MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of words, practiced by morphologists.

Morphemes is roughly defined as the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning, for example, the word boy cannot be broken down into any further unit of meaning. We can have: b, o, y. we say that boy is made of only one morpheme. But the word government, can be broken down into :  govern- ment. Therefore, we say that government is made of two morphemes.

Dalam hal ini Geert (2005: 7) menjelaskan, “In present-day linguistics, the term ‘morphology’ refers to the study of the internal structure of words, and of the systematic form–meaning correspondences between words.” Lebih lanjut, menurut Geert morphology adalah kajian ilmu tentang susunan internal dari kata dan hubungan bentuk dan makna dengan kata tersebut.

Intinya adalah jika syntax membahas tentang bagaimana kata-kata disusun dalam sebuah kalimat, maka morphology membahas bentuk kata-kata tersebut. Keterangan yang sangat sederhana, namun sangat padat dan berisi, semoga bisa menjadi acuan yang bermanfaat untuk semua.

Morphology = study of word structure

("morph" is a recent verb for taking one thing and changing its image to that of another, it's   from a Greek

word meaning 'shape'. So, morphology is about the shape of the words themselves.)

Syntax = study of sentence structure

("syn" as in "synthesis" and "synchronize" means something like "togetherness". So, syntax is about putting

words together.)

Classifying morphemes

Morphemes are categorized thus:

1)Bound morpheme: is a morpheme that  cannot stand alone,

There are two main types of bound morphemes:

A. derivational morpheme: is an affix that’s added to a word to create a new word or new form of word, compare with inflectional morpheme. Derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category ( or part of speech) of a word.           
 Example: adding –ful to bauty, changes the word from the noun to an adjective (beautiful).

B. inflectional morpheme: is a suffix that’s added to a word to assign a particular grammatical property to that word. Compare with derivational morpheme. Inflectional morpheme serve as grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison. Inflectional morpheme in English include  the bound morphemes. –s( or es); ‘s(or s’); -ed; -en; -er; -est; and –ing.   

Example :number        :two books,

                  Possession  : betty’sdesert,

                  tense           : tina eats food, toni eated food, dina has eaten food, doni is  eating  food.                                                                                                                                                     

                  comparison: book is bigger than pen, my book is biggest.

2) free morpheme:  is a morpheme that  can stand alone,

   
 There are two main types of free morphemes:

A.lexical morphemes: morphemes that carry the content or meaning of the messages that we are   
                                      conveying.

 Examples: ship, orange, and president.

                  They are an open set of words in a language.

B.functional morphemes: morphemes that do not carry the content of a message, but rather help     the grammar of sentence function.

Examples: that, this, them, his,  because, but, above,

Affixation

Affixes are the tools we use again to assemble new words. There are several kinds of affixes:

1)suffixes : are morphemes that attach the end of a word.

    Example: -ion ( intonate – ion -  intonation)

2)prefixes : are morphemes that attach to the beginning of a word.

    Example: un- ( un – countable – uncountable)

3)infixes : although English generally does not have infixes, or morphemes that go “in the middle” of the word, other languages do. An exception in English might be –bloddy- in the following

   Example: A: are you going to the concert tonight?

                   B: absobloodylutely (abso- bloody- lutely)

4)circumfixes: are affixes that “surround” the word, attaching to the beginning and the end of the word.

Example: em-  -en in “embolden”

Sometimes, multiple affixations can take place. The riginal word, which is a free morpheme, is known as the stem or root. We can attach affixes to it in continual manner.

Example: anti- inter- govern- ment –al –ist

Here, govern is a root, anti- and inter- are prefixes, and –ment, -al and –ist are suffixes.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linguistics/Morphology