nordquist has a PhD in Rhetoric and English from the University of Georgia. His articles are typically dependable and good overviews of any linguistics topic. "Definitions and Examples of Morphemes in English" explains morphemes, such as affixes, prefixes, suffixes, how morphemes are used in language acquisition, and examples of morphemes. This article only has one visual element, a GIF, which may detract some users and learners.
Connection to Coursework
As a class, we went over morphology and morphemes back in weeks 6 and 7, and morphology was, of course, chapters 5 and 6 from the course textbook. The most memorable part of that coursework being the word formation assignment we completed, which was a fun way to demonstrate my understanding of prefixes, suffixes, slang, and acronyms in morphology. Having been a month or so removed from that coursework, I thought it would be interesting to write about morphology in this entry. Not only could I refresh my memory, I could test myself and see if my mental definitions were accurate still, or if I had forgotten any aspect of morphemes.
Personal Reflection
Not only have I been educated on morphology in English 3345, but I also took an English Grammar course in the spring of 2024, so my knowledge on morphemes and morphology has a solid foundation. Entering this blog, I was curious to see just how much of it I could remember and know like the back of my hand. Being a relatively simple linguistic topic, I remembered most of it: inflectional vs derivational morphemes, bound vs free, affixes, prefixes, suffixes, allomorphs. Honestly, I'm glad I did this blog entry, and I can't quite explain it, but there's some weird sort of nostalgia that fills me with a steady calm reading about morphemes. I suppose because of the simplicity of the topic, but I feel very prepared to educate students on morphology at length in my future career as an English 7-12 teacher. I also believe that I could easily explain morphemes to my niece or nephew and make it sound very simple for them to understand. I could even provide an abundance of examples for them to mentally compare inflectional and derivational morphemes.
Citations
C., Karen. “Morphology.” Teaching Linguistics and English Language Learners, 2020,
Nordquist, Richard. "Definition and Examples of Morphemes in English." ThoughtCo, Aug. 22, 2024,
"Morphology: Crash Course Linguistics #2." YouTube, uploaded by CrashCourse, 9 October 2020,
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