Morphology

Morphology is the study of how phonemes are combined into the smallest meaningful units called morphemes. What are words and how are they formed? A word is an arbitrary sequence of sounds that has a meaning; we would not "hear" words as separate units if we did not understand the language to which they belong.

If we understand that sounds can take on meaning, this leads us to a important principle of human language - that it consists of a series of arbitrary symbols. A symbol is arbitrary and most easily defined as "something which stands for something else." Understanding what a symbol represents (that is, its meaning) requires interpretation. Nevertheless, widespread cultural agreement typically results in a common interpretation of what a symbol stands for.

For example, in examining a traffic light there is no necessary or obvious connection between the color green and the activity or word "go", just as there is no connection between red and "stop". Through cultural convention, however, we all interpret these symbols in a similar way.

Exercise: Combine the sounds "a", "p", "t" into three different words

In the case above, each of the words are considered "free morphemes"-they stand alone and have meaning. Morphemes make up words. Bound morphemes are those words that contain two or more morphemes.

Example: free morpheme is art; bound morpheme is artists [art (root word), ist (suffix, meaing one who engages in the process of doing art), s (plural)].

Exercise: List out which of the words are free morphemes and which are bound morphemes: for indefinite cow walked cows unclear