My Morphology's Article

One aspect of language is word. Word is important in language. Bloomfield (1993: 178) states that the word is the minimum free form, the smallest form that may occur in isolation. It means that the word is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit that can be used on its own. The examples of word are: boy, sister, bird, etc. The word “boy”, “sister”, “bird” cannot be divided into smaller units and they can convey meaning when they stand alone. 

A morpheme is defined as the smallest units of the meaning. Katamba (1994: 24) argues that the morpheme is the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlated with the smallest difference in a word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure. So, it can be said that morpheme is the smallest form of meaning. For example: the word “reader “can be broken down into two meaningful part that is “read” and the suffix “-er”.

In morphological study, the process of creating a new language form can be found in the process of what we call derivation. While, inflection is a process that never create new lexeme and only be able to modify the form of a word. According to Katamba (1994: 59) derivational process is the process of creating new lexemes from other lexemes. The writer is going to analyze derivation process of noun forming which are used in the “Campus English Magazine”.

The examples of derivation of noun forming affixes are:

a. Noun forming affixes from verb to noun:

Example:

1. Development = develop+ -ment

(In the Facebook Make Satisfaction But Mislead articles, P:4, Campus English Magazine)

                  Derivational suffixes: verb + -ment

                  Development (noun)

                  Develop (verb) -ment (affix)

Development consists of two morphemes. They are the base morpheme ‘develop’ and the bound morpheme ‘-ment’. Morpheme of “development” belongs to noun category, while morpheme ‘-ment’ is suffix. Development (n), Develop (v), + -ment. It is derivational affix, because the verb category changes the grammatical category from the verb into noun.

2. Information = inform + -ation

(In the Facebook Make Satisfaction But Mislead articles, P:4, Campus English Magazine)

Derivational suffixes: verb + -ation

Information (noun)

Inform (verb) -ation (affix)

Information consists of two morphemes. They are the base morpheme ‘inform’ and the bound morpheme ‘-ation’. Morpheme of “information” belongs to noun category, while morpheme ‘-ation’ is suffix. Information (n), inform (v) + -ation (affix). It is derivational affix, because the verb category changes the grammatical category from the verb into noun.

3. Teacher = teach + -er

(In the Facebook Make Satisfaction But Mislead articles,p: 4, Campus English Magazine)

Derivational suffixes: verb +-er

Teacher (noun)

            Teach (verb) -er (affix)

Teacher consists of two morphemes. They are the base morpheme ‘teach ‘and the bound morpheme ‘-er’. Morpheme of “teacher” belongs to noun category, while morpheme ‘-er’ is suffix. Teacher (n), teach (v), + -er (affix). It is derivational affix, because the verb category changes the grammatical category from the verb into noun. Because most of people do not understand more about this study, and the source restricted, the writer gets interest to do a research about derivational process of noun forming affixes.

The language form will always develop. The word formation is needed to get the proper words based on people desire to make their communication easier. Here, human being will also keep on creating the communicative and practical language based on their need. The word formation will become the fair matter. In this chapter, the writer reviews some theories concerned with word formation. The theories consist of morphology: the study of morpheme, definition of morpheme, the classification of morphemes, derivation: derivation of process, notion of inflection, the differences between derivation and inflection, part of speech: content word, and grammatical word.

A. Morphology

1. The Study of Morpheme

a. Definition of Morpheme

A morpheme is a minimal element form with specific meaning (Lehman, 1972:127). A morpheme is the smallest unit that is grammatically pertinent. Some morphemes can be usefully described as the language. By “Smallest meaningful unit” is meant unit that cannot be divided carries about meaning or function, so a morpheme also determines the meaning and function of the word.

b. The Classification of Morphemes

Morpheme can be classified into bound, free, and zero morphemes (Wardaught, 1977).

1) Free Morpheme

It is a morpheme that can stand alone as a word. For example: table, book, tea, etc. Free morpheme can be classified into word, stem, root, and base.

a) Word

The meaning of a word may be considered as the way it is used as part of different sentences. The meaning appear when the words are used in sentence or paragraph.

Bloomfield (in Katamba, 1994:11) in his classic definition defined a word as “the minimum free form of a language”. It is a form that cannot be divided into any smaller units that can be used independently to convey meaning.

For example: child is a word. We cannot divide it up into smaller units that can convey meaning when they stand-alone.

According to Bryson (1994) English as the object of this study has thousand of word. English words can be divided into some categories:

(1) Simple word: is a word that consists of a single morpheme, for example: car, girl, animal and etc.

(2) Complex word: is a word which content two or more morpheme, for example: cars, players, and etc.

(3) Morphological word: is a word base on from, for example: go, went, goes, going, and gone.

(4) Lexical word: is a word based on lexeme or an entry in a dictionary, for example: sing is one lexical item.

(5) Compound word: is a joining two separate words to produce a single form, for example: source book and home work.

Word also belong two types of classes:

(1) Open classes

These categories are noun, adverb, adjective, and verb. They are called open classes since we are able to add new words to these classes.

(2) Closed classes

Closed classes or called function words comprise: preposition, conjunction, pronoun, auxiliaries, intensifiers, etc. closed class is the cluster a word which cannot renewable and new function or from of the word. A closed class is a grammatical class of words with limited membership (Katie Wales, 2001:59). 

b) Stem

In linguistics, a stem (sometimes also theme) is the part of the word that is common to all inflected variant. Stems are often roots, i.e. atomic (un analyzable) lexical morphemes, but a stem can also be morphologically complex, as seen compound words. The stem of the complex English noun is designer and it’s only other inflected from is the plural designers.

c) Root

The root of a word is a unit of meaning (morpheme) and, as such, it is an abstraction though it cans usually be represented in writing, as a word would be. For example, it can be said that the root of the English verb form reading is read, or the root the Spanish superlative amplisimo is ampli-, since those words are clearly divided from the root forms by simple suffixes that do not alter the root in any way.

d) Base

According to Bauer (1998:115) a base is any unit over to which affixes of any kind can be added. The affixes attach to abase may be inflectional. Affixes selected for syntactic reasons or derivation affixes which alter the meaning or grammatical category of the base.

For example, the root child can be a base since it is attached to inflectional affixes like -s to get the plural form childs or derivational affixes like –ish to turn the noun boy into the adjectives childish.

2) Bound Morpheme

It is morphemes that always attached to other morphemes, never existing as a word themselves. For example: -ment, -mit, -ceive. The study of bound morphemes, affixes is a part of bound morphemes.

According to Francis (in Katamba, 1993:44), an affix is a attached to some other morpheme or morphemes such a root or stem or base (the other type of morphemes). The morphemes need to be joined with other morpheme.

There are types of affixes:

a) Prefix

A prefix is an affix attached before a root or stem. The prefix is added at the beginning of a word. For example: re-, un-, in-

re -fresh un -believe in –dependent

re -cycle un –happy in -visible

b) Infix

An infix in affix inserted into the root itself. Infixes are less common and rarely found in English word.

c) Suffix

It is an affix attached after root, stem or base. The suffixes add ing at the end of morpheme. The examples are: -ly, -er, -s, -ist, -ed. Fast –ly, read –er, bag –s, vocal –ist, jump –ed.

3) A zero morpheme

It is a zero allomorph without phonemic content. For example: the zero plural in deer and sheep.

B. Derivation

1. Derivation process of word

Derivation is the process of creating new lexemes from other lexemes. Like the word reader, it is derived from the word read, or the word undo is derived from the do, by changing pronunciation of the word or base such as personality from personal.

According to Katamba (1993:47) these are two limitations in doing the process of derivation. They are:

a. By changing the meaning of the base to which they are attached. The examples are:

Kind vs un –kind (both are adjectives but with opposite meaning).

Connect vs dis –connect (both of them are verb but with opposite meaning).

b. By changing the word class the bases belong to. The example is: the addition of the suffix –ly to adjective fast and simple produces the adverb fastly and simply.

2. Notion of Inflection

Inflection is a process, which never change the syntactic category of the words or morphemes to which they are attached. They are always attached the complete words. In contrast with derivation, inflection does not result in a change of word classes and the result is a predictable word. The example of word is: the word ‘table’ becomes table –s and jump into jump –ed. The word tables after added –s shows the plurality. It does not change the meaning or category of the word table.

3. The Differences between Derivation and Inflection.

Discussing derivation and inflection are important to know more about these morphological formations. Both of them have their characteristics. Which differentiate either the form or the meaning inflection is one that produces new words forms of a lexeme from a base: derivation is one that produces a new lexeme from a base (Bauer, 1988:12). The example can be changed morpheme happy into unhappy. Inflection does not alter the word class of the base to which it is attached. Here the inflectional morphemes are only able to modify the form of a word so it can fit into a particular syntactic slot (Francis Katamba, 1993:64).

C. Part of Speech

According to George Yule (2007:75), there are two kinds of part speech:

1. Content Word

a. Noun

In English, noun can be defined as those morphological stems that form words that can co- occur with (in) definite articles and attribute adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase.

The example is: The third shop is almost opened.

b. Verb

A verb is a word belongs to the part of speech that usually denotes an action (bring, read), an occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. It may also agree with the person, gender, and number of some of its argument (subject, object, etc).

The examples are:

The mothers cook in the kitchen

They are singing a song.

c. Adjective

Adjective is a part of speech that modifies a noun or a pronoun, usually by describing it or making it’s meaning more specific. Adjectives exist in most language. The most widely recognize adjectives in English are words such as big, old, and tired those actually describe people, or things. These words can be modified with adverb, as in the phrase very big. 

The examples are:

This is a little house.

She was feeling sad.

d. Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech that adds information to a verb, adjectives, phrase, or another adverb.

The example is: The car is run in fastly on the way.

2. Grammatical Word

a. Pronoun

A pronoun (for example you and they in English) is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner. For example, in the sentence “George gave the flower to marry”. All there nouns in the sentence can be replaced by pronouns: “He gave it to her”. It the coat, George and marry have been previously mentioned, the listener will be able to deduce the pronouns he, it and he refer to, and there for understand the meaning of the sentence.

b. Preposition

Prepositions are words normally placed before noun or pronoun. Prepositions can also be followed by verb, except after, but, and except. The example, in the sentence

“She is talking of adventuring”.

“They succeeded in escaping”.

c. Conjunction

Conjunctions that produce adverb clauses are dealt with in the paragraph on the various types of adverb clause. There are some types of conjunctions: Coordinate also called coordinator, is conjunctions that join two items of equal syntactic importance. The examples: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. Correlative conjunctions are pair of conjunction that works together to coordinate two items. The example: both… and, either…or, neither…nor, and not (only)…but (also). Subordinate conjunction is also called subordinator: it is conjunctions that introduce a dependent clause. The example: after, although, if, unless, and because.

d. Interjection

An interjection is a part of speech that usually has no grammatical connection to the rest of the sentence and simply expresses emotion of the speaker, although most interjections have clear definitions. Filled pause such as un, er, um, are also considered interjections. Interjections are generally uninfected function words and have sometimes been seen as sentence- words: since they can be replaced by a whole sentence. Sometimes, however interjections combine with other words to form sentences, but not with finite verbs.

The examples are:

Ouch, that dirty!

Oh no, I woke up late was today!