Null morpheme - Citizendia

In morpheme-based morphology, a null morpheme is a morpheme that is realized by a phonologically null affix (an empty string of phonological segments). Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words In Morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word In simpler terms, a null morpheme is an "invisible" affix. It's also called zero morpheme; the process of adding a null morpheme is called null affixation, null derivation or zero derivation. The concept was first used over two thousand years ago by Pāṇini in his Sanskrit grammar. Pāṇini ( IAST: Pāṇini Dēvanāgarī: sa पाणिनि a Patronymic meaning "descendant of {{IAST|Paṇi}} " was an ancient Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Grammar is the field of Linguistics that covers the Rules governing the use of any given natural language. (Some linguists object to the notion of a null morpheme, since it sets up (they say) an unverifiable distinction between a "null" or "zero" element, and nothing at all. )

The null morpheme is represented as either the figure zero (0), the empty set symbol ø, or its variant Ø. In Mathematics, and more specifically Set theory, the empty set is the unique set having no ( Zero) members

Examples in English include hiatus and co-operation.

The existence of a null morpheme in a word can also be theorized by contrast with other forms of the same word showing alternate morphemes. A word is a unit of Language that carries meaning and consists of one or more Morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together and has a Phonetic For example, the singular number of English nouns is shown by a null morpheme that contrasts with the plural morpheme -s. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States

cat = cat + -Ø = ROOT ("cat") + SINGULAR
cats = cat + -s = ROOT ("cat") + PLURAL

In addition, there are some cases in English where a null morpheme indicates plurality in nouns that take on irregular plurals.

sheep = sheep + -Ø = ROOT ("sheep") + SINGULAR
sheep = sheep + -Ø = ROOT ("sheep") + PLURAL

Also, a null morpheme marks the present tense of verbs in all forms but the third person singular:

(I) run = run + -Ø = ROOT ("run") + PRESENT: Non-3rd-SING
(He) runs = run + -s = ROOT ("run") + PRESENT: 3rd-SING

According to some linguists' view, it's also a null morpheme that turns some English adjectives into verbs of the kind of to clean, to slow, to warm. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the Null derivation, also known as conversion if the word class changes, is very common in English. In Linguistics, conversion, also called zero derivation, is a kind of Word formation; specifically it is the creation of a Word In Grammar, a lexical category (also word class, lexical class, or in traditional grammar part of speech) is a linguistic category of words (or

In languages that show the above distinctions, it's quite common to employ null affixation to (not) mark singular number, present tense and third persons (English is unusual in its marking of the third person singular with a non-zero morpheme, by contrast with a null morpheme for others). A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them It's also frequent to find null affixation for the least-marked cases (the nominative in nominative-accusative languages, and the absolutive in ergative-absolutive languages). Markedness is a linguistic concept that developed out of the Prague School (also known as the Prague linguistic circle) In Grammar, the case of a Noun or Pronoun indicates its Grammatical function in a greater Phrase or Clause; such as the The nominative case is a Grammatical case for a Noun, which generally marks the subject of a Verb, as opposed to its object or other A nominative-accusative Language (or simply accusative language) is one that marks the direct object of Transitive verbs distinguishing them In Ergative-absolutive languages the absolutive ( abbreviated ABS) is the Grammatical case used to mark both the subject of an An ergative-absolutive Language (or simply ergative language is a language that treats the argument (" subject " of an Intransitive

In most languages of the world these are the affixes that are realized as null morphemes. But in some cases roots may also be realized as these. The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents For instance, Russian word вы-Ø-ну-ть (vynut', to take out) consists of one prefix (вы-), one zero root (-Ø-), one suffix (-ну-), and one postfix (-ть). Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word

A basic radical element plus a null morpheme is not the same as an uninflected word, though usage may make those equal in practice. In the context of linguistic morphology, an uninflected word is a Word that has no morphological markers ( Inflection) such as Affixes

See also