Topic: Morphemes Student: Mukhamedieva Zarina Group: 335

Root morphemes

Not all morphemes are equally central to the formation of a word.  They are of two types: roots and affixes.

A root is the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it. It is the part that must always be present.

Every word has at least one root and they are at the centre of word-derivational processes. They carry the basic meaning from which the rest of the sense of the word can be derived.

Morphemes such as chair, green, ballet, father, cardigan, America, Mississippi are roots, and they all happen to be free forms, i.e. independent words.

On the other hand, there are roots like seg in segment, gen in genetics, brev in brevity... which cannot stand alone as words. They are called bound root morphemes, or bound bases, as distinct from free root morphemes or free bases.

Most of bound roots found in English today are of classical origin, some of them are of Germanic origin.

Affixes

Bound morphemes (those that don’t have a sense by themselves and, additionally, always occur in combinations) are commonly known as affixes. T

• An "affix" is bound morpheme that occurs before or after a base. An affix that comes before a base is called a "prefix." Some examples of prefixes are ante-, pre-, un-, and dis-, as in the following words:
• antedate prehistoric unhealthy disregard
• An affix that comes after a base is called a "suffix." Some examples of suffixes are -ly, -er, -ism, and -ness, as in the following words:
• happily gardener capitalism kindness

Inflectional and derivational affixes

Affixes can be further divided into inflectional affixes and derivational affixes.

Affixes

Inflectional Derivational

 indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word, such as changing a word into a plural or possessive form