Morphology Cheat Sheet - CTEL 501, University Assignment, Semester 1

This assignment is a morphology cheat sheet created for CTEL 501, focusing on the study of words, their forms, and how they are formed. The cheat sheet defines and explains essential concepts such as morphology, content words, function words, morphemes (both free and bound), and affixation (prefix, suffix, infix, and circumfix). It also covers word formation processes like compounding, derivation, clipping, blending, and backformation, providing examples to illustrate each concept. This resource helps students understand the structure and meaning of words, their grammatical functions, and how new words are created. This is a valuable resource for students studying linguistics, and Desklib provides this and other study materials.

Running head: CTEL 501
CTEL 501
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1CTEL 501
Morphology Cheat Sheet.
Morphology - morphology is the study of words, their formational processes, their
relationships with other words in the lame language as well as an analysis of the structure and
function of each of the individual parts of a word.
Content word: These words are useful for denoting aspects like objects, actions, attributes
and ideas that we as humans are able to think about in a concrete fashion.
e.g. Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverb.
Function word: Function words do not have a distinct lexical meaning associated with them
but are words that serve some grammatical functions.
E.g. Conjucntions, like ‘but’, ‘and’, pronouns, prepositions, articles etc.
Morphemes: The shortest, most elemental unit of grammatical form. They are of two types,
free and bound.
Free Morphemes: Free morphemes are morphemes that can have an independent
meaningful existence.
E.g. Boy, Girl, School etc.
Bound Morphemes: do not have an independent existence and requires the attachment of a
free morpheme to exist in a linguistic context.
E.g. –ish, -ize, etc.
Affixation.
Affixation is an important element of morphology which explains how the meanings of the
word are altered according to the addition of either a free or bound morpheme.
Prefix – before the word
Suffix – after the word
Infix – within the word
Circumfix – around the word (before and after).
Word Formation process.
Compounding – Joining of two words (Can + not = cannot)
Derivation – formation of words by combining derivational affixes with the root. (e.g. drink +
able = drinkable)
Clipping – Shortening a longer word but retaining the meaning. (e.g. Advertisement - ad)
Blending – fusion of two words into one. (e.g. biopic – biography + picture).
Backformation – Formation of new words by the removal of an affix. (e.g. proliferate from
proliferation)