Morphology

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Generally speaking, the linguistic discipline of morphology – the term is derived from the Greek word morphos meaning „form‟ – examines the internal makeup and structure of words as well as the patterns and principles underlying their composition. In doing so, morphology straddles the traditional boundary between grammar (i.e. the rule-based, productive component of a language) and the lexicon (i.e. the idiosyncratic, rote-learned component). Morphology looks at both sides of linguistic signs, i.e. at the form and the meaning, combining the two perspectives in order to analyse and describe both the component parts of words and the principles underlying the composition of words. 2 Unlike phonology, morphology does not analyse words in terms of syllables but in terms of morphemes, i.e. components of words that are carriers of meanings. For example, while the words father and teacher both consist of two syllables, father represents only one morpheme (meaning „male parent‟), whereas teacher consists of two: the verb teach („instruct‟) and the nominalizing suffix -er („someone who does something‟). The most frequently found definition of the notion of morpheme states that it is the „smallest meaning-bearing unit‟ in a given language. As the example of father has shown, morphemes can coincide with simple words, or more precisely, simple lexemes, i.e. abstract representations of words uniting forms and (bundles of related) meanings, but they can also constitute parts of complex lexemes, which are in turn defined as lexemes consisting of more than one morpheme. Unlike father, then, teacher is an example of a complex lexeme.

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