What is morphology?

Question

This can be a new concept for students because it has applications in other fields, such as biology, but a specific use in the field of linguistics.

Answer 1

In Linguistics, Morphology is the study of how words are constructed in different languages. The two most common ways that words are constructed in English are by affixation and compounding. Affixation refers to the adding of prefixes and suffixes to roots, as in"illegible", in which the prefix "il" and suffix "ible" have been added to the root "leg", which comes from Latin and means "read". Morphemes are the basic units of morphology. The word "illegible" has three morphemes. Morphemes all have meanings and the meaning of a word is a composite of the meanings of the individual morphemes that it has. In this case, the prefix "il" means 'not', while the suffix 'ible' means 'able to be done', so that "illegible" means 'not able to be read'. In compounding, two or more roots or complete words are combined to make a new word. An example of a compound is" blueberry", which names a particular fruit. Many compounds are written as single words, but compounds can also be written as separate words, such as "air conditioning", and as hyphenated words, such as "out-of-date". English also has many other ways of creating words that are not used as often. All these ways of making words are called word formation processes. Another aspect of morphology is to characterize different languages according to which word formation processes they typically use.