Topic 3:Morphology

In topic 3, we learned about Morphology including morphemes, derivational morpheme, inflectional morpheme, allomorphs, word structure and word formation processes. This is a new topic that I had learned. After learning this topic, I realize that this topic bring more advantages to us a future teacher. As we know, morphology can be defined as the internal structures of words are formed and it is part of the grammatical knowledge. 

For the first subtopic, I learned about morphemes which are free morpheme and bound morphemes. Morphemes is structure-based that can be broken to its smallest unit of meaning. Free morpheme is a word that can be stand on its own and has a grammatical function while bound morpheme is the morpheme which unable to function as a free standing word. The examples of free and bound morphemes are shown in the following table:

Free morpheme	Bound morpheme
expect	ation
lock	un
believe	able
respon	ible
kind	ness

After learning this subtopic, we know that bound morpheme is a sound or a combination of sounds that cannot stand alone as a word. For examples, “kindness” is a combination of bound morpheme “ness” and free morpheme “kind” and it does not have any meaning without the free morpheme.  

            Besides, I also learned about inflectional and derivational morphemes in this topic. Inflectional can be either give further information about the grammatical function they carry and therefore add further grammatical information to the other morphemes they combine with while derivational morphemes can be used to make further new words, in process of adding one morpheme to another where the parts of speech too many change in meaning. The examples of derivational and inflectional morphemes that I search from internet are shown in the following table: 

Example of Derivational Morphemes
Noun to adjective	boy (noun) + ish	boyish(Adj.)
Verb to noun	predict (verb) + ion	Prediction(Noun)
Adjective to adverb	exact (Adj.) + ly	Exactly(Adverb)
Adjective to noun	specific (Adj.) + ity	specificity (Noun)
Noun to verb	moral (noun) + ize	moralize(verb)

Examples of Inflectional Morphemes
They are only found in suffixes in English.	boys, Mary’s , walked
No change of Meaning	walk vs. walks toy vs. toys
Never change the syntactic category of the words or morpheme to they which they are attached.	walk vs. walked or walks (V--> V) boy vs. boys (N --> N) eat vs. eating (progressive) (V-->V)
English Inflectional Morphemes Examples	-s third person singular present She waits at home.  -ed past tense She waited at home.  -ing progressive She is eating the donut.  -en past participle Mary has eaten the donuts.  -’s possessive Disa's hair is short.  -er comparative Disa has shorter hair than Karin.  -est superlative Disa has the shortest hair.

On the other hand, I also learnt about allomorph. Allomorph is an alternative manifestation of a morpheme (a set of meaningful linguistic units). Allomorphs vary in shape or pronunciation according to their conditions of use, but not as to meaning. There are many types of allomorphs which are indicates plurality or third person singular present tense (dogs, cats, horses), past tense morpheme (talked, juggled, ended), the result of lexical conditioning (make-made, sing-sang, sit-sat, think-thought) and zero allomorphs (deer, fish, doctor).  

            I also learnt about word formation processes including affixation, compounding, reduplication, clipping, acronym and other minor processes which are blending, onomatopoeia and antonomasia. For me, this subtopic is quite difficult and sometime I feel confuse in learning this topic. For tutorial activity, we are required to conduct language games on word formation. Our group had carried out the activity named Word Chain, where every group will form a new words based on the last letter of the first word that had be given to them. The new word must relate to the word classes which are noun, verb, adjective and adverb. The advantages of this activity are they can think as fast as they can to form a new word and at the same time it will improve their knowledge in differentiate the word classes. Besides, everyone can participate actively in this activity. But the advantage of this activity is the limited time given to each group makes them difficult to think the suitable word although they might think as fast as they can. For me, this activity is fun and enjoyable especially while waiting the answer from each person. While conducting this activity, I can see that each group are competing excitedly to win the competition.

            As a conclusion, the topic Morphology is very interesting and as we know it is very important for us to master this topic before we proceed to the next topic which is Syntax. The activity that we had done in this topic, more explanation and examples given by our lecturer make me understands better about this topic.