Breaking words down in more than one way

There are some cases in which morphemes can be ambiguous.

Take the following word:

unionized

The more familiar meaning is "formed into a union". The other, less commonly known meaning comes from chemistry: "not converted into ions"; it's actually the word ionized with the un- prefix. This is an example of a homograph, as the words can have two pronunciations and different meanings altogether but are spelled the same.

The root words are different: in the first case, it's union, and in the second case it's ion. Here's the morpheme breakdown of both meanings of unionized:

unionized:

union : root word
-ize : changes a noun into a verb (union -> unionize)
-ed : past tense (unionize -> unionized)

unionized:

ion : root word
-ize : changes a noun into a verb (ion -> ionize)
un- : "not" (ionize -> unionize)
-ed : past tense (unionize -> unionized)

In the second case, notice that the order matters: the un- prefix is applied after -ize, as there isn't a word such as "un-ion".

More on morphemes, or meaningful word elements

In the previous post we discussed morphemes, which are the meaningful parts of a word. An interesting fact about these word elements is that the number of morphemes contained in a word is completely independent of the number of syllables in the word.

Here are some two or more syllable words with just one morpheme:

orange
common
relate
corner
every

The above words are polysyllabic but they cannot be broken down into any more meaningful parts. It can get a bit tricky determining what is and isn't a morpheme, such as the -er in corner not being a suffix.


Here are some one syllable words with more than one morpheme:

caught
went
helped
men
its

The above monosyllabic words contain more than one meaningful element. Some of these form their past tense or plurals irregularly as there is no distinguishable suffix added, even though there is more than one morpheme present.

Examining the number of morphemes in a word

Let's examine the morphemes in the word untruthfully:

morpheme	function
true	root word
-th	changes adjective into noun
-ful	changes noun into adjective
-ly	changes adjective into adverb
un-	'not'

There are a total of 5 morphemes in untruthfully: 1 for the root word, 3 suffixes, and 1 prefix.

In general, the root word is a free morpheme; it can be used on its own. The prefixes and suffixes are usually bound morphemes as they must be attached to the root word. In colloquial speech, there are some cases in which bound morphemes can be used alone (which will be a topic covered in the future).

Words with the greatest number of morphemes in English

Words with 4 - 5 morphemes can be quite common:

uncontrollably: 4 ( root word + 1 prefix + 2 suffixes)
recolonizations: 5 (root word + 1 prefix + 3 suffixes)

Antidisestablishmentarianism, commonly thought of as the longest English word, only has 6 (root word + 2 prefixes + 3 suffixes). Can you find any English words containing more morphemes in just one word? Remember that it is not necessarily just the longest word in terms of total number of letters.

The meaningful elements of a word

The study of word structure and formation is called morphology, and the meaningful parts of a word are known as morphemes. Most of the time in English they are represented by prefixes and/or suffixes. Other languages have infixes (insertion in the middle of a word) and circumfixes (added surrounding a word).

The word toys has two meaningful parts, toy and -s. The -s in this case denotes "plural", modifying the root word toy.
In contrast, the word orange has just one meaningful element (the word orange itself). It would not make sense to break it down further into, say, o + range.

There are 2 kinds of morphemes: free and bound.

Free morphemes can stand alone and have meaning independently.
Bound morphemes must be attached to a free morpheme, they cannot be used by themselves! For instance, you can't just go around saying "-s" to mean "plural".

What is the purpose of morphemes?

Morphemes can derive other words by changing their part of speech. The suffix -ful turns a noun into an adjective. The suffix -ly changes an adjective into an adverb.

Morphemes can also change the meaning of a word, like the prefix un- to mean not. The suffix -ed often represents the past tense when attached to a verb. Obviously, there are exceptions in the case of irregular verbs. The suffix -s can represent either plural when attached to a noun, or denotes third person singular when attached to a verb.

How negative prefixes are determined in English

Ever wonder why certain words use im- and others use in- for their negative prefixes?

This topic requires a bit of knowledge on phonetics and phonology, which was initially discussed in this post about phonetics.


im-
Example words: impractical, imbalance, improper, impressive

Notice how words that take the im- negative prefix start with p and b. The p and b sounds are made with the lips, and this is the same place of articulation as the m sound. This is known as assimilation: the place of articulation of the final sound of the prefix ("m") matches the place of articulation of the initial sound of the root word.

in-
Example words: inaccessible, involuntary, insincere, infamous

In most other cases, the in- negative prefix is used. This is because n is an alveolar consonant, pronounced with the tongue against the area just above the upper teeth. Unlike the p and b sounds, this is a central area, and thus the in- prefix can "handle" many other sounds.

il-, ir-
Example words: illogical, illegal, irrational, irresponsible

The l and r sounds are known as liquids. Just like the im- prefix, assimilation happens here. In this case, the l or r is simply doubled up in forming the prefix.

Negative prefixes adding no meaning?

There are words in English that can take a negative prefix, such as in-, and the meaning of that word will remain the same. Is there really a difference in meaning between these such pairs of words? Let's examine a few:

valuable vs. invaluable - These words can have slightly different meanings depending on the situation, although they can be used interchangeably without much difference. Valuable things have a known value, and invaluable things are those "of value too great to be estimated". A good way of remembering this: invaluable items have value that is inestimable.

flammable vs. inflammable - These words have identical meanings. Inflammable actually comes from the root word inflame, and it is not supposed to be a negative prefix. The word inflammable is being phased out, and rightly so; it just isn't worth the safety risks involved.

regardless vs. irregardless - Again, no change in meaning. Considered nonstandard as it is a double negative; the -less suffix already puts it in the negative, no need to add a negative prefix.