The Morpheme and the Morphemic Structure of the Word.

The morpheme is one of the basic units of morphology. The notion of the morpheme was put forward by the Russian linguist Bodwen de Courtenay.

The morpheme is defined as the smallest meaningful unit and an elementary part of the word. The meaning of the morpheme is purely significative. We mustn’t mix up morphemes and syllables. The difference between them lies in the fact that morphemes are always meaningful, while syllables, as units of phonology, lack this feature though they may coincide with morphemes and then seem meaningful.

For ex., in the word “tables” we distinguish two morphemes: the lexical root morpheme /table/ which denotes a class of things and the grammatical morpheme /s/ expressing plurality.

On the other hand, this word includes two syllables which are meaningless and do not coincide with the morphemes: ta-bles.

The morpheme is analyzable into phonemes. The smallest morpheme may include only one phoneme: table- s, work- s.

Morphemes, in their turn, make up words. The shortest word may coincide with the morpheme when it gets a naming power.

The ideal complete morphemic structure of the word may be presented the following way:

prefix + root + lexical suffix + grammatical suffix (ending, inflexion).

Roots and affixes (prefixes and lexical suffixes) make up the stem of the word. They are word-building morphemes. Grammatical suffixes stand outside the stem of the word and function as form-building morphemes expressing such abstract grammatical categorical meanings as number, tense, degrees of comparison etc.

We should also say that in English we can find three types of inflexions:

- outer inflexions which are added to the stem of the word (e.g. short er, go ing);

- inner inflexions are revealed in the alteration of the root vowel (get – got, food – feed);

- mono inflexion which is a grammatical element modifying word combinations (my son and daughter’ s toys).

As for the STEM of the word, it can be:

1) Simple when it includes only one root morpheme (dog, cats, decided).

2) Derived when it includes one root morpheme and one or more affixes (unreasonable).

3) Compound when it includes 2 or more root morphemes with or without affixes (merry-go-round, sky-scraper).

Speaking about morphemes, we should remember that that they have two planes and both of them should be analyzed when classifying morphemes. The matter is that morphemes may be homonymous: identical on the plain of expression and different on the plane of content.

e.g. /er/ may be a lexical morpheme when it denotes the doer of the action named by the root morpheme.

/er/ may also be a grammatical morpheme when it denotes a degree of comparison.

The grammatical morpheme /s/ denoting plurality is homonymous with the grammatical morpheme /s/ expressing person, number, tense, mood, voice and it may be homonymous with the lexical morpheme /s/ like in the words “waters”, “snows” denoting a great amount of the named material but not plurality.

In present-day linguistics there exists the notion of the zero morpheme. Some scholars identify it in word forms which have no inflexion in one context and get it in another context.

Thus professor Smirnitsky speaks of three morphemes in the noun “teacher”: root + a lexical suffix + a zero inflection expressing singularity. He says that in the word-form “teachers” there really exist three morphemes, and the inflexion /s/ is opposed to its zero counterpart.

So the zero morpheme can be understood as meaningful absence of some morpheme. But here appears a contradiction: the notion of the zero morpheme doesn’t satisfy the definition of the morpheme. If the morpheme is a segmental part of the word, it should have the plane of content and the plane of expression. The zero morpheme lacks the plane of expression.

Should we agree that the zero morpheme is a morpheme, than likewise we’ll have to agree that supra-segmental language units, which also render a certain meaning should be also treated as morphemes, but it is hardly acceptable.

So it seems more reasonable to speak not of the zero morpheme, but of the meaningful absence of the morpheme.

In conclusion we should say that that the morpheme is the smallest, formed by phonemes, meaningful, segmental part of the word. It can’t be divided into other smaller meaningful units.

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