Morphology

	Morphology:

• The study of the structure and form of words in language or a language, including inflection, derivation, and the formation of compounds.
• http://www.thefreedictionary.com/morphology

• a study and description of word formation (as inflection, derivation, and compounding) in language. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morphology

• Morphology is the study of morphemes, obviously.  Morphemes are words, word stems, and affixes, basically the unit of language one up from phonemes. Although they are often understood as units of meaning, they are usually considered a part of a language's syntax or grammar.  It is specifically grammatical morphemes that this chapter will focus on.
• http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/morphology.html

Branch

Linguistic

Study 

Structure

Word

Language

Morphology is the branch of linguistic that studies the structure of words and it formation. 

Word	Definition	Example
Morpheme	A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language, which has a meaning or grammatical function.	Un
Free Morpheme	A morpheme that can carry meaning on its own, and does not require a prefix, suffix, or infix it give it meaning.	Book
Bound Morpheme	Are morphemes that never exist as words themselves, but are always atached to some other morpheme,  that can only occur when bound to a root morpheme	happi-ness
Prefix	is placed at the beginning of a word to modify or change its meaning.	unacceptable
Suffix	is a group of letters placed at the end of a word to make a new word.	musician
Infix	is a group of letters placed in the side of a word to make a new word.	abso-blooming-lutely
Affix	a linguistic element added to a word or root to produce a derived or inflected form: -ment in establishment is a derivational affix; -s in drowns is an inflectional affix See also prefix, suffix, infix	exploration
Derivational Morpheme	it create or derive new words by changing the meaning or by changing the word class	quickness
Inflectional Morpheme	it doesn´t alter words, the meaning or word class of a word. Exam: Cat- Cats

Word	Number of Syllables	Number of Morphemes
Unlikely	3	3
Happiness	3	2
Loves	1	2
Morphology	4	2
syntax	2-1

The types of formation processes:

Derivation:

Is the most common  worf formation process,  build new words by adding morphemes to stems. (Affixes).

We have the morpheme Respect and add one morpheme at the beginnig: dis

We put them together and get a new word:

Disrespect

Compounding:

Is the process of putting words together to build a new one that "does not denote two things, but one", and that is "pronounced as one unit".

We have the morpheme home and add the morpheme work. We put them together and get a new word:

Homework. 

Acronyms:

Are pronounced as a single words.

We have the morpheme Interpol that means:  International Criminal Police  

Onomatopeia:

This special type of word that depicts "the sound associated with what is named, the sound associated with what is named.

We have the morpheme Click