Types of morphemes (3 hours)

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I have hinted before that there are certain "types" of morphemes (e.g., re- is a type of morpheme that can only combine with verbs).

Browse the below chapter to learn what the different types of morphemes, and different ways of combining morphemes, are. From this chapter you will get both a review of the concepts we practiced previously, and an introduction to the different types of morphemes and different types of morpheme combination processes. When you're done, continue to the activities below.

Reading: Chapter 4, "What is morphology?", of Language Files, Ohio State University, 2007. (This could be replaced with a morphology chapter from pretty much any introductory linguistics textbook. A good free alternative is Essentials of Linguistics chapter 6, "Word forms."; the most important sections for this module are 6.1 "Words and morphemes", 6.3 "Inflectional morphology, and 6.4 "Derivational morphology"; these sections will introduce you to the terms we will be using in the activities below.)

From the reading you should have heard about several different types of morphemes, including the following important distinctions:

For each distinction, give me an English example of each type and a Chinese example of each type. (e.g., an English free morpheme, an English bound morpheme, a Chinese free morpheme, and a Chinese bound morpheme; so in total you should show me at least 12 morphemes for this question.)

Another important distinction raised in the reading is the distinction between content morphemes (also called open-class morphemes) and function morphemes (also called closed-class morphemes).

This distinction has real-world consequences; for example, different types of morphemes may be affected differently by language and communication disorders.

Below are two videos of people with aphasia (失語症). Aphasia is a condition in which people lose some of their language ability as a result of neurological damage (often after a stroke), and sometimes can be quite debilitating (although, on the bright side, many people who experience aphasia can recover much of their ability and function with time and therapy). Watch how the these two people speak, and pay close attention to how they use content morphemes and function morphemes. (There are many other differences between these two people, such as how quickly or slowly they speak, and whether or not they seem to understand the questions asked of them. But for now, focus specifically on their content morphemes and function morphemes.)

Do you notice anything different about how the two people use content morphemes and function morphemes? (Again, you don't need to search any other information or readings to answer this question; the purpose of this activity is for you to discover the differences on your own.)

Finally, reflect on what you learned in this module. There is no specific criteria for what a reflection should be like, but it should be something to help you organize and cement the things you learned. To be useful, a reflection should focus on the content, not on affective judgments (like "I enjoyed this module", "I thought this module was very useful", etc.—although if you found the module useless, you are welcome to say so and explain why, as this will be helpful both for you [it gives you a chance to articulate what you already know, what you think you need, and how you think the module didn't help you get that] and for us [it will help me improve this module in the future]).

Some possible things to discuss (although you can also discuss other things, and you don't need to discuss all of these):

When you finish this activity, you are done with the module (assuming all your work on this and the previous tasks has been satisfactory). You can return to the module homepage to review this module, or return to the class homepage to select a different module or assignment to do now.


by Stephen Politzer-Ahles. Last modified on 2021-04-21. CC-BY-4.0.