How words are made: Morphenes (roots and affixes)

Review:

Words are built with morphenes

Morphemes are the smallest form paired with a paricular meaning. You can't make a morpheme smaller.

Morphemes can be tricky.
-morphemes are not necessarily unique to a word; they can show up in many different words (pedal, pedestrian from the latin meaning foot)

-morphemes can sometimes have more than one meaning (e.g., "in" in "invade" means "into" and "in" in "incapable" means "not")

-meanings can sometimes have more than one morpheme (e.g., "a" and "an" both mean "not")
-morphemes are not necessarily only one syllable (e.g., pregnant is pre-gn-ant=before-birth-one who and is two syllables)

Morphemes have two kinds: root and affix

1. Root: free and bound

-Root morphemes have a particular meaning that is fairly constant.

-Every word has to have at least one root morpheme.

-Roots can occur anywere in a word (whereas affixes have more fixed positions).

-Root morphemes do more work than affixes because they carry the most conceptual meaning (for example: pter means wing)

(a) Free roots are independent and stand on their own or join other morphemes (e.g., blue and berry and blueberry)

(b) Bound roots are dependent and can never stand alone (e.g., rasp and cran have to be used with berry)

2. Affix: prefix and suffix

Affixes are always bound roots

You can change the meaning of a root morphene by attaching affix morphenes or by adding another root morphene.

What are affix morphenes? morphenes that aren't words by themselves (bound morphenes)
How does it work? changes the meaning of a word by its position.
What positions can it take? before (prefix, pre-RM) orafter (sufix, RM-suf)
Affix=root morpheme attach either before (prefix) or after (suffix) a word stem
prefix=affix attached before a root morpheme
suffix=affix attached after a root morpheme

What are compound words? Two root morphenes (with or without affixes) which together form a new word
How does it work? the meaninng of both root morphenes changes when they are attached together
What positions do root morphenes take? endocentric (head and modifier, doghouse), exocentric (head and head, white-collar)
What do compounds look like?
1. attached together (solid or closed): shorter words like doghouse, wallpaper
2. hyphenated: (a) ADJ-ADJ (e.g., blue-green); (b) V-V (e.g., freeze-dry) (c) CW-CW-suf (e.g., house-builder); (d) RP-ART-RP (e.g., salt-and-pepper shaker)
3. open or spaced (e.g., lawn bowling)

Can affixes change the meaning of compound words as well? yes
What positions do affixes take? in the middle (interfix, CW-IF-CW, speed-o-metre)

Sources:

Excellent explanations

Compound words
Most common suffixes and prefixes
Greek and Latin Roots

Smaller list of Greek and Latin roots/prefixes/suffixes