INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES: MAIN CHARACTERISTICS - LITERATURE - 2025

The inflections are one of two types of morphemes in the world. These are the ones at the end of the word. Their function is to define the number and the gender.

Morphemes are the fragments of words that are modified to change the meaning. That is, they are the part of the word that is changed to create the word families.

For its part, the lexeme is the fragment of the word that does not vary so that the meaning changes. Together they are the two units that come together so that the word makes sense.

For example, in the word "house" the lexeme is CAS, while the morphemes are the fragments that are added to change its meaning, such as ITA (cas + ita = little house)

Morphemes are studied by morphology, one of the branches of linguistics. The different combinations between lexemes and morphemes are what create the word families.

For example:

- cas + ota = casota

- cas + ero = home

- cas + ucha = hovel

What is an inflectional morpheme?

The inflectional morphemes define the number and gender of the mentioned elements. This implies that the final meaning of the word depends on this morpheme. So part of the coherence of a text depends on these morphemes being well placed in the sentence.

Its meanings are regular and it has few exceptions. For example, the "o" at the end of a word implies that the word is masculine, just as the "s" implies a plural.

In this way they modify the subject, and it is applied to verbs, nouns and adjectives.

Derived morphemes

Derived morphemes are the counterpart of inflectional morphemes. These are not placed at the end of words, but are tied to the lexeme.

Unlike inflectional morphemes, these do not give attributes or modify the word, but change its entire meaning. There are three types of derived morphemes: prefixes, suffixes, and interfixes.

The 2 types of inflectional morphemes

1- Nominal morpheme

These are the ones that apply to nouns or adjectives. Thus they modify the gender and the quantity of these. In Spanish gender is defined by "a" for feminine and "o" for masculine.

- gat + a = cat

- gat + o = cat

While the "s" at the end of the word is indicative of the plural.

- gat + os = cats

- gat + as = cats

2- Verbal morpheme

These are the ones that affect the meaning of verbs, and are defined by verb conjugations.

These are more varied than verb inflectional morphemes. They indicate the time, quantity, people, among other things.

This means that through verbal inflectional morphemes the circumstances in which the verb is executed are defined.

For example:

- corr + er = infinitive verb

- corr + iendo = gerund verb

- corr + ido = verb in participle

- corr + iste = verb in the past, second person singular

References

1. Spanish Morphem. (2013) tes.com
2. A linguistic look at Spanish. (2017) thoughtco.com
3. Glosary of linguistic terms. (2003) people.ds.cam.ac.uk
4. Morfology and Morphems. mathcs.duq.edu
5. Definition of inflectional morphemes. (2001) grammaticas.net