An Introduction To Morphology

Morphology is the study of morpheme obviously. Literally, the word morphology is built by two words. These are morpheme and logy. Morpheme means the smallest meaning that word can be divided into mean while logy means acknowledge or science. So we can conclude that morphology is a science that focuses on developing of the word. Morphology function deals with development and changing of word status.

Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning or grammatical function and cannot be subdivided further. Let’s clarify this definition with some examples. We would say that the reopened in the sentence The police reopened the investigation consists of three morphemes.

One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re- ( meaning ‘again’ ), and a minimal unit of grammatical function is –ed (indicating past ). The world ‘tourists’ also contains three morphemes. There is one minimal unit of meaning, tour another minimal unit of meaning –ist ( meaning ‘person who does something’), and a minimal unit of grammatical function –s ( indicating plural).

There are two main types: free and bound. There are free morphemes, that is, Morphemes which can stand by themselves as single word. Bound morphemes, that is, those which cannot normally stand alone, but which are typically attached to another form.