Morpheme – is one of the central notions of grammatical theory, without which no serious attempt at grammatical study can be made. Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of the language.
A great number of words have a composite nature, i.e. they are made up of small units each possessing a sound form and meaning. Morpheme is the minimal meaningful 2-facet unit. It is indivisible. Unlike a word it is not autonomous. It occurs in speech as a constitutive part of a word, though a word may consist of 1 morpheme. Identification of morphemes in various texts shows that morphemes may have different phonetic shapes. In the word cluster pleasure, pleasing the root morpheme is represented by 2 phonemic shapes: [pli:z] & [ple3]. All the representations that manifest alternations are called — morphemic variants or allomorphs.
Classification. According to the semantic classification morphemes play in constituting the meaning of the word, morphemes are subdivided into: root morphemes; affixes.
Root morpheme is a lexical center or a nucleus of a word. It has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme in the language. The root morpheme is isolated as the morpheme comes to a set of words making a word-cluster. e.g.: handy, handsome, handicraft. The component hand is further indivisible. The influence of the analytical structure of the English language is obvious. All grammatical meanings are expressed mostly outside the word. There is a poor inventory of endings which express grammatical meanings: s; -s; -ing etc.
Affixes — endings, inflections, outer formatives have only grammatical meaning. They are studied mostly in grammar but they constitute different word forms within the word paradigm. Affixes are relevant for building various types of items. Stem is a part of a word which remains unchanged after stripping off derivational and functional affixes. The stem expresses the lexical and part of speech meaning. e.g.: hand; hands. Here hand is a single morpheme which contains only the root. It is a simple free stem. Its homonymous with a word hand. If we take the stem of the words like hearty, heartier, the heartiest well see that it consists of the root part and the suffix y, ier. Hence, this stem is not simple but derived. Affixes change their positions as regards the root. They can be free types of suffixes.
Prefixes are derivational morphemes standing before the root and modifying its meaning. They have part of speech meaning. They can distinguish one part of speech from another. e.g.: sleep; asleep.
Prefixes may modify the stem for 1 time: pre-; post-; fore-; 2 place: in-; 3 negation: un-; dis-; mis- etc. Suffixes are derivational morphemes following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class. e.g.: length, n.; lengthen, v.
Infixes tmesis — are affixes placed within the word. e.g.: stand, stood. In general there are no traces of this nasal infix n in the present tense of some Indo-European verbs. Tmesis is the separation of the parts of a compound word by the intervention of one or more words. e.g.: absolutely; absoblodylutely.
Affixes shouldnt be confused with so-called combining forms which can be differentiated from suffixes historically. A combining form is always borrowed from GreekLatin. Combining forms differ from all other borrowings thats why they occur in compound words and derivatives which didnt exist in the original language but were in modern times in English. Often such forms are international. E.g.: television. Affixes may occur in pre or postpositions.
Structurally morphemes are classified into:
Free morpheme is a unit which coincides with a stem or a word group. A great many root morphemes are free like hand which can be used separately.
Bound morphemes are never used alone, used only as constituent parts of word. In other words they are bound to other morphemes. Affixes are always bound, because they always make part of a word. Many root morphemes are bound. e.g.: ceive — perceive, conceive; tain — contain, pertain. Semi-affixes. Some elements of English vocabulary occur as independent lexical units and as constituent parts of a great many of English words. They became so frequent as second elements that seem to have acquire the valency like that of affixes. e.g.: land, man, like, proof, looking, worthy etc. The combining ability of them is great. Some words may be traced to Old English — land, man, — some appeared in 1960s-1990s like oriented. On the other hand 2 elements very productive in combinations are completely dead as independent words. They are monger, wright. Semi-affixes may also be used in pre-positions. Like mini, maxi, self. The factors that lead to transition of free forms in the semi-affixes: high semantic productivity; adaptability; high valency capacity of combinability; gravity.
