LECTURE 3

THE MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF A WORD

Lecture overview:
1.1. Word structure
1.2. Classification of morphemes
1.3. Morphemic types of words
1.4. The derivative structure of the words

Key terms:
Morphemes, allomorphs; root-morpheme and non-root morpheme;
free morpheme, bound morpheme and s emi-bound (semi-free)
morpheme; monomorphic and polymorphic words; derivative structure
of the word, simplexes (simple, non-derived words) and complexes
(derivatives); stem, simple, derived and compound

1.1. Word Structure

If viewed structurally, words appear to be divisible into smaller units
which are called morphemes. Morphemes do not occur as free forms
but only as constituents of words. Yet they possess meanings of their
own.
For instance, words like boiler, driller fall into the morphemes boil-,
drill- and -er by virtue of the recurrence of the morpheme -er in these
and other similar words and of the morphemes boil- and drill in to boil,
a boil, boiling and to drill, a drill, drilling, a drill-press, etc. Likewise,
words like flower-pot and shoe-lace are segmented into the morphemes
flower-, pot-, shoe- and lace- (flower-show, flowerful, etc., shoe-brush,
shoeless, etc., on the one hand; and pot-lid, pottery, etc., lace-boots,
lacing, etc., on the other).
Identification of morphemes in various texts shows that morphemes
may have different phonemic shapes. In the word-cluster please,
pleasing, pleasure, pleasant the root morpheme is represented by
phonemic shapes: [pli:z] in please, pleasing, [pleƷ] in pleasure and [plez]
in pleasant. In such cases we say that the phonemic shapes of the word
stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other.
All the representations of the given morpheme that manifest alteration
are called allomorphs of that morpheme or morpheme variants. Thus
[pli:z, plez] and [рlез] are allomorphs of оnе and the same morpheme.

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The root-morphemes in the word-cluster duke, ducal, duchess, duchy
or poor, poverty may also serve as examples of the allomorphs of one
morpheme.
1.2. Classification of morphemes
Morphemes may be classified: a) from the semantic point of view, b)
from the structural point of view.
a) Semantically morphemes fall into two classes: root-morphemes
and non-root or affixational morphemes. Roots and affixes make two
distinct classes of morphemes due to the different roles they play in
word-structure. Roots and affixational morphemes are generally easily
distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g.,
in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill: the root-
morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, -fill are understood as the
lexical centres of the words, as the basic constituent part of a word
without which the word is inconceivable.
The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a word, it has an
individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the
language. Besides it may also possess all other types of meaning proper
to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in
roots. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set
of words making up a word-cluster, for example the morpheme teach-
in to teach, teacher, teaching, theor- in theory, theorist, theoretical.
Non-root morphemes include inflectional morphemes or
inflections and affixational morphemes or affixes. Inflections carry only
grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of
word forms (book-s, open-ed, strong-er), whereas affixes are relevant
for building various types of stems — the part of a word that remains
unchanged throughout its paradigm.
Affixes are classified into p r e f i x e s and s u f f i x e s: a prefix
precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixes besides the
meaning proper to root-morphemes possess the part-of-speech meaning
and a generalised lexical meaning.
b) Structurally morphemes fall into three types: free morphemes,
bound morphemes, semi - free (semi -bound) morphemes .
A free morpheme is defined as one that coincides with the stem or
a word-form. Morphemes which may occur in isolation and function
as independent words are called free morphemes. A great many root-

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morphemes are free morphemes, for example, the root-morpheme friend
— of the noun friendship is naturally qualified as a free morpheme
because it coincides with one of the forms of the noun friend.
A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a
word. Morphemes which are not found in isolation are called bound
morphemes. Affixes are, naturally, bound morphemes, for they always
make part of a word, e.g. the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ise (-ize), etc., the
prefixes un-, dis-, de-, etc. (e.g. readiness, comradeship, to activise;
unnatural, to displease, to decipher).
Many root-morphemes also belong to the class of bound morphemes
which always occur in morphemic sequences, i.e. in combinations
with roots or affixes. All unique roots and pseudo-roots are-bound
morphemes. Such are the root-morphemes theor- in theory, theoretical,
etc., barbar-in barbarism, barbarian, etc., -ceive in conceive, perceive,
etc.
Semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes are morphemes that can
function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free
morpheme. For example, the morpheme well and half on the one hand
occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the word-form
in utterances like sleep well, half an hour, on the other hand they occur
as bound morphemes in words like well-known, half-eaten, half-done.
1.3.Morphemic types of words
According to the number of morphemes words are classified into
monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphiс or root-words consist
of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All
pоlуmоrphiс words according to the number of root-morphemes are
classified into two subgroups: monoradical (or one-root words) and
polyradical words, i.e. words which consist of two or more roots.
M o n o r a d i c a l words fall into three subtypes: 1) r a d i c a l -s u f
f i x a l words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and one or
more suffixal morphemes, e.g. acceptable, acceptability, blackish, etc.;
2 ) r a d i c a l - p r e f i x a l words, i.e. words that consist of one root-
morpheme and a prefixal morpheme, e.g. outdo, rearrange, unbutton,
etc. and 3) p r e f i x o - r a d i c a l - s u f f i x a l , i.e. words which
consist of one root, a prefixal and suffixal morphemes, e.g. disagreeable,
misinterpretation, etc.
P o l y r a d i c a l words fall into two types: 1) p o l y r a d i c a l words

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which consist of two or more roots with no affixational morphemes,
e.g. book-stand, eye-ball, lamp-shade, etc. and 2) words which contain
at least two roots and one or more affixational morphemes , e.g.
safety-pin, wedding-pie, classconsciousness, light-mindedness, pen-
holder, etc.
1.4. The derivative structure of the words
The derivative structure of the word is closely connected with its
morphemic or morphological structure and often coincides with it, it
differs from it in principle.
According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big
classes: simplexes or simple, non-derived words and complexes or
derivatives .
S i m p l e x e s are words which derivationally cannot be segmented
The morphological stem of simple words, i.e. the part of the word
which takes on the system of grammatical inflections is semantically
non-motivated and independent of other words, e.g. hand, come, blue,
etc. Morphemically it may be monomorphic in which case its stem
coincides with the free root-morpheme as in, e.g., hand, come, blue,
etc. or polymorphic in which case it is a sequence of bound morphemes
as in, e.g., anxious, theory, public, etc.
D e r i v a t i v e s are words which depend on some other simpler
lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically, i.e. the
meaning and the structure of the derivative is understood through the
comparison with the meaning and the structure of the source word. Hence
derivatives are secondary motivated units, made up as a rule of two
binary units, e.g. words like friendliness, unwifely, school-masterish,
etc. are made up of friendly + -ness, un- + wifely, schoolmaster +- ish.
Stem is that part of a word which remains unchanged throughout its
paradigm and to which grammatical inflexions and affixes are added.
Semantically the stem stands for the whole semantic structure of the
word, it represents all its lexical meanings. Derivationally the stems
may be:
a) s i m p l e , which consist of only one constituent. The most
characteristic feature of simple stems is the phonetic and graphic identity
with the root-morpheme and the word-form that habitually represents
the word as a whole. For the word hearty and for the paradigm heart
(sing) – hearts (pl) the stem may be represented as heart. This stem is a

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single morpheme, it contains nothing but the root, so it is a simple stem.
b) d e r i v e d stems contain one or more affixes. The stem of the
paradigm hearty – heartier – the heartiest is hearty. The derived stem
of the word girlish is understood on the basis of derivative relations
between girl and girlish.
c) c o m p o u n d stems are always binary and their constituents are
stems themselves. The derivative structure and morphemic composition
of each constituent may be of different degree of complexity, for
example, the compound stem of the noun match-box consists of two
simple stems, the stem of the noun letter-writer – of one simple and
one derived stem, and the stem aircraft-carrier – of a compound and
derived stem.

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