Summary “Chapter 2: Basic Concept”

Lexeme is a dictionary word, for example: a, be, sing, laugh, love and so on. Word form is a text word, for example: sing-sings-singing those are called word form. Paradigm is the set of word forms that belong to lexeme. Word family is a set of related lexemes, for example: read, readable, unreadable, readability, reread. The relationship between word forms and lexeme called inflectional morphology. It means doesn’t change the part of speech. The differences between word form and word family are:

Word form doesn’t change the part of speech (Inflectional).

Word family does change the part of speech (derivational).

The relationship between lexemes and a word family called derivational morphology. The part of the word that an affix is attached to is called the base. A base that cannot be analyzed any further into constituent morphemes is called root.

type of affixes suffix prefix infix circumfix

Follows the base Precedes the base Occurs inside the base                               Occurs on both side of the base

Examples English –less “mindless” English –im “impatient” Indonesian –ma- “temali” based on “tali”, -ri- “gerigi” based on gigi, and –mu- “kemuning” based on kuning. German ge-…-en “gegeben” means given in English

Allomorphs are variants of sounds. Allomorphs divide into two. First, phonological allomorphs are phonetically condition. Phonological allomorphs:-d [-ed, -id] wanted, [-t] fish, [-d] buzz. Second, suppletive allomorphs are not all similar in pronunciation. Suppletive allomorphs consist of strong and weak. Strong is difficult to know. e.g: go-went, little-less, bad-worse, good-better. Weak is easy to know. e.g: teach-taught, bring-brought, speak-spoke, buy-bought, catch-caught.

Source: Understanding Moprphology Ebook