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Lexical, Functional, Derivational, and Inflectional Morphemes

In our last post on Free vs. Bound Morphemes, we looked at the two main categories of morphemes, free and bound morphemes. Today, we will be looking at some more specific categories of morphemes.

To review, let me go over what a morpheme is again. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning or grammatical function within a language. The two main categories, free and bound morphemes, each have two sub-categories under them: 

Categories of free morphemes

Lexical morphemes

Morphemes that carry the content or meaning of the messages that we are conveying. In order to identify a lexical morpheme, ask yourself this: “If this morpheme was deleted, would I not be able to understand the main message of this sentence?” If the answer is yes, then you have a lexical morpheme.

Examples of lexical morphemes: follow, type, look, yellow, act, pick, strange

Functional morphemes

Morphemes that do not carry the content of a message, but rather help the grammar of the sentence function. These free morphemes can be identified by asking yourself this question: “If this morpheme was deleted, would I still be able to understand the main message of this sentence?” If the answer is yes, then you have a functional morpheme.

Examples of functional morphemes: but, when, near, above, in, the, that, them, if

Categories of bound morphemes

Derivational morphemes

Morphemes that transform words into different grammatical categories from the root word (a free morpheme). These morphemes transform words into different parts of speech. In order to identify a derivational morpheme, ask yourself this question: “If this morpheme was added, would it change the part of speech of this word?” If the answer is yes, then you have a derivational morpheme.

Examples of derivational morphemes: -ful, -ness, -less, -ly, -y, -ish, -ment

care = noun
care + ful = adjective

Kind = adjective
kind + ness = noun

Inflectional morphemes

Morphemes that indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word, such as changing a word into a plural or possessive form. In order to identify an inflectional morpheme, ask yourself this: “By adding this bound morpheme, does it keep the word in the same grammatical category, but change some aspect of it?” If the answer is yes, then you have an inflectional morpheme. English only has 8 inflectional morphemes.

Examples of inflectional morphemes: 

Nouns: -‘s, ‘s
Verbs: -s, -ing, -ed, -en
Adjectives: -er, -est

Are you ready to identify these different sub-categories of morphemes? See if you can test your knowledge by reading the sentence below and labeling the morphemes into these 4 sub-categories. The answer is written at the bottom of this post.

Try it! 

The teacher’s frankness shocked the boy’s parents. 

Now, see if you can determine what type of morphemes are in the sentence. There are 13 total morphemes. When you’re ready to check your answer, read the correct response below. 

Answer:
The – functional
teach – lexical
-er – derivational
‘s – inflectional
frank – lexical
-ness – derivational
shock – lexical
-ed – inflectional
the – functional
boy – lexical
‘s – inflectional
parent – lexical
-s – inflectional

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