Morphology

ELE3103: ENGLISH FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS

Topic 3   : Morphology  

Reflection          

            In this topic, we have learnt about morphemes, allomorphs, word structure and word formation processes. From this topic, I understand about morphemes and word structure but I still confuse about allomorphs and word formation processes.

            Morpheme is the minimal unit of grammatical analysis or function. The example of morphemes are un+happy and un+believe+able. There are two types of morphemes which are bound morphemes and free morphemes. Morphemes can be produce by adding the prefix, suffix or affix at the root word. Free morpheme is a word that can stand on its own and has a grammatical function. While, bound morpheme is unable to function as a free standing word. For example,

Free morpheme	Bound morpheme
Angle Infra	Un Ation

            I also understand about the inflectional morpheme and derivational morpheme. Inflectional morpheme is an affix used to change form and function only from the grammatical point with no change in part of speech of the word while derivational morpheme is used to make further new words. For example,

Inflectional morpheme	Derivational morpheme
Walk-walks	Adjective            Noun - able            ability
Walk-walking	Noun                  Verb – accept          acceptance

For the allomorphs I quite confuse. It refers to a variant of a morpheme. For example, the past tense morpheme “ed” with 3 allomorphs:

Walked

Doubled

Ended  

            Besides, words are classified according to their functional possibilities with other words in a sentence. There are 2 types of free morphemes in word structure which are major words and minor words.

major words(open class items)	minor words(closed class items)
Nouns	Conjunctions
Verbs	Prepositions
Adverbs	Articles
Adjectives	Pronouns
	Auxiliary verbs

            I also learn about 8 morphological processes to form or expand words. There are affixation, compounding, reduplication, clipping, acronymy, blending, onomatopoeia and antonomasia.  Reduplication and blending is hard to find the example. So, I search the example in the internet. Then I manage to understand the process. For this topic, we have conducted a language games on word formation in a group. There 4 members in a group. Our language game is “Make word fun”. It was a game to form a word by adding suffix, prefix and affix to the root word. But it was not so interesting because it does not challenge student’s thinking. We need to make the game more exciting and challenging by make it competition.

            From this topic, I realize that morpheme is the smallest unit to form a sentence. It is important for students to master the morpheme before they learn to make a sentence. I also realize that are many ways to form or expand words. We can use introduce the ways to students to form words.