5. Morphemes. As the biggest units of morphology, words are made up of smaller units – morphemes- is the smallest, indivisible m-ngful lang-ge unit within the structure of a word. Like a word, a morpheme is a two-faced lang-ge unit. It means that a morpheme has a certain m-ng & a certain sound-pattern. But a morpheme is not autonomous, it can occur in speech only as a constituent part of a word.
Accord to their position:
1.root/central (The root morpheme is a lexical nuclears, the semantic centre of the word, it has a concrete lexical m-ng & is a common part of a WB cluster (is a group of words with one & the same root morpheme, linked through synchronic derivational relations: dog – doggy – doggish – doggedness – to dog). The root m-me possesses all types of m-ng: lexical, differential (bookshelf - bookcase) & distributional m-ng (order of arrangement m-ng – e.g. boyishness), except the part of speech m-ng.)
2. affixational/ peripheral (According to their m-ng & their role, morphemes are: Root (roots); Affixational (affixes). According to the opposition, affixes are: Prefixes, which proceed the root; Suffixes, which follow the root; Infixes, placed within the root. Infixes are very rare in the Eng lang: e.g. to stand. According to their function & m-ng, affixes are: Grammatical (suffixes); Derivational (suffixes & preffixes). Gram affixes serve to form new grammar forms of the same word & are studied in Grammar. Derivational affixes serve to build new words & are studied in Lex-gy. The lexical m-ng of affix-nal morphemes is of more generalising character than that of root morphemes. E.g. –er → agent; -less – without. We have about 200 derivative affixes.)
Accord to function:
Notional – carry the lexical meaning of the W (derivational, W-building)
Functional – either carry gram meaning or change the lexical meaning (inflexional, form-build)
Accord to the material form
Positive
Zero – a meaningful absence of a morpheme
Accord to distribution:
Continuous – which is not interrupted by other lements
Dis~
Structurally morphemes fall into free (root morphemes, which coincide with separate words) & bound morphemes (all derivational affixes & inflections & root morphemes which do not coincide with separate words. E.g. horr- (horrible); angl- (Anglo-saxon). There is a group of so-called semi-free or semi-bound morphemes (semi-affixes) which may function both as root morphemes (-man in manmade, manservant) & as derivational elements (-man in gentleman, cabman).e.g. – like (lady-like...); -proof (waterproof, kissproof). Affixes should not be confused with the so-called combining forms – bound root morphemes of Greek & Latin origin, which occur in compounds & derivatives mostly international terms, formed in modern times (telephone, telegraph) but some of them begin a new life as semi-affixes (-cide “kill” (L.) in suicide today is used in autocide or biocide). A morpheme may have several positional, phonetic & graphical variants or representations called allomorphs (please, pleasant, pleasure [pli:z – plezent – ple e]. These 3 variants are allomorphs of one & the same morpheme.The allomorphs of the negative prefixes “in” are “il+l” (illegal), “im + biabils” (impossible), “ir+r” (irregular).
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