What are morphemes? Free, bound, lexical and grammatical morpheme

In this video I explain what morphemes are. First, I explain the definition of morphemes and then explain into which categories morphemes can be divided. A distinction is made between free and bound morphemes on the one hand and lexical and grammatical morphemes on the other.

Answer to the question, four morphemes: un / control(l) / abil (able) / ity

#linguistics #morphology #language

More videos:
👨‍🎓 What are free morphemes? - (soon)
👨‍🎓 What are bound morphemes - (soon)
👨‍🎓 What are lexical morphemes? - (soon)
👨‍🎓 What are grammatical morphemes? - (soon)

0:00 definition
1:50 Subdivision of the morphemes
2:10 free morphemes
2:37 free lexical morphemes
2:53 free grammatical morphemes
3:19 bound morphemes
3:55 bound grammatical morphemes
4:10 bound lexical morphemes
4:26 excercise

Sources:
Spillmann, H. O. (2000): Einführung in die germanistische Linguistik. Langenscheidt.
Busch, A., & Stenschke, O. (2018). Germanistische Linguistik: eine Einführung. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag.
Dipper, S., Klabunde, R., & Mihatsch, W. (2018). Linguistik. Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Words are made up of units that have a meaning. These units are called morphemes. In linguistics, we say: Morphemes are the smallest meaning-bearing units of a language.

An example: Birds love the rainforest..

Into how many units, each carrying a meaning by itself, can you break down this sentence? You are probably thinking of: Birds / love / the / rain / forest). "rain" and "forest" are separated, because both “rain” and " forest” carry their own meaning. It is said that they have a lexical meaning, that means, they can be used as words. But this is not quite correct. There are six morphemes, which are: Bird / s / love / the / rain / forest).

The word “birds” consists of two morphemes. That is, two units, each carrying a meaning. The morpheme “bird” means "animal that can fly”. And what is the meaning of the ending "s”? This becomes clear if you omit this ending. Bird love the rain forest. This is no longer a grammatically correct sentence. The ending “s” seems to be important and to have some special function.

Thus, the ending -s in "birds" carries the grammatical meaning "plural".
So we see that many word forms consist of one morpheme (I, at, fast). Some, however, have several morphemes bird # s, fast # er.

Morphemes are divided into free and bound morphemes. They can each be further subdivided into lexical and grammatical morphemes as well as bound morphemes. In total, there are four different types:

Free lexical morphemes
Free grammatical morphemes
Bound lexical morphemes
Bound grammatical morphemes

First, the free morphemes:

fine, table, the, and

These free morphemes can stand alone in a sentence as independent words. For example, the word "table" can be used in a sentence like "The table is in the corner" without having to be attached to another word.

As already mentioned, free morphemes are further divided into lexical and grammatical morphemes. The morphemes "fine” and "table" are free lexical morphemes because they have their word meaning. They stand for something real, which can be something concrete (bush) or abstract (piece), or imaginary (witch).

Free grammatical morphemes are, for example: " the” or "and”, because they do not carry an independent meaning, but have a grammatical function. They are so-called function words. In a dictionary, it is not their meaning that is given, but their function. "And" connects two main clauses with each other. That is the function of "and". “And" does not have a word meaning like "table".

Bound morphemes, unlike free morphemes, must always be bound to another morpheme:
The "s” in " birds, the "ed” in "laughed", "s” in loves and the "re" in restart are all bound morphemes. They cannot stand alone and cannot be moved. They must therefore be attached to another morpheme. For example, the "s" of "birds" is bound to the morpheme "bird". It cannot simply be moved in front of the morpheme "bird“.

Bound morphemes are also divided into grammatical and lexical morphemes. Many bound morphemes are grammatical morphemes. They indicate grammatical categories such as singular or plural or time. For example, the morpheme "s" in "birds" stands for plural. It has no word meaning.

Bound lexical morphemes are rather rare. For example, the prefix "re" in "restart" is such a bound lexical morpheme. It cannot be used freely as a word in a sentence and means again or back.