Morphology studies morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning in language. Prefixes and suffixes alter the meaning of base words. Tense endings indicate when an event occurred. Plurals are formed with /s/ or /es/.
Morphology is the study of morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning in a language. Morphemes can transform a word from one grammatical category to another, like dance, a verb into a noun. Free lexical morphemes exist as independent words, such as zebra, while the meaning of free grammatical morphemes is not in the word itself but in its function, such as the. Related morphemes include affixes, tense endings, and plurals.
A prefix is a morphemic unit that is attached to the beginning of a base word to give it a different meaning, and there are dozens of prefixes in English. Re suggests repeated action, doing something new, so to relive means to bring something back to life. To recall is to bring an idea or thought back into the mind, and to reverse means to go back. The prefix un changes a meaning to its opposite, such as inevitable, merciless, and unfair.
Morphology calls suffixes the morphemes attached to the ends of words. Like prefixes, they too alter the meaning of the base word. The suffix less means without, and transforms words like thought, which is a noun, into thoughtless, which is an adjective. Ly is a morpheme that is used to turn an adjective into an adverb. For example, in the statement “She is fast,” fast is an attribute of the subject. “She runs fast” turns the adjective into an adverb that describes how she runs. Adding a letter or two to a verb turns it into a noun and denotes the person or thing performing the act: a writer writes, a laborer works, and a street sweeper sweeps.
The tense is what tells a listener or reader when an event has occurred. Adding /s/, /es/, /d/, /ed/, or /ing/ refines the meaning of the action the verb is describing, and also reminds the reader or listener who was doing the action. In the present tense, a speaker or writer adds /s/ or /es/ in the third person to describe what that person is doing. Morphology organizes regular verbs into the past tense with the addition of /ed/, and irregular verbs change with the substitution of internal morphemes. Adding /ing/ means that the action is in progress and putting a, which is also a morpheme, in front of a verb means that the action will happen in the future.
In morphology, plurals are most often formed with the addition of /s/ or /es/. Some exceptions change the ending of the word before adding the morpheme. For example, leaf becomes leaves, changing /f/ to /v/ before /es/ is linked.
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