Morpheme: The Smallest Meaningful Unit of Language

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

Punctuation

 In our writing, we use punctuation marks to indicate the pauses and changes in expression.  Punctuation marks were invented to clarify the expression in language. It is a set of symbols used in writing to help explain meaning and make sentences easier to read. It helps us organize thoughts, show pauses, indicate emotions, and structure sentences correctly.

The Sentence: Subject and Predicate

 Without sentences, we would have a great deal of difficulty in communicating with each other. A sentence is a group of words that makes complete sense by itself. In its simplest form, a sentence may consist of just a noun and a verb, or even of a single word.

A sentence has two main parts, called the subject and the predicate.

Introduction to Some Mythical Characters Based on Seneca's Phaedra

Diana

Diana was an ancient Italian goddess whom the Romans identified with the Greek Artemis. She was a patroness of wild things and of birth, both human and animal. Apparently a fertility goddess of the 'mountain-mother' type, she was the patron goddess of the Roman plebians. At Rome Diana was the

Seneca's Phaedra

 Seneca's Phaedra is a Roman tragedy that retells the ancient Greek myth of Phaedra, Hippolytus, and Theseus. It is based on earlier Greek versions, especially Euripides' Hippolytus, but with Seneca’s own intense, philosophical, and psychological style.

Phaedra is a Roman tragedy by Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger, a philosopher and dramatist before 54 A.D. It is 1280 lines of verse. It is a powerful depiction of the disintegration of the character of a woman driven by desire for her stepson, Hippolytus. Her attempt to resist the passion proves futile.

The Rules of Word Formation

 Word formation stands for the process of forming new words from words or word groups woth the same root.It  refers to how new words are created in a language. It has traditionally been regarded as a branch of lexicology or a branch of grammar equal in importance to jorphology and syntax, or it has been assigned to morphology.

Free Morpheme and Bound Morpheme:

 Morphemes are classified into two types- free morphemes and bound morphemes. A free morpheme can stand alone as a complete word and still have meaning. For example: bag, book, goat, dog, is, and, but, beauty, cruelty, and so on.

Free morphemes are of two types- lexical or referential morphemes and functional or grammatical morphemes.