FINAL ASSIGNMENT

What is Morphology?

Presented by :

Madeline Yudith
F21116307
Morphology A

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
HASANUDDIN UNIVERSITY
2017
 What is Morphology?

A. Introduction
To represent the idea of something we do speak or write down the idea. Language
is a media to represent those ideas. In the past, human were created a letter to seliver
their idea. Letters become a word, words become a sentence, sentences become a
paragraph and paragraphs become a text. But, the way of representing a language to
become a piece of text were ruled so that people will understand universally what are
we saying or what is the writing about. In every area in the world, people were trying
to structuring the structure of a words. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857–1913) is widely acknowledged as the key figure in this refocusing of interest,
and as the founding father of modern linguistics.
Linguistics is the systematic study of the structure and evolution of human
language, and it is applicable to every aspect of human endeavor.
The Linguistic Society of America observes that linguistics is a field of science
that is almost 3,000 years old. Modern linguists primarily concern themselves with
either theoretical or applied linguistics. Their research includes many facets of
language and language structure, which can be studied at various levels.
The discipline of linguistics focuses on theories of language structure, variation
and use, the description and documentation of contemporary languages, and the
implications of theories of language for an understanding of the mind and brain,
human culture, social behavior, and language learning and teaching.
Phonology and phonetics — the study of the sound systems of languages — deals
with the basic utterances in speech. It can be investigated by observing which physical
properties of the vocal tract (including the lips and tongue) are used to form distinct
linguistic sounds to convey information. Morphology and syntax are concerned with
the study of the internal structure of words and sentences. Apart from the study of the
sound systems of languages and word and sentence structure, linguists seek to specify
the meaning behind words and combinations of words. This investigation is known as
semantics. Semanticists also compare the meanings of these combinations when they
interact with contextual information, a subfield known as pragmatics. 
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and forms a core part
of linguistic study today. The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph-
meaning ‘shape, form’, and -ology which means ‘the study of something’.
Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the first time in 1859
by the German linguist August Schleicher who used the term for the study of the
form of words.
Morphology will explain more about the structure of every words that have been
created for centuries in the same language.

B. Main Body
 Morphology
 Morphology, in linguistics, is the study of the forms of words, and the ways in
which words are related to other words of the same language. Formal differences
among words serve a variety of purposes, from the creation of new lexical items to the
indication of grammatical structure.
Traditionally, morphology is divided into several types, depending on the role
played in grammar by a given formation. The most basic division is between
inflection and word formation: the latter is easy enough to characterize as
‘morphology that creates new words’ ( wuggish, wug-like, wugbird), but inflection
(e.g., wugs) is rather harder to define. Often, inflection is defined by example:
categories like number (e.g., ‘plural’), gender (e.g., masculine, feminine and neuter in
Latin), tense (‘past’), aspect (e.g., the difference between the imparfait and the passé
simple in French), case (‘accusative’), person (1 st vs. 2nd vs. 3rd), and perhaps a few
others are inflectional while everything else is word formation. But this approach is
inadequate, because the same category may be inflectional in some languages, and not
in others.
In Fula (a West Atlantic language), for example, the category `diminutive’ is fully
integrated into the grammar of agreement in the language, just as much so as person,
number, and gender. Verbs whose subjects are diminutive indicate this with an
agreement marker, as do adjectives modifying diminutive nouns, etc. In English, in
contrast, diminutives appear in forms like piglet, but these are clearly cases of word
formation. On the other hand, while number is clearly involved in important parts of
English grammar (verbs agree with their subjects in number), other languages, like
Kwakw’ala (or ‘Kwakiutl’) treat the category of plural as something that can optionally
be added to nouns, or to verbs, as an elaboration of meaning that has no further
grammatical consequence.
Despite the intuitively clear nature of the category of inflection, other efforts to
define it explicitly do no better. Inflection is generally more productive than other
sorts of morphology, for instance: virtually every German noun has an accusative, a
plural, etc., while only a few English nouns have a diminutive formation like piglet.
But in some languages, categories that we would certainly like to call inflectional are
quite limited: in Basque, for example, only a few dozen verbs (the number varying
from one dialect to another) have forms that show agreement. In English, on the other
hand, the process of forming nouns in –ing from verbs (as in Fred’s lonely musings
about love) can take virtually any verb as its basis, despite being intuitively a means
of crating new words, not of inflecting old ones. A variety of other attempts that can
be found in the literature also fail, either because of ready counter-examples, or
because they are insufficiently general: inflectional material is generally found at the
word’s periphery, while word formational markers are closer to the stem (cf. piglets
but not *pigslet), but this property is only useful in words that contain material of both
types, and even then, it does not help us to find the boundary in a word like French
im-mort-al-is-er-ait ‘would immortalize’.
In fact, the intuition underlying the notion of ‘inflection’ seems to be the
following: inflectional categories are those that provide information about
grammatical structure (such as the fact that a noun in the accusative is likely to be a
direct object), or which are referred to by a grammatical rule operating across words
(such as the agreement of verbs with their subjects). The validity of other correlates
with inflectional status, then, follows not from the nature of the categories themselves,
but rather from the existence of grammatical rules in particular languages that refer to
them, and to the freedom with which items of particular word classes can appear in
positions where they can serve as the targets of such rules.
For any given word, we can organize a complete set of its inflectional variants
into a paradigm of the word. Thus, a German noun has a particular gender, and a
paradigm consisting of forms for two numbers (singular and plural) and four cases
(nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative). German adjectives have paradigms that
distinguish not only case and number, but also gender (since they can agree with
nouns of any of the three genders), plus another category that distinguishes between
‘strong’ and ‘weak’ declensions (depending on the presence of certain demonstrative
words within the same phrase).
All of the word forms that make up a single inflectional paradigm have the same
basic meaning. In general, they are all constructed on the basis of a basic shape, or
stem, though in many languages with complex inflection, the paradigm of a given
word may be built from more than one stem. In French, for example, the verb pouvoir
‘to be able to’ shows different stems in (je) peux ‘I can’ and (je) pourrais ‘I would be
able to’.
Certain terminology has become more or less accepted in describing facts of these
sorts. We refer to a particular sound shape (e.g. [fawnd]) as a specific word form; all
of the inflectional forms in a single paradigm are said to make up a single lexeme
(e.g., find). A specific morphosyntactic form of a particular lexeme (e.g., the past
tense of find) is realized by a corresponding word form [fawnd]). These terms are all
distinct, in their way: thus, the same morphosyntactic form of a given lexeme may
correspond to more than one word form (e.g., the past tense of dive can be either
[daivd] or [dowv]), while the same word form can realize more than one
morphosyntactic form (e.g., [hIt] can be either the past tense of hit, the non-third-
person present tense of hit, or the singular of the noun hit).

 Morpheme
 A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. In other words, it is
the smallest meaningful unit of a language. A morpheme is not identical to a word,
and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand
alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. When it stands by itself, it is
considered as a root because it has a meaning of its own (e.g. the morpheme cat) and
when it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an affix because it has
a grammatical function (e.g. the –s in cats to indicate that it is plural). Every word
comprises one or more morphemes.
There are two types of morphemes, free morphemes and bound morphemes. Free
morphemes can stand alone with a specific meaning, for example, eat, date, weak.
Bound morphemes cannot stand alone with meaning. Morphemes are comprised of
two separate classes called (a) bases (or roots) and (b) affixes.
A "base," or "root" is a morpheme in a word that gives the word its principle
meaning. An example of a "free base" morpheme is woman in the word womanly. An
example of a "bound base" morpheme is -sent in the word dissent.
Free morpheme is a word that can stand by itself and has a potential to form a
word. Free morpheme has two types, it is lexical morpheme dan functional
morpheme.
Lexical morpheme may receive an affix, like suffix or prefix. Examples:
1. Noun House + s Houses
2. Adjective Un + Happy Unhappy
3. Verb Write + s Writes
4. Adverb Slow + ly Slowly
Functional morpheme is impossible to receive an affix, Examples:
1. Pronoun: I, You, They, We, He, She, It
2. Conjunction: And, But, Before, … etc
3. Preposition: In, At, On, … etc
4. Interjection: Ah, Hai, Hallo, Wow, … etc
5. Article: A, An, The
6. Demostrative: That, This, These, Those
 Bound Morpheme is a morpheme that can’t stand by itself, has no potential to
form a word but has a potential to form affix. An "affix" is a bound morpheme that
occurs before or after a base. An affix that comes before a base is called a "prefix."
Some examples of prefixes are ante-, pre-, un-, and dis-, as in the following words:
antedate unhealthy
prehistoric disregard
An affix that comes after a base is called a "suffix." Some examples of suffixes
are -ly, -er, -ism, and -ness, as in the following words:
happily capitalism
kindness gardener
Bound Mopheme is divided into two types, it is derivational morpheme and
inflectional morpheme.
Derivational morpheme serve to alter the meaning of a word by building on a
base. In the examples of words with prefixes and suffixes above, the addition of the
prefix un- to healthy alters the meaning of healthy. The resulting word means "not
healthy." The addition of the suffix -er to garden changes the meaning of garden,
which is a place where plants, flowers, etc., grow, to a word that refers to 'a person
who tends a garden.' It should be noted that all prefixes in English are derivational.
In contrast, there are only eight inflectional morpheme in English, and these are
all suffixes. English has the following inflectional suffixes, which serve a variety of
grammatical functions when added to specific types of words. These grammatical
functions are shown to the right of each suffix.
-s     noun plural
-'s     noun possessive
-s     verb present tense third person singular
-ing     verb present participle/gerund
-ed     verb simple past tense
-en     verb past perfect participle
-er     adjective comparative
-est     adjective superlative

 Morphological Processes
Morphological processes that affect roots and stems and which lead to the
production of new words. Those processes are affixation, com-pounding, symbolism,
reduplication, suppletion, acronymy, clipping, blending, borrowing, back-formation,
word coinage and functional shift.
A. Affixation
Affixation consists in adding derivational affixes (i.e., prefixes, infixes and
suffixes) to roots and stems to form new words. For example, if the suffix -able is
added to the word pass, the word passable is created. Likewise, if to the word
passable the prefix in- (or rather its allomorph im-) is attached, another word is
formed, namely impassable. Affixation is a very common and productive
morphological process in synthetic languages. In English, derivation is the form of
affixation that yields new words.
 B. Compounding
Compounding consists in the combination of two or more (usually free) roots to
form a new word. For example, the word blackboard, heartfelt, brother-in-law are
compound words; they are made up of the roots (at the same time words themselves)
black and board, heart and felt, brother, in and law, respectively.
Compounding is a very common process in most languages of the world
(especially among synthetic languages). In English, for instance, compound words
have the following characteristics:
1. Compounds words behave grammatically and semantically as single words.
2. Since compound words behave as units, between their component elements no
affixes (whether inflections or derivations) can usually occur; inflectional suffixes
can appear only after compound words. For example, bathrooms, school, buses,
water resistant. Exceptions: passersby, brothers-in-law, courts-martial.
3. Compound words can be written in three different ways:
a.. Open, i.e., with a space between the parts of the compound; e.g., toy store, div-
ing board, flower pot.
b. Hyphenated, i.e., with a hyphen (-) separating the elements of the compound;
e.g., flower-pot, air-brake, she-pony.
c. Solid, e.g., without a space or hyphen between the component elements of the
compound; e.g., flowerpot, washrooms, pickpocket.
Preference for a particular form of writing the compound word depends largely
on lexicographical conventions and the variety of English use. For instance,
hyphenation (i.e.,separating the elements of a compound with a hyphen) is more
common in British English than in American English. In American English, the
tendency is to write the compounds open or solid (Quirk et al., 1985). However,
hyphenation is quite common practice in both varieties of the language when ad hoc
premodifying compounds are used; e.g., a much needed rest; a state-of-the-art report.
4. The global meaning of the compound word can often be guessed from the
individual meaning of each element of the compound. For example, a boathouse is ‘a
shed in which boats are stored’; a bookstore is ‘a store which sells books’; and so on.
But there are a few compound words whose global meanings have to be learned as if
they were single words because such meanings cannot be guessed from the individual
meanings of the component elements of the compounds. For instance, a Redcoat is ‘a
British soldier’, not ‘a coat that is red’. Similarly, a flatfoot is ‘a detective or
policeman’, a turncoat is ‘a traitor’, a hot dog is ‘a kind of fast food’, etc.
5. Compound words usually have the primary stress on the first element of the
compound; e.g., "air-Æcrafts, "chewing-Ægum. This fact differentiates compounds
from phrases that have the same elements and order as compounds. Phrases usually
have their primary accent on the second (or nominal) element; e.g., a "red à coat vs.
a "Red Æcoat; a "flat à foot vs. a "flatÆfoot; the "white à house vs. the "White
ÆHouse. Of course, there are a few compounds which have their primary stress on
the second element as phrases; e.g., Æworking "man, Æflying "saucer, woman
"writer, Æ fancy "dress.
 6. The second element (or head word) of the compound usually determines the
grammatical category to which the whole compound belongs. Following are a few
possible combinations:
n + n = n; e.g., sunrise, dancing girl, hand-shake, air-conditioning, cigar smoker,
windmill.
v + n = n; e.g., rattlesnake, call-girl, dance-hall.
adj. + n = n, e.g., darkroom, highbrow.
n + adj. = adj.; e.g., airsick, bottle-green.
pron. + n = n; e.g., she-pony, he-goat.
prep. + v = v; e.g., overtake, undergo.
prep. + n = n; e.g., onlooker, off-day.
adj. + adj. = adj.; e.g., gray-green, Swedish-American.
However, there are some cases in which the headword does not determine the
grammatical class of the compound; for example:
n + v = adj.; e.g., man-eating, ocean-going, heartfelt.
adj./adv. + v = adj.; e.g., hard-working, good-looking, dry-cleaned.
n + prep. = n; e.g., passer-by, hanger-on.
v + (adv.) prep. = n; e.g., show-off, holdup.
v + adv. = n; e.g., have-not, get-together.
It is important to point out that some compound words are made up of a bound
root (or ‘special’ combining form, as Quirk et al. (1985) call it), e.g., socio-, psycho-,
and a free root; e.g., socioeconomic, psychoanalysis, biotechnology. The compound
may also consist of two bound roots; e.g., Laundromat, nephrolithotomy,
pornography.
7. Compounding is a recursive process; i.e., one compound itself may become a
constituent of a larger compound; e.g., lighthouse keeper, living-room furniture.

C. Symbolism
Symbolism (or morpheme internal change) consists in altering the internal
phonemic structure of a morpheme to indicate grammatical functions (cf. Pei, 1966).
For example, in order to form the plurals of goose \gu…s\ and tooth \tu…T\ in
English, the phoneme \u…\ is replaced by the phoneme\i…\, thus yielding the plural
forms geese \gi…s\ and teeth \ti…T\, respectively.
Other words that form their plurals in a similar way are man /mœn\ → men
/men/, woman \ "wUm´n\ → women \ "wIm´n\, mouse \mAUs\ → mice \maIs\,
louse \lAUs\ → lice \laIs\, etc. Similarly, a few verbs indicate their past tense and
past participle forms just by undergoing internal changes, as in the following cases:
sing \sIN\ sang \sœN\ sung \søN\
swim \swIm\ swam \swœm\ swum \swøm\
sink \sINk\ sank \sœNk\ sunk \søNk\
bring \brIN\ brought \brÅt\ brought \brÅt\
teach \tiÜtS\ taught \tÅt\ taught \tÅt\
Notice that some of these verbs, in addition, take the inflectional morpheme -en \-´n\
to indicate the past participle, as in:
 break \breIk\ broke \br´Uk\ broken \ "br´Uk´n\
eat \iÜt\ ate \eIt\ eaten \ "iÜtn`\
write \raIt\ wrote \r´Ut\ written \ "rItn`\
ride \raId\ rode \r´Ud\ ridden \ "rIdn`\
It is important to point out that the new words created by the process of
symbolism are usually considered irregular forms and have come to be as a result of
historical changes in the development of the language.

D. Reduplication
Reduplication consists in the repetition of all or of part of a root or stem to form
new words. If the entire root or stem is repeated, the process is called complete (or
total) reduplication, and the new word is considered as a repetitive compound. Total
reduplication is fairly frequent in Indonesian, Tojolabal (Mexico), Hausa (Sudan), and
Hawaiian. For example, in Tojolabal [-otS] means ‘to enter’, [-otSotS] ‘to enter little
by little’. (cf. Nida,1949). Similarly, in Indonesian, total reduplication is used to form
the plural of nouns, as in [rumah] ‘house’, [rumahrumah] ‘houses’; [ibu] ‘mother’
[ibuibu] ‘mothers’; [lalat] ‘fly’, [lalatlalat] ‘flies’. In Hawaiian, holo means 'run',
holoholo 'go for a walk or ride'; lau means 'leaf', laulau 'leaf food package'.
If only a part of the root or stem is repeated, the process is called partial
reduplication, and the repeated portion is called a reduplicative. Such reduplicatives
may occur preposed, interposed, and postposed to the root or stem (cf. Nida, 1949);
however, reduplica tives are more common word-initially and word-medially. Partial
reduplication is fairlycommon in Snohomish and Tagalog.
In English, partial reduplication is a little bit more common than total
reduplication. Quirk et al. (1985) refer to the words formed by either type of
reduplication as reduplicatives (also called ‘jingles’). As an example of total
reduplication, they give bye-bye, goody-goody (‘a self-consciously virtuous person’).
As to partial reduplication, they say that the constituents of the reduplicatives may
differ in the initial consonants, as in walkie-talkie, or in the medial vowels, e.g., criss-
cross. The same authors add that most reduplicatives are highly informal or familiar,
and many belong to the sphere of child-parent talk, e.g., din-din (dinner’).
Quirk et al. (1985) in addition state that the most common uses of reduplicatives
are the following:
a. To imitate sounds, e.g., rat-a-tat (knocking on door), tick-tack (of a clock), ha-
ha (of laughter), bow-wow (of dog).
b. To suggest alternating movements, e.g., see saw, flip-flop, ping-pong.
c. To disparage by suggesting instability, nonsense, insincerity, vacillation, etc.,
e.g., higgledy-piggledy, hocus-pocus, wishy-washy, dilly-dally, shilly-shally,
willy-nilly.
d. To intensify, e.g., teeny-weeny, tip-top.

E. Suppletion
Suppletion consists in a complete change in the form of a root (i.e., a word) or in
the replacement of root by another morphologically unrelated root with the same
component of meaning in different grammatical contents (cf. Richards et al., 1985;
Byrne, 1978; Pei,1966). For example, good and well change to better and best in the
comparative and superlative. Similarly, bad and badly change to worse and worst.
Likewise, be changes to am, are, and is in the present; am/is change to was and are to
were in the past. Another example is go which changes to went in the past. As can be
seen, this process yields completely irregular forms. Suppletive forms help to fill gaps
in grammatical paradigms of the language (cf. Pei, 1966).

F. Acronymy
Acronymy is the process whereby a new word is formed from the initial letters of
the constituent words of a phrase or sentence. For example, from the initial letters of
the words of the phrase North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the word NATO \ "neIt
´U\ is formed.
Similarly, from the initial letters of the constituent words of the phrase
unidentified flying object, the word UFO \Æ ju…ef "´U\ (or\ " ju…f´U\) is formed.
In a like manner, from the constituent words of the sentence I owe you, the word
IOU \ ÆaI´U"ju…\ (notice the adaptation in spelling) is formed. And from the
Situation normal, all fouled up, snafu \snœ"fu…\ (army slang) is formed. The words
created by this process are called acronyms; all of them function as nouns.
Types of Acronyms
According to Quirk et al. (1985), there are two main types of acronyms, namely:
1. Acronyms which are pronounced as a word; e.g., NASA \ "nœs´\ (= National
Aeronautics and Space Administration), radar \ "reIÆdA…r\ radar \ "reIÆdA…r\
(radio detecting and ranging), laser (= light amplification by stimulated emission of
radiation), UNESCO \ju…"nesk´U\ (= United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization), BASIC \ "beIsIk\ (= Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic
Instruction Code), COBOL \ "k´UbÅl\ (Common Business Oriented Language), etc
As can be seen, acronyms of this type often derive from phrasal names. Many of
them belong to the jargon (i.e., specialized language) of particular occupations,
organizations or fields of study (esp. scientific, administrative, political) and might be
completely meaningless to the persons who are not familiarized with them. Notice
also that some of these acronyms are of so frequent an occurrence that people often
use them without the slightest idea of what the words stand for; e.g., laser, radar.
2. Acronyms which are pronounced as sequences of letters (also called 'alphabet-
isms'); e.g., C.O.D. \ Æsi…´U"di…\ ( = cash on delivery), MIT \ ÆemaI"ti…\ (=
Massachusetts Institute of Technology), VIP \ Ævi…aI"pi…\ (= very important
person). In writing, the more institutionalized formations have no periods between
their component letters. This tendency is especially more common in British English
than in American English; e.g., DIY \ Ædi…aI"waI\ (= do-it-yourself), FBI \
Æefbi…"aI\ (= Federal Bureau of Investigations).
Note that each constituent letter of these acronyms usually represents a full word
or constituent in the compound, or just a part of a word, as in the following examples:
TB \ Æti…"bi…\ (= tuberculosis), TV \Æti…"vi…\ (= television), c/o (= (in) care of).
Likewise, notice that some of these acronyms are given a quasi-phonetic written form;
e.g., Emcee for M.C. (= Master of Ceremonies), Deejay for DJ (= disc jockey), etc.

G. Clipping
Clipping is the processes whereby new words are formed by shortening other
words; i.e., by eliminating the initial part, the last part, or both parts, of those words.
E.g., phone from (tele)phone, plane from (air)plane, ad (advert (BrE)) from
ad(vertisement), exam from exam(ination), flu from (in)flu(enza), fridge(esp. BrE)
from refrigerator. Notice that the short form or clipping represents the word in its
entirety; however, that fragment does not have to be the salient part of the original
word, neither prosodically nor semantically. Also, the clipping may not be used in the
same contexts as the longer word.
For example, the word exam is mostly used to refer to academic examinations or
tests, not to medical examinations or check-ups. Clipped forms generally show a
certain tone of informality, which is often reflected in their spellings; e.g., showbiz for
showbusiness, 'cause ('cuz or cos) for because, praps for perhaps. Note that in some
cases the spelling is adapted to suit the pronunciation of the original word, as in mike
for microphone, Mike for Michael, nark for narcotics, bike for bicycle. In other cases,
the pronunciation changes, as in soc \ "sAk\ (BrE) for society \s´"saI´ti\. Still in other
cases, neither spelling nor pronunciation changes as in veg \ "vedZ\ for vegetable (or
veggies \ "vedZiz\ for vegetables). Also, some clipped forms retain a finals present in
the original longer forms, as in maths (esp. BrE) for mathematics, specs for
spectacles. The tone of informality of some clippings is usually lost when they
become well established in the language; e.g., plane, stereo (from stereophonic), taxi
(from taxicab), cab (from cabriolet), pram (BrE for perambulator) and so on.
In many long-established cases, the fuller form is rarely used or is not ordinarily
known, as in omnibus for bus and mobile vulgus for mob (cf. Quirk et al., 1985).
Other common clippings are cosec \ "k´Usek\ from cosecant \ k´U"si…k´nt\ (in
trigonometry), demo for demonstration, Doc from Doctor, Ed from Education, French
fries (AmE) from French fried potatoes, gas from gasoline, gents from gentlemen's
room (lavatory), gym from gymnasium, lab from laboratory, lib form liberation as in
Women's Liberation Movement, mart from market, nark from narcotics (agent),
photo from photograph, prof from professor, pseud (BrE) from pseudo (-
intellectual), lit from literature, pub from public house, Stat from Statistics, telly
(BrE) from television, hanky from handkerchief, tec or dick from detective, turps
(BrE) from turpentine, van from caravan (or vanguard), etc.

H. Blending
Blending is the process whereby new words are formed by combining parts of
two words, usually the beginning of one word and the end of another (cf. Godby et al,.
1982).
For example, smog (smoke + fog), brunch (breakfast + lunch), heliport
(helicopter + air-port), motel (motor + hotel), FORTRAN (formula translation), etc.
Notice that enough of each word is normally retained so that the complex whole
remains fairly readily analyzable.
Following is a partial list of other common blends: breathalyzer (breath +
analyzer), electrocute (electro + execute), Eurovision (European + television),
multiversity (multiple + university), newscast (news + broadcast), paratroops
(parachute + troops), telecast (television + broadcast), travelogue (travel + catalogue),
telex (teleprinter + exchange). According to Quirk et al. (1985), acronymy, clipping
and blending are three highly productive ways in which abbreviation (i.e., the
shortening of words) is involved in English word-formation.

I. Borrowing
Borrowing is the process whereby new words are formed by adopting words from
other languages together with the concepts or ideas they stand for (cf. Brun, 1983; Pei
1966). E.g., tango, mango, taco, burrito from Spanish; fiancé, very (adapted from
Old French verai), garage from French; pizza, mafia from Italian; and so on. Usually,
the pronunciation and morphology of the borrowings (borrowed terms or loanwords)
are adapted to the phonology and morphology of the host language (i.e., the language
which adopts the terms); e.g., guerrilla \g´"rIl´\ (English), \ge" r@ija\ (Spanish);
banana \b´"nœn´\ (English), \ba"nana\ (Spanish); mango (sing), mangoes (pl.)
(English), mangos (Spanish). It is important to remark that, in many cases, words are
borrowed due to historic occurrences, such as conquests and invasions, or to
geographical proximity. The borrowed term may substitute for a native term or may
live along with the native term in different social contexts. E.g., beginning and début
(French), donkey and burro (Spanish). However, the most common reason for a
language to borrow words is to fill lexical and semantic gaps, i.e., to express new
concepts and ideas for which the borrowing language has no terms, such as in the
fields of science, politics, culture (esp. cooking and music); e.g., guerrilla, taco, tango,
piano, junta, matador, arena, cole slaw (Dutch), alcohol, radio, etc.

J. Back-formation
Back-formation is the process by which new words are formed by the deletion of
a supposed affix from an already existing word (cf. Quirk et al., 1985; Fromkin &
Rodman, 1983; Richards et al. 1985). For example, the verbs peddle, edit, hawk,
enthuse, stoke, swindle, televise, donate, sculpt, buttle have been created form the pre-
existing nouns peddler, editor, hawker, enthusiasm, stoker, swindler, television,
donation, sculptor and butler, respectively. The nouns have been thought to be
derivatives of verbs on the analogy of cases such as revision, creation, formation,
transmission, to name a few, which are true derivatives form the verbs revise, create,
form, transmit, respectively. Notice that this process normally involves the
transformation of one part of speech into another.

K. Word Coinage
Word coinage (or invention) is the process whereby new words are created
outright, either deliberately or accidentally, to fit some purpose. Usually, words are
coined to express new ideas, processes, products, etc. in the language. For example,
brand names such as Xerox, Kodak, Exxon, Kleenex, Nylon, Dacron, etc.; pooch,
snob, nerd, blurb, googol, etc. It is worth pointing out that the invention of new words
is sometimes based on existing words, such as Jell-o on gel, Kleenex on clean. Many
acronyms such as Cobol, laser, etc. are based on phrases for which they stand.
However, words are more often created out of thin air, i.e., without basing on any
other pre-existing word.

L. Functional shift
Functional shift (conversion or zero derivation) is the process by which new
words are created by using a word in new functions (i.e., by shifting, changing or
converting its original grammatical class to another class), without any change in its
form (cf. Godby et al., 1982; Byrne, 1978; Pei, 1966). For example, when the word
water is used in the following sentence Give me some water, please it is used as a
noun, which is probably its original (and more common) use. But when water is used
in the sentence The children water the plants every morning, it is used in a new
syntactic function, namely, as a verb, and no change in spelling or pronunciation has
been made. In other words, the grammatical category of the word water has shifted
from noun to verb. Another example of this process is the use of the word walk in the
following sentences:
a. If the shop isn't too far away, we can walk over there.
b. I take a walk around the block every evening.
In (a), walk is used as a verb (probably its most common use); in (b), it is used as
noun. As we can see, the very same word walk, without undergoing any change in its
spelling or pronunciation, passed from verb to noun.

C. Conclusion
Linguistics is the systematic study of the structure and evolution of human
language, and it is applicable to every aspect of human endeavor. The discipline of
linguistics focuses on theories of language structure, variation and use, the description
and documentation of contemporary languages, and the implications of theories of
language for an understanding of the mind and brain, human culture, social behavior,
and language learning and teaching.
Morphology, in linguistics, is the study of the forms of words, and the ways in
which words are related to other words of the same language. Formal differences
among words serve a variety of purposes, from the creation of new lexical items to the
indication of grammatical structure.
A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. In other words, it is
the smallest meaningful unit of a language. A morpheme is not identical to a word,
and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand
alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. When it stands by itself, it is
considered as a root because it has a meaning of its own (e.g. the morpheme cat) and
when it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an affix because it has
a grammatical function (e.g. the –s in cats to indicate that it is plural). Every word
comprises one or more morphemes.
There are two types of morphemes, free morphemes and bound morphemes. Free
morphemes can stand alone with a specific meaning, for example, eat, date, weak.
Free morphemes divided into two types, it is lexical morpheme and functional
morpheme. Bound morphemes cannot stand alone with meaning. Bound morphemes
is divided into two types, it is derivational morpheme and inflectional morpheme.
Morphemes are comprised of two separate classes called (a) bases (or roots) and (b)
affixes.
Morphological processes that affect roots and stems and which lead to the
production of new words. Those processes are affixation, com-pounding, symbolism,
reduplication, suppletion, acronymy, clipping, blending, borrowing, back-formation,
word coinage and functional shift.

References

UC Davis. What is Linguistics?. [Link]

WordPress. What is Morphology?. [Link]

Anderson, Stephen R. Morphology.

NTID. Free and Bound Morphemes.

Wikipedia. Morpheme. [Link] accessed on

Ramadani, Julia. Free Morpheme and Bound Morpheme.

Zapata, Argenis R. “Unit 1: Types of Words and Word-Formation Processes in