Reflection on Topic 3: Morphology

Reflection on Topic 3: Morphology

After studying on about this topic, I have understood that morpheme is actually one of three part of the grammatical knowledge of language. It is the minimal unit of grammatical analysis/ function. All words are morphemes or combinations of morphemes. Based on what I have learned, monomorphemic words have one morpheme, dimorphemic words have two morphemes and polymorphemic words have more than one morpheme.

There are 5 types of morpheme which are

• · free morphemes
• · Bound morphemes
• · Inflectional morphemes
• · Derivational morphemes
• · Allomorphs

Free morpheme is a word or morpheme that can stand on its own and has a grammatical function. E.g is play is a basic morpheme which can occur on its own and has a grammatical function as an adjective. For bound morpheme, it is opposite of the free morpheme where it can’t stand by its own. For example is word un+identify. The word un can’t stand by its own.

An inflectional morpheme is an affix used to change form and function only from the grammatical point with no change in part of speech of the word. In example is the word play. The meaning didn’t change if we add inflectional morpheme for the word plays, played and playing. The opposite of inflectional morpheme is derivational morpheme. This type of morpheme can be used to make further new words and change the meaning of the words. The examples are as follows:

• · Sing+er
• · Bad+ly
• · Graceful+ly
• · Un+do
• · Mis+take

The last one is allomorph. The [s] morpheme in English which indicates plurality or third person singular present tense has 3 variants of allomorphs /s/, /z/ and /ᵊ z/. For past tense, the 3 allomorphs are the sound /t/, /d/ and /Ι d/. Other types of allomorphs are also the result of lexical conditioning, where it happens also in past tense. Examples are eat become ate, sing become sang and etc. The last part of allomorphs that I understand for this topic is the zero allomorphs. It is the term given to the unit involved when a morpheme changes status from one type of morpheme to another without any addition or subtraction of its parts. It also includes some words that show no change in masculine or feminine gender for example fish, ants, bear and etc.

From this topic, we had also learned about word structure and how morpheme build into words and then form a phrase. After we had gone through all of these, I had realize how important grammar for English teacher like us. I also understand that English is a very sensitive language where every change of the root word from example adding affixation will make the meaning of the word will change from the root word after we had learned about word formation process. For me, as a teacher, we should be the role model for the students. Excellent English usage in the class is very important. This subject gives me opportunity to improve my grammar.

For the ISL this week, we are required to do games related to this topic. So, my group had decided to do this games using action, in other words, students will guess the action that their friends act out and add any suitable affixation to the words. The groups that can modify the root word accurately and can produce more words are the winners. From this activity, the children can improve their vocabulary.

I also understand that as a teacher, we should try to make the students attracted to study English where students can play and learn at the same time. This will make learning English will be more fun and students will love English and did not feel that it is difficult to learn.