ChapterWordStructureandWordFormation.docVIP

Chapter 4 Word Structure and Word Formation In modern times, vocabulary is largely enriched on an internal basis. That is, we use existing material available in English, be it native or foreign, to create new words. The creation of new words follows certain patterns or rules in spite of many exceptions. In this chapter we shall present a detailed discussion of the morphological structure of words and various processes of modern English word-formation. 4.1 Morphological Structure of Words 4.1.1 Morphemes A morpheme is ‘the smallest meaningful linguistic unit. Some words are formed by one morpheme (e.g. cat, dog) and some words are formed by two or three more (e.g. lovely, unacceptable). 4.1.2 Morphs and Allomorphs Morphemes are abstract units, which are realized in speech by discrete units known as morphs, that is, ‘they are actual spoken, minimal carriers of meaning’. ( Bolinger and Sears 1981). E.g. {big} Most morphemes are realized by single morphs like bird, tree, sad, etc. These morphemes coincide with words as they can stand by themselves and move freely in a sentence if necessary. Words of this category are called monomorphemic words. Some morphemes, however, are realized by more than one morph according to their position in a word. Such alternative morphs are known as allomorphs or morphemic variants. They are the variants of the same morpheme. For instance, the morpheme of plurality {-s} has a number of allomorphs in different sound context, e.g. in cats /s/, in bags /z/, in matches /iz/. 4.1.3 Types of Morphemes Morphemes fall into different classes by different criteria of classification. Some linguists classify them on a semantic basis into lexical morphemes and grammatical morphemes. Other scholars categorize them into root morphemes and affixational morphemes. Now people tend to group morphemes into free forms and bound forms.. 1) Free Morphemes (= Content Morphemes = Roots) Morphemes which stand independent of other morphemes are free. They can f