Linguistic morphology

morphology (from the Greek μορφo morphḗ 'shape', and λογία logy 'treaty or study') is the branch of linguistics which studies the internal structure of words to define and classify their units: word variants (inflectional morphology) and the formation of new words (derivative morphology and composition).

The word "morphology" was introduced in the 19th century and originally dealt simply with the shape of words, although in its more modern sense it studies more complex phenomena than the shape itself.

Word construction with two types of monemas, the lexema "gat-"and his flexive morphisms.

Morphology as a linguistic discipline

The term morphology comes from the Greek μορφo-, morpho ('shape') and λογία logy ('treatise', 'science'); thus, the whole literally means 'science (or study) of form'. Indeed, we speak of the morphology of plants, of the morphology of living beings, of the morphology of the terrestrial relief, etc.

In linguistics, this term takes on a specialized meaning: 'study of word forms' and, by extension, 'word study'. This goes back to a tradition started in the works of Baudouin de Courtenay according to which words are made up of roots and affixes that perform the function of the Saussurean sign. And although one must also speak in linguistics of the form of phrases and/or phrases, the term morphology does not apply to the latter; it is the word, and only the word, which constitutes the object of linguistic morphology according to general usage.

The position in grammatical morphology is intermediate. For Bloomfield's American structuralist tradition, morphology was essential; in the Chomskyan generativist tradition, on the other hand, syntax is central and morphology is either relegated to phonology or ignored as an independent discipline. These positions have made linguistic morphology a controversial field that is difficult to define in modern linguistic theory. Morphological patterns are commonly considered to be the result of grammaticalization and that, in a sense, that is all there is to morphology. Therefore, the search for morphological universals and the morphological analysis itself would be nothing more than a study of grammaticalization patterns.

Distinction between morphology and syntax

Traditional grammar divides the study of all the world's languages by convention into two sections: morphology and syntax. The relationship between the two is as follows:

However, within generative grammar it has been argued that morphology is untenable as an autonomous branch. Sometimes there are morphological alternations that are caused by phonological restrictions, which is why certain aspects of traditional morphology fall within morphophonemics. Some other morphological processes do not seem easily separable from syntax, so their study falls under the study called morphosyntax. For some authors, morphology is restricted only to the process of word formation, leaving out the morphophonemic and morphosyntactic processes.

Language groups

From the point of view of morphology, the traditional classification of human languages into 3 groups is important:

• Insulating languages (formerly poorly called monosilábicas). This group includes those languages whose words are typically formed by components with their own meaning, easily separable, often from a single syllable, so that there is little bending and the difference between composition and derivation is not clear; this group belongs many languages of the South and East Asia, such as the Mandarin Chinese.
• Aglutinating languages. This group integrates the languages whose words are composed of lexemas and clearly separable posters, each with a well-defined referenceal or grammatical meaning. Examples are euskera, Hungarian language or Japanese language. In these languages there is both bending and derivation, and the composition is clearly distinguished from the derivation, which differentiates the insulating languages.
• Mergeant languages (formerly called flexive). This group is formed by those languages which, like the ancient Greek, Spanish or Arabic, have structured words in posters and slogans, such as agglutinants, but contrary to these the limits between the different morphisms of each word are often difficult to define by the tendency to merge each other.

Not all languages fall neatly into these 3 groups.

Definition of morpheme

Lexemes (lexical morphemes)

In all languages, regardless of the morphological procedures it possesses, a basic morph can be identified in a word, a sequence of sounds that identifies the main meaning of the word, which is called lexema or root. However, in languages with morphs that are not affixes, such as Semitic languages, lexemes are "skeletons" of two or three consonants between which vowels are inserted. These vowels come in the form of paradigmatic schemes and are an example of a discontinuous morph (in this type of language the lexemes are also in fact discontinuous, that is, they do not form a sequence of consecutive phonemes).

Lexemes form the majority of the lexicon of a language, their number is always much higher than that of grammes (morphemes that are not lexemes), and in principle it is considered an open class. That is, they form a set that can be expanded with new lexical loans or other creative procedures to designate new concepts or realities.

Gramemes (grammatical morphemes)

The grammatical morphemes are the units that constitute the variable part of the word and are responsible for expressing grammatical relationships that do not alter the basic referential meaning of a word. Usually they are not autonomous and their appearance is not optional but is subject to grammatical restrictions. These morphemes express relationships or grammatical accidents such as:

• Grammatical number
• Grammatical gender
• Grammatical case
• Grammatical time

Derivative grammes

They are optional formants through which compositional meanings and concepts derived from the basic meaning are formed. Some examples of this:

According to their position with respect to the lexeme, three types of derivative grammatical morphemes can be distinguished:

• Sufijos: they go after the radical or lexema and before the grammatical dependent morphemes. They can change the grammatical category of the word or gender of the nouns and are tonic, that is, they carry with the accent of the word.

repeatable	suffix: - Yes., transforms a verb into adjective
quietly	suffix: -transforms an adjective into adverb
dandruff	suffix: -on., transforms the gender of the noun house.

• Prefixes: precede the radical or lexema. They are atonos and have meaning. If they load with accent they are actually prephyjoids or prefixes close to lexemas.

impoundable	Prefix: in-meaning of denial or deprivation
monosylobic	prefijoid: monkey-meaning one or only

• Interface: are euphonic morphological elongations that are placed between the prefixes and suffixes to avoid the cacophony between two sounds and the homonimies. They are atonos and have no meaning. Many of them also worked as suffixes but remained meaningless. These interfixes are not comparable to suffixes or prefixes and it is important not to confuse them with the infijos that appear in other languages, which are comparable to the prefixes and derivative suffixes.

Inflectional Gramemes

They are constitutive formants that always occupy the final position of the word and the information they offer is grammatical, such as gender, number, person, mood, etc.

Free or independent morphemes

There is another class of morphemes called free morphemes or independent morphemes that are not attached to any lexeme but confer grammatical meaning to the words with which they are associated. Determiners, prepositions, and conjunctions can act as free morphemes. Almost all of them are unstressed. For example, the article acts as an inflectional morpheme for the noun of the sentence.

Morphs of a morpheme

Allomorphs are the different phonetic realizations of a given morpheme. For example, in Spanish the plural can be realized as -s or -es, these two forms are therefore allomorphs of the Spanish plural number morpheme. They are also allomorphic -ble and -bil, as in impossible and impossibility, or need- and foolish, as in foolish and foolishness.

Zero Morph

An interesting type of morph is one that has no audible phonemic realization. Considering this absence of phonic content as a relationship often helps to make morphological analysis simpler and more systematic, since the fact that a given morpheme does not have phonic realization does not prevent it from being considered a full member of the equivalence class. that forms the morpheme on the basis of systematic paradigmatic relations.

An example of this can be found in Spanish in the word atlas. Here the number morpheme is not present, and that is precisely the reason why number is singular. Another example is gender morphs in nouns or adjectives ending in a consonant:

This is the Better.-∅_M

This is the Better.-∅_F

Consideration of the zero allomorphs ∅_M and ∅_F allows us to say that in an attributive sentence the subject and attribute always agree in gender. An alternative analysis along the lines of Vossler denying that these zero allomorphs are real would need to explain that sometimes there is agreement (when there are gender morphemes) and sometimes there is no agreement, in which case the more complicated rule. That is, the consideration of zero morphemes simplifies generalizations about agreement and other aspects of grammatical structure. Similarly, person marks of in the third person singular can be considered zero morphs:

Cant-or, cant-a-s, cant-a-∅_3aSG, cant-a-mos, cant-a-is, cant-a-n

bb-or, beb-e-s, beb-e-∅_3aSG, beb-e-mos, beb-e-is, beb-e-n