what is best term to describe the smallest meaningful parts of words?

Smallest lexical item in a language

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful lexical item in a linguistic communication. A morpheme is non a word. The divergence between a morpheme and a give-and-take is that a morpheme sometimes does non stand alone, but a give-and-take on this definition always stands alone. The field of linguistic written report dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.

In English language, when a morpheme can stand solitary, it is considered a root because it has a meaning of its ain (such as the morpheme cat). When it depends on another morpheme to limited an idea, it is an affix considering information technology has a grammatical function (such as the -s in cats to betoken plurality).^[ane]. However this definition is not universal and does not utilize to, for example, Latin, where many roots cannot stand alone. For instance, the Latin root reg- ('rex') must ever be suffixed with a case marking: rex (reg-s), reg-is, reg-i, etc. For a language similar Latin, a root tin can exist defined as the principal lexical morpheme of a discussion.

Example English words have the following morphological analyses.

• "Unbreakable" is composed of three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying "non"), -break- (the root, a free morpheme), and -able (a gratis morpheme signifying "can exist done").
• The plural morpheme for regular nouns (-s) has three allomorphs: it is pronounced /due south/ (east.g., in cats ), /ɪz, əz/ (e.1000., in dishes ), and /z/ (e.yard., in dogs ), depending on the pronunciation of the root.

Nomenclature of morphemes [edit]

Costless and jump morphemes [edit]

Every morpheme can be classified every bit either free or leap.^[2]

• Free morphemes can function independently as words (e.g. boondocks, dog) and can appear within lexemes (eastward.g. boondocks hall, doghouse).
• Spring morphemes appear only as parts of words, ever in conjunction with a root and sometimes with other bound morphemes. For instance, un- appears only accompanied past other morphemes to form a give-and-take. Most spring morphemes in English are affixes, specifically prefixes and suffixes. Examples of suffixes are -tion, -sion, -tive, -ation, -ible, and -ing. Spring morphemes that are not affixed are called cranberry morphemes.

Classification of bound morphemes [edit]

Jump morphemes can be further classified equally derivational or inflectional morphemes. The chief divergence between them is their function in relation to words.

Derivational bound morphemes [edit]

• Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root, change the semantic significant or the function of oral communication of the affected word. For example, in the give-and-take happiness, the addition of the bound morpheme -ness to the root happy changes the word from an describing word (happy) to a noun (happiness). In the word unkind, un- functions equally a derivational morpheme since it inverts the meaning of the root morpheme (word) kind. Generally, morphemes that affix (i.e., affixes) to a root morpheme (word) are leap morphemes.

Inflectional spring morphemes [edit]

• Inflectional morphemes modify the tense, aspect, mood, person, or number of a verb, or the number, gender, or case of a noun, describing word, or pronoun, without affecting the discussion's meaning or grade (part of speech communication). Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to class dogs, or adding -ed to wait to class waited. An inflectional morpheme changes the form of a word. English language has eight inflections.^{[3] [iv]}

Allomorphs [edit]

Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme that differ in form just are semantically similar. For example, the English plural marker has ii allomorphs: -s and -es (dog -> canis familiaris s / bus -> charabanc es . Not to be confused with allophones where the change is in pronunciation; for instance: /-south, -z/ (bats / bugs), or /-ɪz, -əz/, (buses).

Zero-Jump-Morpheme [edit]

Zero-Morpheme [edit]

This section needs expansion with: at least a proper definition of the term. You tin assist past adding to it. (December 2019)

A nada-morpheme is a type of morpheme that carries semantic meaning but is not represented by auditory phonemes. They are often represented by /Ø/ within glosses.^[five]

Generally, these types of morphemes have no visible changes. For case, sheep is both the atypical and the plural course. The intended pregnant is thus derived from the Co-occurrence determiner (in this case, "some-" or "a-").^[vi]

Content vs. function [edit]

Content morphemes express a concrete pregnant or content, and office morphemes have more of a grammatical role. For example, the morphemes fast and sad can be considered content morphemes. On the other hand, the suffix -ed is a function morpheme since information technology has the grammatical part of indicating past tense.

Both categories may seem very clear and intuitive, but the idea backside them is occasionally harder to grasp since they overlap with each other.^[vii] Examples of cryptic situations are the preposition over and the determiner your, which seem to have physical meanings but are considered function morphemes since their office is to connect ideas grammatically.^[8] Here is a general rule to make up one's mind the category of a morpheme:

• Content morphemes include free morphemes that are nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and verbs, and include bound morphemes that are bound roots and derivational affixes.^[8]
• Role morphemes may be free morphemes that are prepositions, pronouns, determiners, and conjunctions. Sometimes, they are leap morphemes that are inflectional affixes.^[8]

Other features [edit]

Roots are composed of merely 1 morpheme, while stems can exist composed of more than one morpheme. Any additional affixes are considered morphemes. For example, in the give-and-take quirkiness, the root is quirk, merely the stalk is quirky, which has two morphemes.

Moreover, some pairs of affixes accept identical phonological class only different meanings. For instance, the suffix -er can be either derivational (east.grand. sell ⇒ seller) or inflectional (e.g. small ⇒ smaller). Such morphemes are chosen homophonous.^[eight]

Some words might seem to be equanimous of multiple morphemes but are not. Therefore, not simply form but as well meaning must be considered when identifying morphemes. For example, the word relate might seem to be composed of two morphemes, re- (prefix) and the word tardily, but it is not.^{[ citation needed ]} Those morphemes take no relationship with the definitions relevant to the word like "to feel sympathy," "to narrate," or "to be connected by claret or marriage." By contrast, the give-and-take rename does consist of two morphemes; here the morpheme re- indicates that the activeness "name" is done again.

Furthermore, the length of a word does not decide whether or not it has multiple morphemes. The discussion Republic of madagascar is long and might seem to take morphemes like mad, gas, and car, simply it does non. Conversely, some short words accept multiple morphemes (east.g. dogs = dog + south).^[8]

Morphological icons [edit]

Morphological icons are images, patterns or symbols that relate to a specific morpheme.^[9] For children with dyslexia, information technology has been shown to exist an constructive way of building up a word. The word 'inviting' equally an example is made up of two commonly used morphemes, 'in-' and '-ing'. A morphological icon for 'in-' could be an arrow going into a cup, and '-ing' could exist an arrow going forward to symbolise that something is in action (as in beingness, running, angling).

The concept of combining visual assistance icons with morpheme teaching methods was pioneered from the mid 1980s past Neville Brown.^[10] He founded the Maple Hayes school for dyslexia in 1981, where he later improved the method alongside his son, Daryl Brown. The school's curriculum uses morphological icons as a learning aid.^[11]

Morphological analysis [edit]

In natural language processing for Japanese, Chinese, and other languages, morphological analysis is the process of segmenting a sentence into a row of morphemes. Morphological analysis is closely related to role-of-speech tagging, but word partition is required for these languages because word boundaries are not indicated by bare spaces.^{[ citation needed ]}

The purpose of morphological analysis is to decide the minimal units of meaning in a linguistic communication (morphemes) by comparing of similar forms: for example, comparing forms such as "She is walking" and "They are walking" with each other rather than either with something less like like "You are reading." The forms can exist finer broken down into parts and the different morphemes can be distinguished.

Both meaning and form are equally of import for the identification of morphemes. An amanuensis morpheme is an braze like -er that in English transforms a verb into a substantive (due east.g. teach → instructor). English also has another morpheme that is identical in pronunciation (and written class) merely has an unrelated meaning and function: a comparative morpheme that changes an adjective into another degree of comparison (but remains the same adjective) (e.yard. pocket-size → smaller). The contrary can also occur: a pair of morphemes with identical meaning simply unlike forms.^[8]

Irresolute definitions [edit]

In generative grammar, the definition of a morpheme depends heavily on whether syntactic trees take morphemes every bit leaves or features as leaves.

• Direct surface-to-syntax mapping in lexical functional grammer (LFG) – leaves are words
• Directly syntax-to-semantics mapping
  • Leaves in syntactic copse spell out morphemes: distributed morphology – leaves are morphemes
  • Branches in syntactic trees spell out morphemes: radical minimalism and nanosyntax – leaves are "nano-" (small) morpho-syntactic features

Given the definition of a morpheme as "the smallest meaningful unit of measurement," nanosyntax aims to account for idioms in which an entire syntactic tree often contributes "the smallest meaningful unit." An example idiom is "Don't let the cat out of the bag." Here, the idiom is composed of "allow the cat out of the bag." This might be considered a semantic morpheme that is itself composed of many syntactic morphemes. Other cases of the "smallest meaningful unit" being longer than a word include some collocations such as "in view of" and "business concern intelligence", in which the words together accept a specific pregnant.

The definition of morphemes also plays a pregnant role in the interfaces of generative grammer in the post-obit theoretical constructs:

• Event semantics: the thought that each productive morpheme must take a compositional semantic meaning (a denotation), and if the meaning is there, in that location must exist a morpheme (whether nada or overt).
• Spell-out: the interface where syntactic/semantic structures are "spelled out" by using words or morphemes with phonological content. This tin can likewise exist idea of as lexical insertion into the syntactic.

See also [edit]

• Alternation (linguistics)
• Bound morpheme
• Floating tone
• Greek morphemes
• Hybrid word
• Morphological parsing
• Morphophonology
• Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, featuring a comparable concept in folklore studies
• Phoneme
• Theoretical linguistics
• Give-and-take stem

References [edit]

1. ^ Kemmer, Suzanne. "Words in English language: Structure". Retrieved 10 April 2014.
2. ^ Morphology Classification Of Morphemes Archived 2014-03-20 at the Wayback Machine Referenced 19 March 2014
3. ^ "ENG 411B Concepts". Archived from the original on 2013-02-eighteen.
4. ^ Matthew, Baerman (2015). The Morpheme. Oxford University Press: Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN9780199591428 . Retrieved thirty September 2019.
5. ^ Gerner, Matthias; Ling, Zhang (2020-05-06). "Zero morphemes in paradigms". Studies in Language. International Periodical Sponsored by the Foundation "Foundations of Language". 44 (1): 1–26. doi:10.1075/sl.16085.ger. ISSN 0378-4177. S2CID 218935697.
6. ^ Dahl, Eystein Dahl; Fábregas, Antonio (2018). "Zero Morphemes". Linguistics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.592. ISBN978-0-nineteen-938465-5 . Retrieved 3 November 2019.
7. ^ "Morphology II". Retrieved x April 2014.
8. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Department of Linguistics (2011). Linguistic communication files: Materials for an introduction to language and linguistics (11th ed.). Ohio State Academy Press.
9. ^ Richard Garner (July 27, 2014). "College for dyslexic pupils uses flashcard system to teach literacy". The Independent.
10. ^ Justine Halifax (Jan 4, 2015). "Dyslexia dictionary: Lichfield doctor male parent and son lead way in helping immature sufferers". Birmingham Mail.
11. ^ Ross Hawkes (May 14, 2019). "Author's tribute to experts behind Lichfield dyslexia schoolhouse". Lichfield Live.

• Baerman, Matthew (2015), Matthew Baerman (ed.), The Morpheme, Stephen R. Anderson, Oxford Academy: Oxford University Printing, p. 3
• Plag, Ingo (2015), The structure of words: morphology, Sabine Arndt-Lappe, Maria Braun, and Mareile Schramm, Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter, Inc., pp. 71–112

External links [edit]

Look upward morpheme in Wiktionary, the gratuitous lexicon.

• Glossary of reading terms
• Comprehensive and searchable morpheme reference
• Linguistics 001 — Lecture vii — Morphology past Prof. Marking Lieberman
• Pronunciation of the word morpheme

ewingdontards.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme

Share this post