The term 'morpheme' is exploited to refer to the smallest meaningful, observable, syntactic or grammatical unit in a language that cannot be divided without altering or destroying its meaning. For example, sing' is a morpheme; but if we remove 'g' or 's', it changes to 'sin' or '-ing', which have quite different meanings; and if we remove ‘si’ or the like, sing' loses its meaning. In writing, individual morphemes are usually represented by their graphic form, or spelling, for example, -es, -er, un-, re -; or by their graphic form between bracers { }, for example, {-es}, {-er}, {un-}, {re-}.
Bloomfield (1933) presents a
precise definition of the morpheme ‘as a linguistic form that bears no partial
phonetic-semantic resemblance to any other form’. According to this definition,
'speaking,' for example, cannot be a morpheme since part of it resembles the
first part of 'speaks', and part of it resembles the second part of going'. But
if we divide 'speaking' into two- 'speak'/ spi:k/ and '-ing' / in/-, these
forms have no partial resemblance to any other form, and, hence, are morphemes.
Bloomfield primarily divided
morpheme in two sections. These are : free morphemes and bound morphemes.
Classification of Morpheme:
Figure:
Classification of Morpheme
Free morphemes: morphemes
that can functions independently are called free or independent morphemes, for
example, man, boy, girl, cow, mango, curly, beauty, is, an, but, clever,
animal, city, and the like. Free morphemes are also classified into two
sub-classes: lexical content or referential morphemes and grammatical or
functional morphemes.
Lexical Morphemes: The
lexical morphemes are very large in number and independently meaningful. They
include nouns. (For example, man, cat, pen, rice, country, land, etc.), Main
verbs (e.g., do, go, come, eat, write, jump, etc.), adjectives (e.g., large,
long, short, dull, wide, beautiful, etc.), and adverbs (e.g., quickly, slowly,
happily, sadly, etc.). Lexical morphemes form the open class of words ( content
words) in a language,
Grammatical
morphemes:
Grammatical morphemes
are very limited in number and can also be used independently. They have little
or no meaning on their own but demonstrate grammatical relationships [s in and
between sentences. They usually include auxiliary verbs(for example, am, is,
are, can, may, etc.), determiners( for example, a, an, the, much, many, little,
each, etc.
), prepositions( e.g. in, on, up, into, over, through, below, etc.),
conjunction(e.g. And, but, yet, or) and so on.
Bound Morpheme
Some morphemes cannot function alone and are added to root words. This type of morpheme is called a bound or dependent morpheme. For example, -less, -ness, pre-, -ment, un-, im-, and so forth. Bound morphemes are of two types: bound roots and affixes.
Bound roots include those bound
morphemes which have lexical meaning when they are attached to other bound
morphemes to form content words, for example, -ceive in receive,
conceive; -tain in retain, contain; -plac in
implacable, placate; cran- in cranberry; etc. it is noteworthy
that bound roots can be prefixed or suffixed to other affixes.
Affixes are bound morphemes which are usually marginally attached to words, and which change the meaning or function of those words, for example: -ment in development, en- in enlarge; ‘s in John’s; -s in claps, -ing in studying, etc. Affixes can be classified in two different ways: a) according to their position in the word; and b) according to their function in a phrase or sentence.
Figure: Subdivision of Bound Morphemes
According to their position in the word (or side of the word they are attached t
