just a warning

this lesson is going to be a little academic

It is intended for high intermediate

to advanced students

This lesson will give you the tools you need

to take 2000 words

and turn the into more than 15 000 words

Trust me

I did it in university

Actually, this is the first in a series of lessons

in which you will learn how to create new words

and understand words that you have never seen before

After this lesson

You will know how to describe the structure

of a word

and you will have the vocabulary that you need

to take yours to the next level

we will cover the terms

'morpheme'

'root'

'affix'

'prefix'

'suffix'

'grammatical suffix'

'derivational suffix'

and 'word family'

The first word we'll cover

is morpheme

This is a word

that is used in linguistics

It is used to describe

a group of sounds that is meaningful

For example,

The word 'morpheme' has two morphemes in it

'morph-' and '-eme'

'morph-' means shape

and '-eme' means meaningful

We know that they are separate

meaningful units

because they can be added to different words

while having the same meaning

For example, 'morph-' is used in the words

'polymorph'

an organism that can take many forms

'metamorphosis'

the process of changing form or shape

'morphology'

the study of morphemes

'morph'

this is a verb that means to change shape

'morphogenesis'

the origin

and development of biological forms

etcetera

The list goes one

'-eme' is a technical is a technical morpheme

it is only used in linguistics

One of the words that uses it is 'phoneme'

'phone-' means sound

and '-eme' means meaningful

So a phoneme is a meaningful sound

in a language

all words are made of morphemes

English uses two types of morphemes

Roots and affixes

roots and affixes

Roots can exist independently

They do not need to be added to anything else

to be used in a sentence

For example, 'eat'

If you try to separate 'ea' or 't'

They have no meaning on their own

Therefore, 'eat' is a root

There are two types of affixes

prefixes

and suffixes

Prefixes are added to the beginning of a root

a suffix is added to the end

It is possible to have several affixes added to one root

For example, the latin root 'civ'

or 'civis-'

means 'citizen', a person who is a member of a state

many affixes can be added onto it

For example, '-il'

This gives us the word 'civil'

it has three meanings

One is belonging to the affairs of a people of a state

For example, 'civil law'

These are the laws that govern citizens

as opposed to members of the military

it can also mean polite

if we add the prefix 'un-'

to create the word 'uncivil'

This means not polite

His behavior was truly uncivil

with the word civil you could add the suffix '-ize'

meaning to make or become

and create the word civilize

which means to make more culturally advanced

adding the suffix '-ed' to this

creates the word 'civilized'

means being in a culturally advanced state

'uncivilized' means not being culturally advanced

and it goes on, we could create many more words

the point is that many roots can take many affixes

and suffixes can be added to other suffixes

to create even more words

Let's slow down for a minute

There are actually two kinds of suffixes

Grammatical and derivational

First, we'll look at grammatical suffixes

Grammatical suffixes do not change the class of a word

So they will not change a verb

to an adjective or a verb to a noun

They simply add grammatical information

a few examples are...

the plural '-s'

one banana

two bananas

the possessive '-'s'

John's banana's

the third person '-s'

John eats banans

These are not all of the grammatical suffixes

but I hope it's enough to help you understand what they are

do not change the class of a word

derivational suffixes do

For example, the adjective 'quik'

can have '-ly' added to it

to create the adverb 'quickly'

here are two example sentences

He had a quick snack

That's an adjective

He ate it quickly

That's an adverb

Learning how to use these suffixes

is one of the keys to speaking English fluently

Before we finish there is one more important idea for us to look at

and that is the word family

A word family is all of the words that can be made

from a single root

Take a look at this verb

'expect'

We can make the noun 'expectation'

We could also make an adjective, 'expectant'

or the adverb, 'expectantly'

Here's another fun word, 'explode'

we could make the noun, 'explosion'

and the adjectives, 'exploded',

'explosive'

and 'explodable'

There is also an adverb,

'explosively'

let's take a look at the noun 'shape'

there is also a verb, 'shape'

this means to give shape to something

there are other nouns, 'shaper',

'shapliness',

and 'shapelessness'

Then we have the adjectives

'shapeable'

'shaped'

'shapely'

and 'shapeless'

Here's a quick summary of what we've learned

in this lesson

you've learned about morphemes

which are a meaningful group of sounds

we've also looked at two types of morphemes in English

The root and the affix

There are two types of affixes

Prefixes and suffixes

Prefixes are added to the beginning of a word

and suffixes are added to the end

Again, there are two types of suffixes

Grammatical and derivational

Grammatical Affixes do not change the class of a word

Derivational suffixes, on the other hand, do change the word's class

Finally, all the different words that can be created

by adding affixes to a root

are called a word family

Mastering word families is one of the keys to English fluenct

Well, that's it folks

Have a great day!