:: A YEAR OLDER! ::

:: What is morpheme?? ::

Today we had learned about morpheme. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language. Its all about structure of words.Morpheme is classified either free or bound. Free morphemes can function independently by itself. For example, 'one', 'cat' and others. Bound morphemes appears as only part of word, as it combines with other base and may also other bound morphemes. For example, -dis appears by other morpheme to form a word. Most bound morphemes in English are affixes, particularly prefixes and suffixes. 

This is the exercise on bound morphemes which I've done in group :)

PREFIX	BASE/ ROOT	SUFFIX	WORD
un	break	able	unbreakable
im	polite	ly	impolitely
un	touch	able	untouchable
un	forget	able	unforgettable
in	direct	ly	indirectly

Reflection: It was quite challenging to think of those words which involve both prefix and suffix (affix). It might because I was never concern about the uses of affixes. Before this, I was just simply say out or write down the words as anyhow rather than to understand the correct used of affixes. Therefore, it is important to have a DICTIONARY around if you want to make your life easier! ^_^

Next, in bound morpheme we can classified it into derivational and inflectional.

• Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root, change either the semantic meaning or part of speech of the affected word. For example, in the word happiness, the addition of the bound morpheme -ness to the root happy changes the word from an adjective (happy) to a noun (happiness). In the word unkind, un- functions as a derivational morpheme, for it inverts the meaning of the word formed by the root kind.
• Inflectional morphemes modify a verb's tense or a noun's number without affecting the word's meaning or class. Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to form dogs and adding -ed to wait to form waited. 

[Qouted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme]

Exercise on DERIVATIONAL:

PART OF SPEECH	MORPHEME	FUNCTION	EXAMPLE
verb	[ s ] [ ed ] [ ing ]	present tense past tense continuous tense	talk talked talking
noun	[ s ] [ ‘s ]	plural possessive	boys boy’s
adjective	[ er ] [ est ]	comparison	smaller smallest

WORD	PART OF SPEECH
community communication communicate	noun noun verb
select selective selection	verb adjective noun
universe universal university	noun adjective noun

Reflection: It was interesting to learn this although we have gone through it before (so many times). But, by learning it with the understand of the correct use of bound morpheme, I am able to understand them better rather than just simply memorize what the teacher taught me before. Besides, it was as well a challenging exercises ( as it is done without the help of dictionary, if there is dictionary it surely will be a piece of cake.. hihi) to complete.

* This is what I have learned during ELE's class. Basically, I could know and understand what is MORPHEME. 

* sorry for any grammatical errors or any mistakes.. will improve myself from time to time.. InsyaAllah.. :)

* do leave comments.. thanks :)