Compiled by Febina Lu' lu' Ilmuna-English Edu-UIN Salatiga
In English syntax, morphemes and lexemes are two different concepts that play an important role in the structure and meaning of words. A morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that carries meaning and can be either a free morpheme (e.g., "book") or a bound morpheme (e.g., "un-" or "-ed"). On the other hand, a lexeme is the set of all the inflected forms of a single word (e.g., "run" for "run, runs, running, ran"). Morphemes are the basic unit of morphology, while lexemes are the basic unit of the lexicon. Syntax, on the other hand, refers to the set of rules by which a person constructs full sentences. Morphemes and lexemes are fundamental concepts in linguistics, particularly in the study of morphology and word formation. A morpheme can be a word unit or an affix, while a lexeme encompasses all the different forms of a word. Understanding these concepts is essential for analyzing the structure of language and how words are formed and used in sentences. A morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that provides a specific meaning to a string of letters (which is called a phoneme). There are two main types of morphemes: free morphemes and bound morphemes. A lexeme is the set of all the inflected forms of a single word.
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Morphemes, the basic unit of morphology, are the smallest meaningful unit of
language. Thus, a morpheme is a series of phonemes that has a special meaning.
If a morpheme is altered in any way, the entire meaning of the word can be
changed. Some morphemes are individual words (such as “eat” or “water”). These
are known as free morphemes because they can exist on their own. Other
morphemes are prefixes, suffixes, or other linguistic pieces that aren’t full
words on their own but do affect meaning (such as the “-s” at the end of “cats”
or the “re-” at the beginning of “redo.”) Because these morphemes must be
attached to another word to have meaning, they are called bound morphemes.
Within
the category of bound morphemes, there are two additional subtypes:
derivational and inflectional. Derivational morphemes change the meaning or
part of speech of a word when they are used together. For example, the word
“sad” changes from an adjective to a noun when “-ness” (sadness) is added to
it. “Action” changes in meaning when the morpheme “re-” is added to it,
creating the word “reaction.” Inflectional morphemes modify either the tense of
a verb or the number value of a noun; for example, when you add an “-s” to
“cat,” the number of cats changes from one to more than one.
A "morpheme" is a short segment of language that
meets three basic criteria:
1. It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.
2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments
without changing its meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder.
3. It has relatively the same stable meaning in different
verbal environments.
There are two types of morphemes-free morphemes and bound
morphemes. "Free morphemes"
can stand alone with a specific meaning, for example, eat, date, weak.
"Bound morphemes" cannot stand alone with meaning. Morphemes are
comprised of two separate classes called (a) bases (or roots) and (b) affixes.
A "base," or "root" is a morpheme in a
word that gives the word its principle meaning. An example of a "free
base" morpheme is woman in the word womanly. An example of a
"bound base" morpheme is -sent in the word dissent.
Affixes
An "affix" is a bound morpheme that occurs before or
after a base. An affix that comes before a base is called a "prefix."
Some examples of prefixes are ante-, pre-, un-, and dis-, as in
the following words:
antedate
prehistoric
unhealthy
disregard
An affix that comes after a base is called a
"suffix." Some examples of suffixes are -ly, -er, -ism, and -ness,
as in the following words:
happily
gardener
capitalism
kindness
1. Free Morphemes:
• Can stand alone
with a specific meaning, such as "eat," "date," or
"weak"
• Can be further
divided into lexical morphemes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) and
derivational morphemes (words that make new words of a different grammatical
category from a stem).
2. Bound Morphemes:
• Cannot stand alone
with meaning.
• Can be
divided into bases (or roots) and affixes.
• Bases or roots
give the word its principal meaning, such as "woman" in
"womanly"
• Affixes are
bound morphemes that occur before or after a base, such as prefixes (e.g.,
"ante-, pre-, un-, dis-") or suffixes (e.g., "-s" for noun
plural, "-'s" for noun possessive, "-s" for verb present
tense third person singular, etc.)
Morphemes
play essential roles in English syntax, as they help to form words and convey
meaning. They can be used to create new words and modify the grammatical
function of existing words, allowing for the expansion and flexibility of the
language.
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Lexeme, In English syntax, a lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies
a set of words related through inflection. It is the fundamental unit of the
lexicon (or word stock) of a language and serves as the main parts of speech
that convey meaning, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. Lexemes are
minimal units of language with distinctive meanings and are often called word
stems. Lexemes are minimal units of language with distinctive meanings and are
often called word stems. It is the abstract form of a word that includes all
its inflected forms and variations. For example, the word "walk" is a
lexeme that includes variations such as "walks," "walked,"
and "walking." In linguistics, lexemes are used to study the ways in
which words are related to one another and how they function in sentences. By
analyzing lexemes, linguists can gain insights into the structure and meaning
of language.
Variable
lexemes are word-sized lexical items that may have two or more forms. The
following are ways to inflect words belonging to various syntactic categories.
• Nouns can change in number
(bird, birds)
• Verbs
can change in tense or number (shape, shapes, shaped, shaping)
•
Adjectives can change in degree (big, bigger, biggest)
•
Adverbs can change in degree (good, better, best)
•
Pronouns can change in case (you, your, yours)
There
are two types of Lexeme:
• Variable Lexemes are
word-sized lexical items that may have two or more forms.
• invariable Lexemes only have
one word corresponding to a particular meaning.
The
function of lexemes is to communicate concepts. They are the main parts of
speech that convey meaning, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on.
The
function of lexemes in English syntax can be summarized as follows:
1. Conveying meaning: Lexemes are
responsible for communicating concepts and carrying the significance of a word.
2. Inflectional paradigm: Lexemes often
have many different forms, known as an inflectional paradigm, which are
governed by rules of grammar. For example, the lexeme "run" has a
present third person singular form "runs," a present non-third-person
singular form "run," and a past participle "ran".
3. Morphological analysis: Lexemes
are often composed of smaller units with individual meanings called morphemes,
according to root morphemes, derivational morphemes, and suffixes (not
necessarily in that order).
4. Syntactic structure: Lexemes
play a crucial role in the syntactic structure of sentences, as they are the
main components that convey meaning and function within the sentence.
A lexeme
is a fundamental unit of the lexicon of a language that belongs to a particular
syntactic category, carries a particular meaning, and in most cases, has
corresponding inflectional versions of itself. Example:
Lexeme:
park
Syntactic
category: noun
Meaning:
an outdoor recreational space.
Inflectional
versions: parks, park’s, parks’
This
word park is a lexeme that might be confused with another lexeme; its homonym
park.
Lexeme:
park
Syntactic
category: verb
Meaning:
to bring a vehicle to a temporary stop
Inflectional
versions: parks, parked, parking
Although
these two words sound and are spelled the same, they are two distinct lexemes
because their meanings are different. Due to the difference in syntactic
category—one is a verb, and one is a noun—the corresponding inflections also
vary.
In
conclusion, understanding morphemes and lexemes is very important in English
syntax to reveal the cause and effect of word structure and meaning. Morphemes,
as the smallest units of meaning, play a role in word formation through
prefixes, roots and suffixes. Lexemes, on the other hand, represent groups of
words that have the same meaning and provide insight into the relationships
between different word forms. This linguistic concept makes language analysis
more in-depth, helping understanding and enriching sentences in the broader
context of English syntax.
LIST OF REFERENCES:
https://study.com/academy/lesson/morphemes-examples-definition-types.html
https://www.rit.edu/ntid/sea/processes/wordknowledge/grammatical/whatare
https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/english/morphology/lexeme/
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