ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute OBJECTIVES You will understand: 1. The different kinds of morphemes 2. The patterns and rules of word formation You will be able to: 1. Apply your basic understanding of morphemes and word formation to your teaching

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute INTRODUCTION When we form words in any language we take pieces of words, or meaning units, and put them together to form complete words. The smallest meaningful linguistic unit used in building words in any language is called a morpheme. The study of morphemes and of the use of morphemes to build words is called morphology. In this module and the next module we will look at the different kinds of morphemes and the patterns and rules of word formation. We will also tie this knowledge into what we can do in the language classroom to help our students understand the word-building patterns behind the English words they are learning.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute A. Identify the morpheme that each of the words in the groups below have in common. What does the morpheme mean? i. Unfair, unwise, uninteresting, unable ii. Disability, dismantle, displeasure, disinterest iii. Dryness, quickness, brightness, illness iv. Songs, boys, apples v. Worker, teacher, dancer vi. Proudly, quickly, hurriedly, surprisingly

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute B. Identify the meanings of two morphemes in each of the following words (the word may have more than two morphemes): i. Automobile ii. Bicycle iii. Microscope iv. Independent v. Considerate vi. Supernatural vii. Prototype

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute FREE VERSUS BOUND MORPHEMES There are three different ways that we can categorize or divide up morphemes. The first way is to divide morphemes into free morphemes or bound morphemes. Free morphemes do not need to be attached to any other morphemes. In other words they can constitute a complete word, or they can stand alone as a complete word. Examples of free morphemes are: bug, pen, to, a, under, over, lamp, and book.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute FREE VERSUS BOUND MORPHEMES Bound morphemes, on the other hand, can never appear independent of another morpheme. They must always be attached to one or more morphemes. Examples of bound morphemes are: mis, ly, ed, s, er, and un. Let’s look at word to see how this works. In the word ‘proudly’, there are two morphemes—‘proud’ and ‘ly’. ‘Proud’ is a free morpheme because it can stand alone as a complete word. ‘Ly’ is a bound morpheme because it must always be attached to another morpheme in order to make sense.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Each language is different in terms of the number of bound versus free morphemes that it has. Languages that have a large percentage of free morphemes are called isolated languages. Chinese is a good example of this—the majority of morphemes in Chinese are free. Languages that have a lot of bound morphemes are called agglutinative languages. Languages also differ, then, in terms of which concepts are expressed through free morphemes and which through bound morphemes. For example, in English, we express the concept of ‘small’ through the free morpheme ‘small’. We put it in front of a word to convey ‘smallness’, as in the ‘small ball’ or the ‘small house’. In Spanish, on the other hand, the concept of ‘small’ is expressed by a bound morpheme ‘etta’. So we have the word ‘casa’ for ‘house’ and ‘casetta’ for ‘small house’.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute 2. FREE VERSUS BOUND MORPHEMES Divide the words below into their morphemes. Indicate if each morpheme is free (F) or bound (B). i. Nevertheless ii. Indescribable iii. Glasses iv. Freezing v. Blackened vi. Energetic

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute LEXICAL VERSUS GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES Free morphemes can be divided into two groups—lexical morphemes and grammatical morphemes. Lexical morphemes are free morphemes that primarily convey meaning. Examples of lexical morphemes include: cat, plant, build, lamp, light and so on. Grammatical morphemes are free morphemes that serve a grammatical function (articles, prepositions, pronouns). Examples of grammatical morphemes include: a, an, the, to, from, he, she, it and so on.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute 3. LEXICAL VERSUS GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES Determine if the following words are lexical or grammatical: LexicalGrammatical bake of pen and which fish my who phone red fire if

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute DERIVATIONAL VERSUS INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES Bound morphemes can also be divided into two groups— derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes. Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes that change the meaning of the stem of the word or change the word class of a word. The following are examples of derivational morphemes: ‘ful’ changes nouns to adjectives, ‘ly’ changes adjectives to adverbs, and ‘ness’ changes adjectives to nouns. Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that indicate the syntactic relation between words and function as grammatical markers. The following are examples of inflectional morphemes: ‘s’ makes a count noun plural, and ‘er’ makes adjectives and adverbs into comparatives.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute 4. DERIVATIONAL VERSUS INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES Determine if the following bound morphemes are derivational or inflectional. DerivationalInflectional ment hood ed est tion s (3 rd person singular) en un pre ing (present participle) tri ize

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Complete Question 5A or 5B in your Task Journal. Task Journals can be submitted via to (preferred) or printed and handed in.