Morphemes 1

Running head: MORPHEMES – ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

A Contrastive Analysis of English and Vietnamese Morphemes

Đinh Lý Vân Khanh

Class 4A06

University of Pedagogy

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Abstract

As you all know, a language is formed by four constituent parts: the phonological

system, the morphological systems, the syntactic system, and the semantic system.

Morphology, which is based on the morphological system, is the study and description

of word-structure and word-formation of a language. In term of linguistics, according to

Eugene A Nida, morphology is known as “the study of morphemes and their

arrangements in forming words” (Nguyen, 2004, p. 6). Therefore, in order to understand

how words in different languages are formed, we must learn and understand about its

basic element: morphemes, first. It is the aim of this paper that will help readers to be

clear about this term as well as the similarities and differences in the way it is present in

English and Vietnamese.

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A Contrastive Analysis of English and Vietnamese Morphemes

Morphemes

Definition

Today we know that words are not the smallest units of meaning in language. If

we take a word and separate it into smaller parts, we may have morphemes (Từ tố). So

what are morphemes here? According to Eugene Nida, “morphemes are the minimal

meaningful units which may constitute word or parts of words” (Nguyen, 2004, p. 9). In

other words, morphemes are the smallest components of a word which contribute to its

meaning. A word, therefore, can contain one or more than one morphemes. For

examples, with the word “teach” in English, here we have one morpheme which is also

the word. However, with the word “teacher”, we can divide it into “teach” and “-er”

meaning “the person who does the action”, and get two morphemes here. Just bear in

mind that whenever we can separate a word into smaller meaningful parts, then we can

have morphemes.

Morphemes, Words, Syllables

Word, as for StateMaster-Encyclopedia, is a unit of language that carries

meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly

together, and has phonetic value. As we can see from this definition, morphemes are

the smaller parts of word which contribute to the meaning of that word.

Syllable (âm tiết) “is a unit of speech which is often longer than one sound and

smaller than a whole word” (Nguyen, 2004, p. 10).

Ex: In English: One –1 syllable

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Water – 2 syllables (wa-, -ter)

Information – 4 syllables (in-, -for, -ma, -tion)

A morpheme can be smaller, bigger or equal to a syllable, and a word can

contain one or more than one syllables.

Just like morphemes, syllables in different languages are very different.

Therefore, we must accept them and should not try to bring our native language’s

knowledge of syllables to produce words from other languages.

The table below will give you more clear examples about these three terms

Language Word Morpheme Syllable1. Dog2. Dogs3. Unproductive4. Xamalôt5. Nhà máy6. Công nghiệp hóa

EnglishEnglishEnglishRussian

VietnameseVietnamese

111111

12 (dog, -s)3 (un-, product, -ive)3 (xam-, a-, lôt)2 (nhà, máy)3 (Công, nghiệp, hóa)

114 (un-, pro-, duc-, -tive)3 (xa-, ma-, -lôt)2 (nhà, máy)3 (công, nghiệp, hóa)

Knowing how to distinguish words, morphemes, syllables can be very useful in

analyzing and contrasting languages in term of word-structure and word-formation.

Types of Morphemes

According to meanings, morphemes can be categorized into two types: free

morphemes and bound morphemes. Free morphemes are those that can stand alone

as a word. They usually occur in the central place of word-structure. In contrast, bound

morphemes are those that cannot stand alone but have to be attached to the beginning

and ending of other morphemes to form words.

Ex:

1. English

Interesting: interest => free morpheme

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-ing => bound morpheme

Dislike: like => free morpheme

dis- => bound morpheme

Weaken: weak => free morpheme

-en => bound morpheme

2. Vietnamese

Nhà cửa: nhà => free morpheme

cửa => free morpheme

Ca sĩ: ca => free morpheme

sĩ => bound morpheme

Vui vẻ: vui => free morpheme

vẻ => bound morpheme

Free morphemes mostly function as the roots in words which have principal

meaning while bound morphemes are the affixes which modify the basic meaning of the

roots.

According to functions, there are two types of morphemes: lexical morphemes

and grammatical morpheme. Lexical morphemes are morphemes that determine the

main meaning of words whereas grammatical morphemes are those that decide the

grammatical function of them. For example, in English, the morpheme “aqua” is a lexical

morpheme which means “water”. The morpheme “-ed” refers to the simple past tense in

English and it is a grammatical morpheme.

Most roots, prefixes, suffixes in words are lexical morphemes. As a result, we

can find numerous lexical morphemes but limited grammatical ones in a language.

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English Morphemes

Since English belongs to synthetic languages, it has a high morpheme-per-word

ratio. That means a single word in English can contain many morphemes, which are

mainly bound morphemes. As a result, bound morphemes in English are those that

cannot stand alone as separated words and must be attached to others to form words.

There are a large number of bound morphemes in English which are categorized into

two main types: prefixes, suffixes.

1. Prefixes

Prefixes are bound morphemes that are attached at the beginning of a root.

Ex: inaccurate, unkind, discontinue, rewrite, ex-major, impossible, malfunction …

All prefixes in English are lexical morphemes which carry lexical meanings. Thus,

there are many groups of English prefixes according to their own meanings, e.g.

negative prefixes (un-, non-, dis- …), prefixes of degree and size (super-, out-, over-,

sub-), prefixes of attitude (co-, anti-, counter-), prefixes of time and order (fore-, pre-,

post-), number prefixes (bi-, multi-, poly-, mono-) …

2. Suffixes

Suffixes are bound morphemes that follow the root.

Ex: childhood, kindness, refusal, friendly, singing, worked, toys, plays…

There are two kinds of suffixes in English which are derivational suffixes and

inflectional suffixes. Derivational suffixes are those that can influence the meaning and

change the word class of the word they are added in. Inflectional suffixes, in contrast,

are grammatical morphemes which carry only the grammatical information of the word.

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Ex:

Derivational Suffixes

fail (v) => failure (n)

refuse (v) => refusal (n)

hope (n) => hopeful (a)

act (n) => active (a)

weak (a) => weaken (v)

civil (a) => civilize (v)

Inflectional Suffixes

There are eight types of inflectional suffixes in English (Nguyen, 2004, p. 22):

a) The noun possessive morpheme: {-s1}: Bill’s

b) The noun plural morpheme: {-s2}: cars

c) The verb present third person singular morpheme: {-s3}: flies

d) The verb present participle morpheme: {-ing1}: singing

e) The verb past tense morpheme: {-ed1}: ended

f) The verb past participle morpheme: {-ed2}: worked

g) Comparative morpheme: {-er}: nicer

h) Superlative morpheme: {-est}: nicest

Like prefixes, English suffixes can be categorized into four groups according to

the part of speech: noun suffixes, verb suffixes, adjective suffixes, and adverb suffixes.

Since its words consist of many morphemes and have the main structure: root +

affix morphemes, it is not always easy to identify morphemes in English. Therefore,

according to many linguists, it is easier for us to recognize English words than its

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morphemes. Besides, since it is a synthetic languages, there are fewer free

morphemes occurring alone as a word in English than other languages, especially

isolating ones.

In English, morphemes can be bigger, smaller or equal to syllables.

Ex:

manager => Morpheme: manage, -er

Syllable: ma- + -na + -ger

Superman => Morpheme: super, man

Syllable: su- + -per+ -man

Eye => Morpheme: eye

Syllable: eye

Vietnamese Morphemes

Unlike English, Vietnamese belongs to isolating language which has words

composed by single morpheme. That means a single word in Vietnamese often

contains only one morpheme which is also the word. From this, we can know that nearly

all morphemes in Vietnamese as well as in isolating languages are free morphemes and

they functions as single words (nhà, đất, nước, sự, cuộc, việc, đã, sẽ, đang …)

Vietnamese bound morphemes are still exist but in a very limited number and

very different from English. Firstly, they are separated words that cannot occur alone to

form words. Generally, they function as reduplicative elements (đo đỏ, xanh xanh, lưa

thưa, lạch bạch …). Secondly, they are nearly all suffixes and only carry lexical

information.

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Vietnamese words are not formed by root + affix morphemes like English.

Instead, it is the combination of separated words which have the relationship with each

other in meaning to form a new word. For example, “bố” + “mẹ” are the two separated

words which have their own meanings when standing alone. Spontaneously, these two

words have a relationship with each other since each of them refers to the person who

brings up a child. Therefore, when we put them together, we will have a new word “bố

mẹ”.

Since the boundary between words and morphemes in Vietnamese are unclear

and blurred, it is very easy for us to be mistaken about these two units. The easiest unit

that can be recognized in Vietnamese is syllables. All Vietnamese syllables are equal to

morphemes, and a large amount of them are even equal to words.

Let take a look at the table below and you will see the differences between syllables and

morphemes in English and Vietnamese:

Vietnamese English

Syllable Morpheme Syllable Morpheme

Tổ + quốc Tổ + quốc Na- + -tion Nation

Sản + xuất Sản + xuất Pro- + -duct product

Đọc + giả Đọc + giả Rea- + -der Read + -er

Năng + xuất Năng +xuất Pro-+ -duc + -ti+ -vi+ -ty Product + -iv(e)+ -ity

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Conclusion

For some Vietnamese people, learning English is definitely not an easy task.

They can encounter many difficulties that will keep them from mastering this language.

As people all know, one of those difficulties is its new vocabulary items. When meeting

a new vocabulary, some people usually lean on the dictionary for meaning. Others will

try to predict it through the context. These ways are actually good but can waste us a lot

of time for looking up or reading the whole sentences or paragraphs. Therefore, if we

know another effective way to understand difficult words in English, our learning must

be much easier. Through what I have mentioned about morphemes in this paper, I think

you can figure out what the method I want to say here is. Since you have already known

that English words are formed by smaller morphemes, which you probably know their

meanings before, it can help you predict and guess the meaning of the new words

effectively without wasting too much time. And once you can make a clear distinction

about English and Vietnamese word structure, you will feel more comfortable when

writing or translating both languages. Therefore, learning word structure in English as

well as other languages are very important and must be taught to students in order to

acquire the language easily.

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References

Elearning.khoaanh: Word Formation in English and Vietnamese. Retrieved November

23, 2009, from page 5 at

http://elearning.khoaanh.net/file.php/6/Topic_5_CA_Principles_and_Methodology

/4A05_Le_Truong_My_Loc_Word_Formation_in_English_and_Vietnamese.pdf

Le, Q. T. (2004). Nghiên cứu đối chiếu các ngôn ngữ. Ha Noi: Ha Noi National

University Press

Nguyen, H. L. (2004). An Outline of Morphology. Ho Chi Minh City: University of

Education Press

Nguyen, T. G., Doan, T. T., & Nguyen, M. T. Dẫn luận ngôn ngữ học. Ho Chi Minh City:

Educational Publisher

StateMaster – Encyclopedia. (n.d). Word. Retrieved December 28,2009, from

http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Word

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APPENDIX

Common English Prefixes

Prefix Meaning Example

a-, an- without amoral

ante- before antecedent

anti- against anticlimax

auto- self autopilot

circum- around circumvent

co- with copilot

com-, con- with companion, contact

contra- against contradict

de- off, away from devalue

dis- not disappear

en- put into enclose

ex- out of, former extract, ex-president

extra- beyond, more than extracurricular

hetero- different heterosexual

homo- same homonym

hyper- over, more hyperactive

il-, im-, in-, ir- not, without illegal, immoral,

inconsiderate, irresponsible

in- into insert

inter- between intersect

intra- between intravenous

macro- large macroeconomics

micro- small microscope

mono- one monocle

non- not, without nonentity

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omni- all, every omniscient

post- after postmortem

pre-, pro- before, forward precede, project

sub- under submarine

syn- same time synchronize

trans- across transmit

tri- three tricycle

un- not unfinished

uni- one unicorn

Common English Suffixes

1. Noun Suffixes

Suffix Meaning Example

-acy state or quality privacy

-al act or process of refusal

-ance, -ence state or quality of maintenance, eminence

-dom place or state of being freedom, kingdom

-er, -or one who trainer, protector

-ism doctrine, belief communism

-ist one who chemist

-ity, -ty quality of veracity

-ment condition of argument

-ness state of being heaviness

-ship position held fellowship

-sion, -tion state of being concession, transition

2. Verb Suffixes

Suffix Meaning Example

-ate become eradicate

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-en become enlighten

-ify, -fy make or become terrify

-ize, -ise become civilize

3. Adjective Suffixes

Suffix Meaning Example

-able, -ible capable of being edible, presentable

-al pertaining to regional

-esque reminiscent of picturesque

-ful notable for fanciful

-ic, -ical pertaining to musical, mythic

-ious, -ous characterized by nutritious, portentous

-ish having the quality of fiendish

-ive having the nature of creative

-less without endless

-y characterized by sleazy

4. Adverb Suffixes

Suffix Meaning Example

-ly like boldly, wisely, freely

-way, -ways In (such) a way, course,

direction, manner

Straightway, anyway,

always

-wise Manner, mode likewise, otherwise

-ward, -wards turning to homeward, backward,

upwards, towards