English Morphology Exercises - Part 1

English morphology exercises about: open and closed class words, word root and stem, syntactic category, suffixes, prefixes, affixes, free and bound morphemes, compound words and word formation process in English.

Exercise 1                     Answers

Fill in the table using words from the text below:

“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words . . . the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.”

MARK TWAIN

Open class words	Closed class words
............................ ............................	............................ ............................

Exercise 2                     Answers

Identify the root in these words by underlining it and state which syntactic category it belongs to:

Example: faster: adjective.

a. hushes
b. kindness
c. fried
d. gamers
e. heavily
f. grandfathers

Exercise 3                     Answers

A. Identify the suffixes by underlining them:

a. singing
b. unhappy
c. mechanism
d. trousers
e. brother
f. blackboard

B. Identify the prefixes by underlining them:

a. rewarded
b. misfortune
c. establish
d. submit
e. strawberry
f. abnormal

Exercise 4                     Answers

Identify the free morphemes in the following words by underlining them:

a. kissed
b. freedom
c. stronger
d. follow
e. awe
f. goodness
g. talkative
h. teacher
i. actor.

Exercise 5 (From studylib.net)                     Answers

Divide the following into free and bound sets:

ation, nation, pre, post, angle, ible, infra, out

Free sets	Bound sets
............................ ............................	............................ ............................

Exercise 6  (From studylib.net)                     Answers

Separate the affixes from the stems in the following words:
Example: faster = fast + er

Trains, succeeded, lighter, predetermined, retroactive, confusions, instructional.


Exercise 7   (From : https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/sound/chapter5.pdf)      Answers

Use the words that you think are relevant to answer the following questions:

a. Can a morpheme be represented by a single phoneme? Give examples. By more than one phoneme? Give examples.

b. Can a free morpheme be more than one syllable in length? Give examples. Can a bound morpheme? Give examples.

c. Does the same letter or phoneme-or sequence of letters or phonemes- always represent the same morpheme? Why or why not?
(Hint: you must refer to the definition of morpheme to be able to answer this.)

d. Can the same morpheme be spelled differently? Give examples.

e. Can different morphemes be pronounced identically? Give examples.

f. A morpheme is basically the same as:

i. a letter
ii. a sound
iii. a group of sounds
iv. none of the above

Exercise 8   (From studylib.net)                     Answers

Compounds are often frequent in modern technical areas where new vocabulary is being created. Find the compounds in the following passage:

Free Talker

Nokia 610 Car Kit

The cell phone stays by your side -- instead of your ear -- with Nokia's hands-free Bluetooth system. An unobtrusive dash-mounted screen provides the same information as your cell-phone display, and you can effortlessly download contact info from your phone.
A small console-mounted control unit with three intuitive buttons and a dial is but one way to manage calls and messages, which sound off through your car's speakers: Choose to use Nokia's decent voice-recognition software and neither hand has to leave the wheel.

www.nokia.com

Exercise 9                     Answers

Complete the process and identify the type of word formation in English:

Influenza	flu	Clipping
Teleprinter, exchanger	telex	..............
Megabyte	meg	..............
Random access memory	RAM	..............
A progress	To progress	..............
Black,board	Blackboard	..............
United States of America	USA	..............
Compact disc	CD	..............
Act	action	..............