English Prefix un-

There are two kinds of the prefix un- in English. The first is attached to adjectives to form new adjectives, and the second is attached to verbs to form new verbs. The two kinds of the prefix un- do not change the part of speech. The prefix un- attached to adjectives means ‘not’. Fromkin (1990: 130) calls this derivation antonym or negative. The examples of prefix un- attached to adjectives unable (un + able), unafraid (un + afraid), and unimportant (un + important)
The prefix un- can also be added to the adjectives of the derived words that have been formed by morphological rules (Fromkin, 1990 : 130). The examples are unacceptable (un + acceptable) unavoidable (un + avoidable), unbelievable (un + believable) unpredictable (un + predictable) and unreachable (un + readable).
Based on the examples above the rule of the prefix un- attached to adjectives can be stated as: {un-} + ADJECTIVE --> new ADJECTIVE. This rule says that the prefix un- attached to an adjective creates a new adjective. The new adjective is indicated by the change of meaning. In this case the prefix un- means ‘not’
The second prefix un- joins with verbs to form new verbs. In this case the prefix un- means ‘to do the opposite of ’ (Hornby, 1986: 935). The examples of the prefix un- which combines with verbs are unbind (un + bind), uncover (un + cover) undo (un + do) undress (un + dress) unload (un + load), unlock (un + lock) , untie (un +tie)
From the examples above, the rule of prefix un- attached to verbs can be stated as: {un-} + VERB --> new VERB. This rule says that the prefix un- attached to a verb creates a new verb. The new verb is indicated by the change of meaning namely ‘to do the opposite of’.

REFERENCE


Fromkin, Victoria A. 1990. An Introduction to Language. Sydney: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich Group (Australia) Pty Limited.

ENGLISH DERIVATION

Language consists of two aspects namely form and meaning. In relation to meaning, the smallest meaningful unit in language is morpheme. Morpheme is defined as the smallest meaningful unit of a language (Lim Kiat Boey, 1975 : 37). Words are made up of morphemes. The word teachers, for example, consists of three meaningful units or morphemes, teach, –er, and –s. The morpheme teach forming the word teachers has the lexical meaning; the morpheme –er means the doer of teaching; the morpheme –s has plural meaning. We can identify the meaning of the morpheme teach although it stands alone but we cannot identify the meaning of morphemes –er and –s in isolation. We can identify the meaning of the morpheme –er and –s after they combine to the morpheme teach. The morphemes which can meaningfully stand alone are called free morphemes while the morphemes such as –er and –s, which cannot meaningfully stand alone are called bound morphemes. Bound morphemes must be attached to free morphemes. Bound morphemes are also called affixes which can be classified into prefix, infix, and suffix. English only has two kinds of bound morphemes namely prefixes and suffixes. There are not infixes in English. Bound morphemes are classified into two namely derivational and inflectional morphemes. This article tries to discuss derivational morphemes. These morphemes are complicated so that understanding what derivational morphemes are is important.
As mentioned above, bound morphemes consist of inflectional and derivational morphemes. Inflectional morphemes are those which do not create new meaning. These morphemes never change the syntactic category of the words or morphemes to which they are attached (Bauer, 1988: 12). They only refine and give extra grammatical information about the already existing meaning of words which they are attached to. The word books, for example, consists of a free morpheme book and an inflectional morpheme –s. The bound morpheme –s does not change the syntactic category of the morpheme book. The bound morpheme –s does not change the lexical meaning of book. It only gives grammatical meaning which shows that the word books is plural. Book is a noun and books is still a noun.
Different from the word books which contains the bound morpheme –s which does not create new meaning of the word book, the word happiness contains a bound morpheme –ness which creates new meaning of the word happy. The bound morpheme like –ness is called derivational morpheme. A derivational morpheme is the morpheme which produces a new lexeme from a base (Bauer, 1988: 12). Sari (1988: 82) says that derivational morphemes are bound morphemes which derive (create) new words by either changing the meaning or the part of speech or both. In the word happiness, the bound morpheme –ness creates a new word by changing both the meaning and the part of speech. Happy is an adjective but the derived word happiness is a noun. Some derivational morphemes create new meaning but do not change the syntactic category or part of speech. The word unhappy, for example, consists of the base happy and the derivational morpheme (prefix) un-. Happy is an adjective and the derived word unhappy is also an adjective.
In English, derivational morphemes can be prefixes or suffixes. All prefixes in English are derivational. All prefixes in English modify the meaning although they do not modify the syntactic category. For examples, the derivational prefix in- in inefficient, un- in undo, re- in rewrite, dis- in dislike and a- in amoral modify the positive meaning to the negative meaning but do not change the syntactic category of the derived words; efficient is an adjective and the derived word inefficient is also an adjective; do is a verb and the derived word undo is also a verb; write is a verb and the derived word rewrite is also a verb; moral is an adjective and the derived word amoral is also and adjective. All the derivational prefixes explained above have the meaning ‘not’. Most derivational suffixes change both the syntactic category and the meaning. Only a few of them do not change the syntactic category. The derivational suffixes which change the syntactic category can be noun-forming suffixes, verb-forming suffixes, adjective-forming suffixes, and adverb-forming suffixes.

REFERENCES

Bauer, Laurie. 1983. English Word Formation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bauer, Laurie. 1988. Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh : Edinburgh
University Press.

Fromkin, Victoria A. 1990. An Introduction to Language. Sydney: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich Group (Australia) Pty Limited.

Hornby, AS. 1986. Oxford Advanced Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Lim Kiat Boey. 1975. An Introduction to Linguistics for the Language Teacher.
Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Sari, Nirmala. 1988. An Introduction to Linguistics. Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan dan
Kebudayaan.

Allomorph

The variants of morpheme are called allomorphs. Morphemes are abstract, what actually occurs, or what we hear is morphes. One morpheme can be realized by more than one morph. The morphes which belong to one morpheme are called allomorphs of the morpheme. Plural morpheme in English, for example, has allomorphs [s], [z], and [ez]. If we symbolyze the morpheme plural as {s}, we can say that the allomorphs of the morpheme {s} are [s], [z], and [ez]

English Plural Morpheme 2

the plural morpheme or the morpheme {-s} is not always realized by the suffix –s. The following are the examples:

man (singular) + -s ---> men (plural)
woman (singular) + -s ---> women (plural)
child (singular) + -s ---> children (plural)
ox (singular) + -s ---> oxen (plural)
tooth (singular) + -s ---> teeth (plural)
foot (singular) + -s ---> feet (plural)
sheep (singular) + -s ---> sheep (plural)
deer (singular) + -s ---> deer (plural)

English Plural Morpheme 1

In English, to form the plural noun from the singular one is by adding the plural marker to the noun. The common plural marker or the plural morpheme is the suffix –s, although in reality this morpheme can be realized by the phonetic representations [s], [z], or [iz]. These phonetic representations or allomorphs are conditioned by the phones of the base to which the plural morpheme is added. Some countable nouns are not added with the suffix –s to make them plural but the number of these types are not as many as those added with the suffix –s. Therefore, this plural morpheme is usually called the morpheme –s because this suffix frequently occurs in the plural noun formation. The following are the examples of the words containing the plural morpheme or the morpheme {-s} which is pronounced /s/, /z/, or /iz/


baby (singular) + -s ----> babies [beibiz] (plural)
bag (singular) + -s ----> bags [bægz] (plural)
book (singular) + -s ----> books [buks] (plural)
box (singular) + -s ----> boxes [boksiz] (plural)
cat (singular) + -s ----> cats [kæts] (plural)
dog (singular) + -s ----> dogs [dogz] (plural)

Morphological Structure

The domain of morphology is words. How words are formed is the concern of this field so morphological structure is the structure which consists of the elements to form words. The most common word formation in language including English is affixation. Affixation is the process of word formation by adding the affixes or bound morphemes in bases or roots (free morphemes). In other words morphological structure is the structure or forms of words primarily through the use of morpheme construct (Crystal, 1980: 232).
Morpheme is defined as the smallest meaningful unit of language (Lim Kiat Boey, 1975 : 37). Morphemes can be divided into two namely free morphemes and bound morphemes. Morphemes are the components which build words. The word singers, for example, consists of three meaningful units or morphemes, sing, –er, and –s. The morpheme sing which forms the word singers has the lexical meaning; the morpheme –er means the doer of singing; the morpheme –s has plural meaning. We can identify the meaning of the morpheme sing although it stands alone but we cannot identify the meaning of morphemes –er and –s in isolation. We can identify the meaning of the morpheme –er and –s after they combine to the morpheme sing. Sing which can meaningfully stand alone is called free morpheme while the morphemes such as –er and –s, which cannot meaningfully stand alone are called bound morphemes. Bound morphemes must be attached to free morphemes. Bound morphemes are also called affixes which can be classified into prefix, infix, and suffix. English only has two kinds of bound morphemes namely prefixes and suffixes. No infixes exist in English. Bound morphemes are classified into two types namely derivational and inflectional morphemes. Both inflectional and derivational morphemes play an important role in the larger structure namely syntactic structure.

Elements Smaller than Words

- Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language.
- Morpheme is an abstract unit realized by Morphs
- The members of morph in the same morpheme are called Allomorphs.
- Allomorph is a variant of morphemes.
- An allomorph is a conditioned morph.
- Morphemes are enclosed in braces { }
- Allomorphs are in complementary distribution. They never occur in the same environment or context.
- Morpheme, like lexeme and phoneme, is realized by something else. We cannot hear a morpheme or say morpheme. We can only hear or say something which realizes a morpheme, morph.
- Morph is a segment of a word-form which represents a particular morpheme.
- Morphemes are abstract elements of analysis, and what actually occurs is a phonetic (or orthographic) strings which realizes the morpheme.
- When the phonetic (or orthographic) strings which realize morphemes are segmentable, these are termed ‘morph’. The form un. touch. able. s, the segmented portions are morphs, each of which represents a morpheme.

Morphology

In the 19th century, the term Morphology is the study of the change in the forms of words. The term is taken from the biological science, and refers to the study of shapes. In Linguistics this means the study of the shapes of words.
Syntax is the study of ways in which words are strung together. Many traditional grammars (grammar books) deal largely with morphology and have little to say about syntax. For many people the term grammar is equated with Morphology . For most linguists today grammar includes both Morphology and Syntax.

Source:
Bauer, Laurie. 1988. Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh