Linguistics An Introduction

In the previous section, we have referred to both derivational and inflectional processes which enable us to form words from other words. The field of linguistics that examines the internal structure of words and processes of word formation is known as morphology, and in this section we shall introduce some of the important ideas in this domain by illustrating their application to English word structure.

Morphemes

Many words in English can easily be split into smaller components. Consider words like reader, printer and illustrator. These are all nouns related to the verbs read, print and illustrate, and they all mean roughly ‘person or instrument that Verb-s’. Clearly, it is the ending -er (with its alternative spelling -or in certain words) which conveys this new aspect of meaning and we can say that -er/-or creates a new noun from a verb. We can also create new verbs from verbs, as illustrated by pairs such as read ∼ re-read, print ∼ re-print and illustrate ∼ re-illustrate. Here, the new verb begins with re- and means ‘to Verb something again’. In both these cases, the complex word consists of a number of components, each with its own meaning. We call such components morphemes, and to make them easier to identify we can separate them by means of a hyphen (e.g. read-er). You will often see the morpheme described as the minimal linguistic sign. What this means is that the morpheme is the smallest component of a word which contributes to its meaning.