Morphology is a study of words. It basically deals with
word formation, examines the relationship between words, and analyzes their constituent
elements.
Morpheme is the smallest unit of a word, which
has a meaning, lexical or grammatical, and cannot be divided into smaller units. For
instance, the word "unpresentable" consists of 3 morphemes -- un
+ present +
able. Un is a prefix, which means "not" and
is used in this example to negate the adjective "presentable." The suffix
able is used to form adjectives and is usually placed at
the end of a verb (useable, loveable, deniable,
etc.).
Morphs form morphemes,
and they are "an element of speech or writing that represents and expresses one or more
morphemes" (Microsoft Encarta
Dictionary). Morphs are the real forms utilized to form a morpheme (
71 ). For instance, "students" consists of 2 morphemes, student + suffix
s. Students is
comprised of "one or more morphs" that constitute the "environment" (
of the word students. Students has 2
morphemes, each with 1 or more morphs. The morpheme
-s has 1 morph and can have
1 of 2 allomorphs of
pronounceable realization: s or
z, as in cats
(s) and shoes
(z).
Allomorphs
are different realizations of one morpheme (Yule 72). For example, the words
cats,
dogs and
buses all contain a plural morpheme,
and we can deduce that the pluralizing morphemes
(-s and
-es) have 3 different potential
pronunciations - /s/, /z/ and /iz/. We call these
allomorphs because they represent different pronunciation
potentials of the same morphemes, the plural morphemes (and one plural morpheme has one
morph -s, while the other has two
morphs
-es).
Yule,
George.
Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
Web.
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