The notions of the Word and the Morpheme

 

The word morphology is based on the two Greek words morpheme and logos.

Morpheme means form.

Logos was regarded as one of the main notions of the Old Greek philosophy. It meant both: 1) word (expression, sentence or speech) and 2) sense/meaning (notion, judgment or base). To the Old Greek philosophy it was introduced by Heraclites in the 6^th – 5^th centuries B.C. Logos (Mind) and Spirit (Soul) were considered as the base of the World’s Fire or the initiation of Existence (Life).

Thus, it is seen that morphology in Linguistics does not only refer to the Form but also takes into consideration the Content.

To simplify, Morphology studies morpheme and word which is built with morphemes and can change due to them.

 

Morphology refers to:

1) A part of the system of language, the system of parts of speech, their grammar meanings, categories and forms of the Word.

2) A section of Grammar that studies such part of the language system; a science about parts of speech, their grammar meanings, categories and forms of word.

 

Word (general definition) is the main unity of morphology; a unity of language that denotes/names a definite object, thing, phenomenon or notion.

The definition of the Word, which is characteristic for flexible languages (given by Maslow, a professor, Leningrad school):

Word is a minimum unity of a language whose property is a positional independence (the examples are given under). It has characteristics of mobility (different words-parts of speech take different positions in a sentence) and discrete (can exist separately unlike/in the contrast to the Morpheme that has a meaning but cannot exist separately).

For example:

Respect is a desirable attitude (subject).

He has been paid a lot of respect (object). positional independence and mobility

We respect him (predicate).

When the word respect is said or written or heard it can exist separately and be perceived and understood (discrete).

 

Morpheme is a minimum meaningful unity of word that does not have a positional independency (prefix takes the position in the beginning of the Word, root takes main central position in the midst and suffix – at the end). Thus, all the morphemes can be divided into two big groups, root morphemes and affixes (table 2.1).

Table 2.1