Morphology

Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the structure of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. 

It is generally divided into:

- Inflectional morphology which studies inflections of a language.

- Derivational morphology which studies the types of word-formation. 

At the basic level, words are made of "morphemes." It is defined as a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. For example, the word unlocked in the sentence “He unlocked the door” has three morphemes: 

• un- is used to show an opposite; 
• lock  means to fasten with a key, and 
• –ed indicates past tense. 

Types Of Morphemes

Free Morphemes: Some morphemes can be used as single words (e.g. book, run, nice, one)

Bound Morphemes: Others cannot stand alone and have to be attached to another morpheme (e. g. un-, -ment, -ed, -s).

Example: 

Word: peaceful

Free morpheme: peace

Bound morpheme: -ful

Types Of Words

Simple Words: They are words that consist only of one morpheme.

Example: Success, Kind.

Complex Words: They are words consisting of two or more morphemes.

Example: Successful (success + -ful), Unkindness (un- + kind + -ness).

Complex words have a root and one or more affixes (prefixes or suffixes).
Root: is a word or word part that can form the basis of new words through the addition of affixes.
Affix: is one or more than one syllable or letter added at the beginning or at the end of a root word, to change its meaning. It can be:
-Prefix: it is a group of letters placed before the root of a word.
-Suffix: it is a group of letters placed after the root of a word.
Another important concept is base or stem, which is the form that an affix is added. Example: in the word assertiveness, assert is the root and the base for –ive and assertive is the base for –ness. 

In the next table, you can see somes of the most common affixes.

Ways To Form New Words

• Compounding: combination of two or more roots to form a new word. Examples: raincoat, brother-in-law, bathrooms, etc.
• Conversion: it is when the function of a word changes. Examples: walk (Verb) - walk (Noun).
• Clipping: new words are formed by shortening other words by eliminating the initial part, the last part, or both parts of the words. Examples: phone from telephone, plane from airplane, exam from examination.
• Blending: it is when we say in pronunciation two words into one. Example: I get it (the words get and it are pronounced together as if they were a single word).
• Backformation:  new words are formed by the deletion of a supposed affix from an already existing word. For example, the nouns such as revision, creation, formation, transmission, to name a few, which are derivatives from the verbs revise, create, form, transmit.
• Initialism (abbreviations and acronyms):
• An acronym is formed from the initial letters of some longer name and is pronounced differently than the expanded form. Examples of acronyms as the term is commonly used: FBI, which stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation, but is pronounced ef-bee-I
• An abbreviation is typically a shortened form of words used to represent the whole. is pronounced the same. Examples: Mr., which stands for mister and is pronounced mister.
• Borrowings: words that are borrowed from other languages. Examples:  the noun chef- “a skilled cook, especially the main cook in a restaurant” - has been borrowed from French.
• Coinages: new words are created outright, either deliberately or accidentally, to fit some purpose. Usually, words are coined to express new ideas, processes, products, etc. in the language. For example, xerox, teflon or aspirin.