Morphemes Are Marvelous

1. Morphemes Are Marvelous CONNBIDA Conference October 21, 2011 Susan Santora, M.S., F/AOGPE Director, Learning House

2. What is a Morpheme? A morpheme is a smallest meaningful unit in a language. It relates meaning and ideas. Identify how many and what are the morphemes in the words below? How do they relate meaning? • cats • example • transportation • brown • browning • hypodermic • nephew • melodiously

3. cats • example • transportation • brown • browning • hypodermic • nephew • melodiously • 2 cat s • 2 ex ample • 3 trans port tion • 1 brown • 2 brown ing • 3 hypo dermic • 1 nephew • 3 melodiously

4. Base and Root The Difference between Base and Root: • Base refers to the morphological base of a word stripped of its affixes. For example: spell from misspell or spelling  • Base word can also refer to a complete English word, such as cough • Root refers to a word part from an original language, such as Latin or Greek. For example, plex(complex) therm (thermos)

5. Why Teach Morphology? • Morphology builds word reading, aids spelling, and develops vocabulary and comprehension   • Between the third and seventh grade, most students learn from 2,800 to 26,000 words and most new words are encountered through reading • Words with affixes (prefix, suffix, root) outnumber single-morpheme words by a ratio of four to one in written text • Derived words (Ex: spect: (look, watch) inspect, spectator, suspect) with affixes are somewhat more numerous among words of lower frequency and must be deciphered from repeated reading in text as well as learning word structure and word derivation.  

6. Continued….. • When students learn word structure and word origins: • they increase their word structure knowledge • gain metacognitive skills by discussing, reflecting upon, and monitoring their decoding and spelling • increase the strategies available for decoding and spelling and • Improve their reading and spelling performance.   • More than 80% of derived words mean what their part suggests if multiple meanings of parts are taken into account.  • Latin & Greek derived words account for 60% of the content words in textbooks.

7. Origin of English Words English words originate from 3 time periods: • Old English 449 – 1066 CE • Middle English 1066 - 1500 • Present Era 1500 – Present The most common influence was from Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Greeklanguages.

8. Old English - The Angles, Saxons, and Jute tribes arrive in England and the Anglo – Saxon language becomes prominent. The language of the Vikings, Old Norse, and the Latin language are other influences Middle English – The Norman-French invade England and Latin becomes a strong influence on English, along with French Modern English – Exploration and colonization brought new words from many different languages and the Greek influence was strong

9. Anglo Saxon influence: The most common words in printed text are: • of Anglo Saxon origin • learned first for reading and spelling as sight words • the least likely to be affixed, except for inflected suffixes: s/es, ed, ing, er, est • about 20-25% of words in Modern English Examples: the, and, one, of, he, this, red, cow, play, come, chest, does, pick, hook, knife, gnat, thimble

10. Latin influence: • The Romans ruled most of the countries in Europe and the Latin language established the foundation for many of the languages. About 60% of modern English comes from Latin. • Most words of religion, legal system, and government, come from Latin religion: angel, savior, trinity, monastery legal system: defendant, citation, parliament government: constitution, parliament, president

11. Greek influence: • About 10% of English words are of Greek origin • The Greeks introduced many scientific and scholarly words • They are referred to as Greek combining forms: bio sphere, phonology, hydro gen • Greek words can be identified by characteristic letter and letter combinations, such as: ph (graph), chas /k/ (chorus), th (athlete), medial y (cycle), silent p (psychology)

12. Number of Words • English – 1 million words • English has the largest vocabulary mostly due to historical invasions and intermarriage of tribes and countries within English territory over time • William Shakespeare added over 1700 words to the English language. • German – 184,000 words • French/Russian – 100,000 words

13. What Language of Origin did Shakespeare Use? • amazement • bet • beached • invulnerable • metamorphize • gnarled • discontent • olympian

14. What Language of Origin did Shakespeare Use? • amazement • bet • beached • invulnerable • metamorphize • gnarled • discontent • olympian • Latin • Anglo-Saxon • Anglo-Saxon • Latin • Greek • Anglo-Saxon • Latin • Greek

15. Knowledge of Morphemes Informs Instruction • Anglo-Saxon words are taught in the early grades - Kindergarten –Grade 3 • Latin words become very important once science and history are formally taught - Grade 4 • Greek combining forms, provide deeper levels of science and social studies topics – Grade 8 • French - College

16. Reading Instruction We divide words by morpheme mis] cell/an/e [ous hemi] [sphere dys] lex/ i/a tact] ful [ness un] super] vis [ed frater] ni/za [tion techno] [cracy

17. Free and Bound Morphemes Free Morphemes Base words that stand alone cat desk people house Compound words have two free morphemes afternoon flashlight Bound Morphemes Prefixes, roots, suffixes and combining forms precipitation centimeter Bound morphemes cannot stand alone; they must combine with other morphemes to make a word.

18. We teach vocabulary with morphemes wordrootkey wordmeaning spectacle:spect spectator view, watch a spectacle is something watched juxtapose:juxta next next to pose pose position to juxtapose, something is placed close to something else

19. Use index cards front back KeywordMeaning preview before pre-

20. We increase vocabulary with morpheme derivatives port = carry export exporter exports exported exporting exportation exportable exportability portable import report portage porter transport deportation support

21. Morphemes improve reading comprehension …there were successive movements in France for remodeling of spelling on etymological lines. A simple example is pauvr, which was written for earlierpovre an imitation of Latin pauper. Such spellings were particularly favored in legal language, because lawyers’ clerks were paid for writing by the inch and superfluous letters provided a useful source of income. A History of English Spelling, D.G. Scragg,(2011)

22. Spelling Instruction Latin and Greek morphemes are typically easier to spell than Anglo-Saxon words • Anglo-Saxon words are usually 1 syllable , yet have difficult spellings, such as: vowel teams (ai, ea, oo, ow), silent letters (kn, gn, wr) and varied consonant spellings (final /k/, /d/, /ch) • Latin has fewer “clues” for spelling, such as: -ct, pt, soft c, -tion/-sion, tas/ch/, das /j/ • learning rules to add Latin suffixes facilitates spelling • Greek words have even fewer spelling clues, such as: ph, ch as /k/, long words with k, medial y

23. Spelling Instruction We spell by morphemes discussion - /shun/ is spelled –sion because it is added to a root ending with –s or –ss accredit – assimilated prefix accounts for the double c’s ac = ad (to) credit: to give credit

24. Difficult Words to Read and Spell The most difficult words to read and spell are words with derivational suffixes that make a change in the base word spelling and pronunciation. - J. Carlisle • Spelling change: slipped, sensible, happiest, occurrence • Phonological change: resignation, electricity, autumnal • Both spelling and phonological: sanity, sublimation, finality, injurious

25. What makes morphemes so marvelous? • They’re fun! • They expand vocabulary enormously! • They assist reading comprehension! • They’re easier to spell than Anglo-Saxon words! • They can be taught systematically and from easy to more difficult! • They empower students!!

26. Morphology Study Knowledge of Morphologically Complex Words: A Developmental Study of Older Children and Young Adolescents by Marilyn A. Nippold, Lei Sun, University of Oregon, Eugene Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools:Vol 39, 365-373, American Speech-Language Hearing Association

27. Findings • Concrete nouns (piano, strawberries, plate) are easier to learn than abstract (conclusion, invention, tactfulness) nouns. • Derived nouns (-ship, -ment, -ness) are more difficult than derived adjectives (-less, -ful, -ic, able) • Students benefit from explicit instruction of morphemes, their meaning, and influence on parts of speech

28. Credits: • Word Detective, Suzanne Carreker, Neuhaus Education Center www.neuhaus.org • Advanced Language Toolkit, Paula Rome and Jean Osmanwww.epsbooks.com • Essential Roots, T. Elli Cross, www.etc-ne.com/ • Unlocking Literacy: Effective Decoding and Spelling Instruction, Marcia Henry • Louisa Cook Moats – various publications

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