Morphology

morphology

studies the structure of words and describes the smallest meaningful components

morpheme

smallest meaningful component of language which contains one or more morphemes

duality

meaningless phonemes which are physically articulated are combined into meaningful morphemes

free morphemes

words

lexical morphemes

the ones you find in dictionary

functional morphemes

with grammatical function

bound morphemes

not words, but may be added to them

derivational morphemes

change lexical category

inflectional morphemes

do not create new words, involve the grammatical categories

visible morpheme

can be visually split into morphemes

invisible morpheme

cannot be visually split (men = man + s)

allomorph

different phonological realisation of one morpheme or a different shape of one morpheme

derivation

root + bound morpheme

compounding

free + free morpheme, two actual words

transparent compounds

adjective + adjective, black&white

semi-transparent compounds

adjective + noun, blackboard

compound + derivation

head-hunter, head + hunt + er

conversion

change of word class without changing the word’s form

clipping

shortening, no change in category, decreases formality

back-formation

manipulating the final section, change of category

acronyms

using initial sounds of a compound as a lexical entry

blending

beggining of one word + end of another, motorist + hotel = motel

borrowing

adding to the lexicon from another language