Identifying a Morpheme

Question 1

Question on ‘Morphemes’
1) What is a morpheme?

2) Types of morphemes?
3) Production of morphemes
4) Identification of morphemes

Answer 1

1
Smallest unit that carries information about meaning or function.

Minimal linguistic unit ,An arbitrary union of sounds
Has a meaning that can not be further analyzed.

                               Build + er  2 

Free morphemes
• can be a word by itself. Ex: boy
Bound morphemes
• that has to be attached to another element. Ex: er,s

Special feature - variant pronunciation of a morpheme is called “Allomorphs”

3
• At the age of 2 n 1/2 - 3 
• One word stage ➡️ two word stage 
• production of affixes are rapid 
• first inflectional affixes followed by derivational affixes. 
- Roger Brown Morpheme order studies 

4
Segmentation
Segmenting words into minimal sound-meaning units.

Strategy - compare and contrast forms that are
partially similar in sound and meaning.

                associate shared sounds with shared 
                with shared meanings.

                Continue to do so until the form cannot
                Be broken into a smaller sound-meaning 
                unit. 

Compare ➡️ Contrast ➡️ Isolate

Repayments — repayments — repayment - s
Repayment — payment — repayment 
Payment — pay— pay- ment 
Re -    pay-    ment 
Pref.    Root.     Suf.

Identifying meaning of various forms