2.2 Morphology

Question 1

Morphology

Answer 1

Morphology deals with the structure of a language’s morphemes, phonemes, and other linguistic units.

Question 2

Why is morphology important?

Answer 2

Aids English language acquisition; understanding the morphological relationship between two words gives a pupil a sense of how a language is structured and help them make connections and learn new words more easily. e.g. Heart + monitor = heart-monitor, so Hall + monitor = hall monitor.

Question 3

Morphemes

Answer 3

Morphemes are the physical structural units in a word that carry meaning. e.g. root words, prefixes or suffixes.

Question 4

Difference between phonemes and morphemes

Answer 4

Phonemes refers to the SOUNDS that make up the structure of the word (pronunciation), whereas morphemes are the PHYSICAL structural units in a word (meaning).

Question 5

Free Lexical Morpheme

Answer 5

A morpheme that can exist on its own and have meaning. e.g. ‘market’ in ‘marketers’.

Question 6

Bound Lexical Morpheme

Answer 6

A morpheme that is bound to another morpheme and cannot make sense without it; often refers to prefixes and suffixes. e.g. ‘-er’ in ‘marketers’.

Question 7

Bound Grammatical Morpheme

Answer 7

A morpheme that is bound to another morpheme and allows the word to fit into the sentence grammatically. e.g. ‘-s’ in ‘marketers’.

Question 8

Free Grammatical Morpheme

Answer 8

A morpheme that is not bound to other morphemes but serves a grammatical purpose. e.g. ‘John threw the ball AT Mike.’