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October 01, 2005
Chapter 3: Morphology
What are the advantages of having morphological modifications to words in a language? Does this make the language easier to learn, more flexible to innovation? How?
The advantages of having morphological modifications to words in a language are numerous and make a language easier to learn. Having morphemes allows the speaker to know more words in the language by learning rules that will change the meaning of the root word slightly. The speaker would only need to learn the root words and all of the possible affixes. For example, if you take the word “mistreatment” the speaker would need to learn the root “treat” and the affixes “mis-” and “-ment.” Then the speaker could apply these affixes to a new root to make another word such as “misalignment” and the speaker’s vocabulary can expand immensely.
-Jessica F.
Posted by lcisfaria at October 1, 2005 05:37 PM