MORPHEMES AND AFFIXATION



     A morpheme is the smallest unit that has meaning in a language. For example, the word cat has one morpheme but the word cats has two: cat and s. Both cat and s have meaning (cat means 'a small furry animal with four legs and a tail', and s means 'more than one') but you cannot divide cat and keep any meaning.
     Some morphemes can exist as words on their own (e.g cat) but others cannot (e.g. s). Morphemes that can exist alone and still have meaning are called free morphemes, while those that cannot are called bound morphemes

Exercise 1
How many morphemes are there in the words below? Which are free? Which are bound? 
1. unattractive 
2. midday 
3. movement 
4. teachers 

Answers 
1. Three: un + attract + ive
     Un and ive are bound morphemes 
     Attract is a free morpheme.

2. Two: mid + day
     Mid is a bound morpheme
     Day is a free morpheme.  

3. Two: move + ment
     Move is a free morpheme 
     Ment is a bound morpheme.

4. Three: teach + er + s
     Teach is a free morpheme 
     Er and s are bound morphemes.

     A morpheme is often added to the beginning or end of a word to form a word that has a different meaning or is a different part of speech from the original. 


Exercise 2
How do the morphemes in Exercise 1 change the words attract, day, move and teach? For example, un changes the meaning of attractive to the opposite of attractive. 
Answers 
1. Un changes the meaning of attractive to the opposite of attractive; -ive changes the verb attract into an adjective. 

2. Mid adds the meaning of in the middle of to the word day.

3. Ment changes the verb move into a noun. 

4. Er shows us that this word is a noun, i.e. it changes the part of speech from a verb to a noun; s shows us that it is plural. 

     Morphemes that are added at the beginning of words are called prefixes and those at the end are called suffixes. They are both types of affixes and the process of adding affixes is affixation. Prefixes normally change the meaning of a word (e.g. unhappy) while suffixes normally change the part of speech of a (e.g. when er is added to teach verb changes to a noun).


SUFFIXES
Knowledge of how suffixes form words can help us identify parts of speech. For example, when we see an -ate ending, we know the word is likely to be a verb. 
Here are some common suffixes and the parts of speech they often make.

1. Suffixes - nouns 
-al e.g. arrival
-ant, -ent e.g. assistant, student 
-dom e.g. boredom, freedom 
-ee e.g. employee 
-ence e.g. dependence 
-er, -or e.g. teacher, instructor 
-hood e.g. childhood 
-ity e.g. possibility 
-ment e.g. employment 
-ness e.g. happiness 
-tion e.g. production 

2. Suffixes - adjectives 
-able e.g. recordable 
-atic e.g. systematic
-ed e.g. employed 
-ent e.g. dependent 
-ful e.g. helpful 
-ic(al) e.g. economic(al)
-ish e.g. brownish
-ive e.g. productive 
-less e.g. careless 
-ous e.g. famous 
-y e.g. windy

3. Suffixes - verbs
-ate e.g. originate 
-ise e.g. economise

4. Suffixes - adverbs
-ly e.g. quickly 
-wards e.g. afterwards 


PREFIXES 
Here are some common prefixes and their most common meanings. 
However, sometimes a word looks as if it has a prefix when in fact it does not. For example, record or resign do not have the meaning of 'again'. The verb record does not mean 'cord again'; there is no verb cord in English. 

anti- : opposed to, against e.g. anti-social 
dis- : the opposite of e.g. disagree, disagree 
extra- : outside, in addition to e.g. extraordinary 
il-, im-, in- : not e.g. illegal, impossible, inexperienced 
inter- : between, among e.g. international 
mid- : in the middle of e.g. midday, midnight, mid-December 
mis- : wrong, wrongly, bad, badly e.g. misspelling, misspell, misbehavior, misbehave 
non- : not e.g. non-stop, non-recordable
over- : too much e.g. overeat, overweight 
pre- : before e.g. pre-heat, pre-arrange 
re- : again e.g. remake, rewrite, reunite 
un- : not, lacking, the opposite of e.g. undress, unlucky, unrecorded
under- : not enough e.g. underachieve, underweight 


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