Kinds of morpheme

Poder Executivo[pic 1][pic 2]

Ministério da Educação

Universidade Federal do Amazonas

Instituto de Ciências Humanas e Letras

Departamento de Línguas e Literaturas Estrangeiras

Estrutura da Língua Inglesa

Prof°: Sérgio Armstrong

Caroline Santiago

1. Kinds of morpheme: bound versus free

• Bounds Morphemes – The bound morphemes cannot stand alone, they appears only as part of a larger word, but nonetheless serves to distinguish one word from the other. Most bound morphemes in English are affixes, particularly prefixes and suffixes. Examples: pre-, dis-, in-, un-, -ful, -able, -ment, -ly, -ise: pretest, discontent, intolerable, receive.
• Free Morphemes – The free morpheme is the one that can stand alone. A free morpheme does not require a prefix, suffix, or infix to give it meaning. Examples: Bed is a free morpheme, but the -s on beds is not, because -s carries no meaning until joined to a free morpheme; read-able, hear-ing, en-large, perform-ance, white-ness.
• Cranberry Morphemes – A cranberry morpheme is a morpheme that only appears in one word, and whose meaning by itself is unclear or unknown to the everyday speaker. They are named after the word 'cranberry' which is an example of the phenomenon: The morpheme 'berry' indicates that the word refers to a kind of small fruit. However the morpheme 'cran' by itself is dead and doesn't mean anything, as opposed to, say, the blue in 'blueberry' or even the goose in 'gooseberry' Others examples :mit  in  permit , commit,  transmit,  remit, and submit; ceive in receive, perceive, and conceive; twi in twilight and con in cobweb.

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