Morphology In The English Language

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Morphology Morphology is the subdivision of grammar that deals with the internal structure of words (Katamba, 1). The words can then be subdivided into smaller meaningful units called morphemes. Two different types of morpheme exists the bound morpheme which cannot stand by itself and the free morpheme which can stand alone (Rowe and Levine 88). Thus, Morphology plays a major role in linguistic analysis since its role is to produce and build thousands of English words. It assists the English writer to formulate words on a daily basis, and gives you an idea of how to structure and form new words by following the English rules and regulations. In an interview with Raquel Manzanilla conducted on September 15, 2016, she used derivational and inflectional…show more content…
in 'cat-s', 'talk-ed', '-s' an d'-ed' are inflectional suffixes). Inflection is viewed as the process of adding very general meanings to existing words, not as the creation of new words. During the interview with Raquel she said, “corn tortilla” instead of corn tortillas (Borland and Moro 4). She failed to add an –s which is an inflectional suffix to make the word plural. Raquel’s speech lacks the importance of adding prefixes and suffixes. Another instance in which Raquel failed to add the suffix –ed is when she stated, “where I work for five months” (Borland and Moro 4). Raquel should have used the past tense by adding the suffix –ed converting the word “work” to a verb. There were several other instances in which Raquel made these same errors. This indicates that she has problems with use of inflectional morphemes, and is not conscious that she needs to apply the correct inflectional morpheme to demonstrate her knowledge of subject and verb agreement, use of the comparative degree, and correct use of the…show more content…
It analyzes the sound patterns of a particular language bydetermining which phonetic sounds are significant, andexplaining how these sounds are interpreted by the native speaker” (Marlett 1). Based on an interview with Ms. Raquel Manzanillaon 15th September 2016 she was asked to pronounce the following five words: See, verb, that, pill and real.Someissues relating to her pronunciation of the words are indebted to initial and medially pronunciation of sounds. This is an issue or pattern that exists because of her second language acquisition process and how the Spanish language stresses the “ee” sounds in their language. It is also possible that her recognition of the letter is off and therefore she blends the first vowel or stresses more on the first vowel in the word “real.” For example, when Raquel was asked to pronounce the word “real” her pronunciation of the word was “reel.” Her pronunciation problem was the medially sound and the stress of the “e” as a double. However, when asked to pronounce the word “pill”, Raquel changed the “I” sound to produce the word, “peel.” This pattern originated from her first language and is constituted to the fact that in Spanish the “I” comes before the “e” in words such as “piel.” Ms. Raquel also made an error when pronouncing the word “see.” She transcribed the word “see” as “cee” by changing the initial sound of the word which is a common mistake because
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