Affixes

[taylorkl]

Can someone please help me... I have to break several words apart and identfiy the inflection and derivation affixes. The paragraph below is where I have to find the words that have more than one morpheme in them. I have several done; however several of them are confusing me.


Morphology is the study of a language’s morphemes, its minimal meaningful units. In the following passage, identify the kinds of morphemes present: (1) free, (2) bound roots, (3) inflectional suffixes, (4) derivational prefixes, and (5) derivational suffixes. Be careful. Sometimes two or three morphemes lurk in words that at first glance appear to consist of only one.
Example: language’s

morpheme base/pre/suf bound/free I/D
language pre bound -----
-‘s base free I



It had been a wonderful summer for the bear family. They had gone swimming and boating at the beautiful lake. They had picnicked in the refreshing woods and taken many walks along sunny paths. But now summer was just about over. There was a nip in the air. The birds were beginning to fly south and the leaves on the treehouse were changing colors. One evening at supper, Brother Bear said, "I am getting tired of summer vacation. I think I am ready to go back to school!" "That is good news," said Papa Bear." Because school will be starting again really soon!" Sister Bear’s ears perked up at the word school.

[Tdol]

Which have you done?

[taylorkl]

It had been a wonderful summer for the bear family. They had gone swimming and boating at the beautiful lake. They had picnicked in the refreshing woods and taken many walks along sunny paths. But now summer was just about over. There was a nip in the air. The birds were beginning to fly south and the leaves on the treehouse were changing colors. One evening at supper, Brother Bear said, "I am getting tired of summer vacation. I think I am ready to go back to school!" "That is good news," said Papa Bear." Because school will be starting again really soon!" Sister Bear’s ears perked up at the word school.


The words I have in green bold are the words I have found to have more than morphemes. Would the word ready also be one? Would:

read = base, free
-y = suffix, bound, derivational?????

also the word gone... I know it is the past tense of; to go.... how would I break that down?

[BobK]

It depends how far you want to take the analysis. Historically, ready and gone each had two morphemes (I think - the history of English is something I only have passing/occasional/random bits of information about); but I think in a 'synchronic' analysis [language as it is at one moment - typically the present moment] they might be thought of as just having one.

b

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by taylorkl

Would the word ready also be one? Would:

read = base, free
-y = suffix, bound, derivational?????

Ask yourself, is the base read, pronounced red, found elsewhere in the lexicon, and if so, are the two forms related in meaning? If not, then ready is probably a single morpheme. That is, take away what appears to be productive -y and the result, read should have a meaning of its own in order to be a morpheme, a minimal unit of meaning. Is that read and the past tense read related? ...no.

Originally Posted by taylorkl

also the word gone... I know it is the past tense of; to go.... how would I break that down?

The plural nouns men and women work the same way. The following, from course notes on Morphology, an online document, explains:

"Note the terminology: Braces, { } indicate a morpheme. Square brackets, [ ] indicate a semantic characterization. Italics indicate a lexical item.

Here plurality is indicated not by adding –s but by changing the vowel in the stem. Yet we still want to say that men is, morphologically, {man} + {PLU}, even though the form of {PLU} is quite different in this case.

In the same way, it seems sensible to say that went = {go} + {PAST}, just as walked = {walk} + {PAST}, even though in the first case {PAST} involves a morphological change in form quite different from the usual adding of –ed."

Read more here: www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/Courses/Psy598/Ling-Morphology.pdf

All the best.