we're now going to move from the subject
of phonology to the subject of
morphology
we're going to consider two types of
morphemes bound morphemes and free morphemes
now first we have to establish
exactly what morphology is you remember
that the phonemes were the smallest
parts of speech
the part of speech or of language
i should say that on their own don't
mean anything
well now we're going to move to the
meaningful parts so phonemes are put
together in ways that predictably mean
things that are used that are recognized
that have recognizable meanings
so when we think about, I don't know, the
T sound in English it doesn't have a
recognizable meaning but when we look at
the ER sound the er sound in English
then we say wait that does have a
recognizable meaning because when it's
put at the end of an adjective like
pretty prettier or big bigger
then we notice that that predictably
means a comparison or when it's put at
the end of a verb like dance dancer or a
singer the singer then we notice that it
means the person who does something so
we say oh when those phonemes the
building blocks are put together into
meaningful patterns patterns that always
represent these these same ideas then we
say they are morphemes so more things
can be considered into different
categories
free morphemes are morphemes that can
be used on their own to have meaning
we call these words are signs I don't
need to say anything else other than
book for you to have the idea of a book
or other than sit for you to have the
idea of sit by themselves they can occur
book can be used alone
but other morphemes can't be used alone you have to
use them in a context they have to be
attached to particular morphemes for
instance the ER morpheme that we were
talking about in English you can't just
say er to mean more
no it has to come be attached to 
another word has to be attached to
pretty
or too big then once it's attached
together then you could use it prettier
bigger these morphemes are what are
called bound morphemes are more things
that cannot be used alone
they have to be bound to or attached to
other morphemes and just as we have free
and bound morphemes in spoken language
we have free and bound morphemes in
sign languages as well now we can
further divide free morphemes and
bound morphemes into categories
free morphemes can be divided into
different types of words that can be
used since free morphemes are by in large
words then we can say free morphemes
can be nouns or adjectives or adverbs or
verbs and bound morphemes can also be
divided into particular types we have
inflectional morphemes which are
grammatical morphemes and derivational
morphemes which are grammatical
morphemes that change the part of speech
inflectional morphemes don't change the
part of speech whereas derivational
morphemes do so we'll take a look at
that in just a moment let's first go
back to these free morphemes and
consider different types of free
morphemes now you might need to go back
to your grammar book to re-familiarize
yourself with with parts of speech
we have nouns verbs adjectives adverbs
conjunctions and interjections you're
also going to learn about a few other
types of parts of speech
for example determiners which you
probably have never heard of before
because most English grammar classes
don't cover them
but remember these are just instances of
free morphemes morphemes that can be
used on their own and we call them words
or signs bound morphemes in spoken
language can either come before in the
middle of or at the end of free
morphemes so you can take the word arange which is a free morpheme and put a
prefix to it rearranged or prearranged
or you can put a suffix on it
arrangement you can also put a sometimes
an infix which is pretty rare in English
we actually tend to only use curse words
that we sort of put
in the middle of other words
we'll say something like oh pardon my
language
unfucking believable and you put that infix in the middle of a word
this is different ways that bound
morphemes can be used in spoken
languages before in the middle of or at the end of now as I mentioned bound
morphemes come in two types derivational
morphemes change the part of speech
so if you have a verb like relax then
you can add the ending tion or sometimes
ation and that will change the verb
into a noun
relax becomes relaxation create becomes
creation and populate becomes population
so by adding the tion or the ation at
the end of a word you change it from a
verb to a noun
that's a derivational morpheme it
changes the part of speech now
inflectional morphemes don't change the
part of speech but they assign some
particular grammatical property to the
word in English for instance we have the
S ending that we use to make nouns
plural
we have the ing sound that we add to
verbs to take run and change it to
running for the ED sound that changes walk in to walked to make the past tense
these are inflectional index if you ever
took spanish you probably learned lots
of inflectional endings as you are
learning for the verb endings of i love
you love he loves amo amas ama or in the
past tense ame amaste amo
endings that change the meaning of the
word that change the particular
grammatical property of the word
these are inflectional morphemes
so you might think well ASL doesn't have
any of these things I understand how ASL
has free morphemes it has individual
signs that function like words but it
wouldn't have any of these bound
morphemes either derivational or
inflectional I wouldn't know how to even
recognize those but it turns out ASL
does have bound for themes
let's take a look at a few of them
notice how in verbs you can change the
movement of the verb
so you can sign the sign TO GO or you
can repeat that movement in a
back-and-forth motion which means to go
again and again or you can make a
circular movement or add a circular
movement to a verb
you can take the verb TO WORK but if you
sign it with a large circular movement
it means to work for a long time so
these movements that can be assigned to
verbs are bound inflectional morphemes
they're inflectional because they don't
change the part of speech but they're
bound because they have to be used as a
part of the free morpheme WORK
you can't just do the circular movement
on its own to mean for a long time
it has to be part of the verb TO WORK
you can't just do the back-and-forth
movement of GO to mean for a long time you
have to sign GO with the back-and-forth
movement as a part of it
the movement is incorporated or bound
into the sign and that's why we say
that movement in verbs are inflectional
another bound inflectional morphemes
are facial markers that we can add to
verbs
so we can add the the tongue out or the
bared teeth and each of these changes the
the grammatical use of the verb without
changing the part of speech
similarly with adjectives we can change
both the movement or the facial
expression of the adjective
so you can sign is to be SICK or if you
do this with a tense movement that then
goes quickly to be VERY SICK
you can sign FAST or if you go from
tense - quick VERY FAST
similarly you can change the movement
the meaning of adjectives for example
you can sign BIG with the cha facial
expression to be VERY BIG or with the
the facial expression that shows just
the lips pursed together which means the
sort of big now these have all been
inflectional morphemes but in ASL we
also have derivational morphemes morphemes
that change the part of speech
for instance if you take a verb like the
verb to SIT and make it with a smaller
double movement then you've created the
noun CHAIR if you take the verb FLY
which is a big movement and you do it
in a quick small movement then you
you change FLY to AIRPLANE so by
changing the movement you've added a
bound morpheme to the sign FLY and
you've changed the part of speech which
is why we say it's a derivational morpheme
you've made a verb fly into a noun
airplane another derivational morpheme
that we have is the person marker
dance - dancer now up until recently
this was a bound morpheme because no one
used that sign that person marker alone
it had to be bound you
couldn't just sign it that way you have to
sign it with Ps and if you signed it
with Ps then it meant person but if you signed it
with just the straight hands it had to be
used with a verb dancer teacher
learner but people have sort of revived
an older use of that sign and so now
they use that sign alone so I'm not sure
that we can still consider it a bound
morpheme because it can be used by
itself to just mean person
now even though 30 years ago it was
never used on its own so we will still
consider that a derivation bound
morpheme but it's a little questionable
because sometimes it's used alone now so
maybe that person marker can be
considered a free morpheme now that's ok
languages change and the
category of morphemes change as well as the language of evolves
