Welcome to this lesson
just a warning
this lesson is going to be a little academic
It is intended for high intermediate 
to advanced students
This lesson will give you the tools you need
to take 2000 words
and turn the into more than 15 000 words
Trust me
I did it in university
Actually, this is the first in a series of lessons
in which you will learn how to create new words
and understand words that you have never seen before
After this lesson
You will know how to describe the structure
of a word
and you will have the vocabulary that you need
to take yours to the next level
we will cover the terms
'morpheme'
'root'
'affix'
'prefix'
'suffix'
'grammatical suffix'
'derivational suffix'
and 'word family'
The first word we'll cover
is morpheme
This is a word
that is used in linguistics
It is used to describe
a group of sounds that is meaningful
For example,
The word 'morpheme' has two morphemes in it
'morph-' and '-eme'
'morph-' means shape
and '-eme' means meaningful
We know that they are separate
meaningful units
because they can be added to different words
while having the same meaning
For example, 'morph-' is used in the words
'polymorph'
an organism that can take many forms
'metamorphosis'
the process of changing form or shape
'morphology'
the study of morphemes
'morph'
this is a verb that means to change shape
'morphogenesis'
the origin
and development of biological forms
etcetera
The list goes one
'-eme' is a technical is a technical morpheme
it is only used in linguistics
One of the words that uses it is 'phoneme'
'phone-' means sound
and '-eme' means meaningful
So a phoneme is a meaningful sound
in a language
all words are made of morphemes
English uses two types of morphemes
Roots and affixes
roots and affixes
Roots can exist independently
They do not need to be added to anything else
to be used in a sentence
For example, 'eat'
If you try to separate 'ea' or 't'
They have no meaning on their own
Therefore, 'eat' is a root
There are two types of affixes
prefixes
and suffixes
Prefixes are added to the beginning of a root
a suffix is added to the end
It is possible to have several affixes added to one root
For example, the latin root 'civ'
or 'civis-'
means 'citizen', a person who is a member of a state
many affixes can be added onto it
For example, '-il'
This gives us the word 'civil'
it has three meanings
One is belonging to the affairs of a people of a state
For example, 'civil law'
These are the laws that govern citizens
as opposed to members of the military
it can also mean polite
if we add the prefix 'un-'
to create the word 'uncivil'
This means not polite
His behavior was truly uncivil
with the word civil you could add the suffix '-ize'
meaning to make or become
and create the word civilize
which means to make more culturally advanced
adding the suffix '-ed' to this
creates the word 'civilized'
means being in a culturally advanced state
'uncivilized' means not being culturally advanced
and it goes on, we could create many more words
the point is that many roots can take many affixes
and suffixes can be added to other suffixes
to create even more words
Let's slow down for a minute
There are actually two kinds of suffixes
Grammatical and derivational
First, we'll look at grammatical suffixes
Grammatical suffixes do not change the class of a word
So they will not change a verb
to an adjective or a verb to a noun
They simply add grammatical information
a few examples are...
the plural '-s'
one banana
two bananas
the possessive '-'s'
John's banana's
the third person '-s'
John eats banans
These are not all of the grammatical suffixes
but I hope it's enough to help you understand what they are
do not change the class of a word
derivational suffixes do
For example, the adjective 'quik'
can have '-ly' added to it
to create the adverb 'quickly'
here are two example sentences
He had a quick snack
That's an adjective
He ate it quickly
That's an adverb
Learning how to use these suffixes
is one of the keys to speaking English fluently
Before we finish there is one more important idea for us to look at
and that is the word family
A word family is all of the words that can be made 
from a single root
Take a look at this verb
'expect'
We can make the noun 'expectation'
We could also make an adjective, 'expectant'
or the adverb, 'expectantly'
Here's another fun word, 'explode'
we could make the noun, 'explosion'
and the adjectives, 'exploded',
'explosive'
and 'explodable'
There is also an adverb,
'explosively'
let's take a look at the noun 'shape'
there is also a verb, 'shape'
this means to give shape to something
there are other nouns, 'shaper',
'shapliness',
and 'shapelessness'
Then we have the adjectives
'shapeable'
'shaped'
'shapely'
and 'shapeless'
Here's a quick summary of what we've learned
in this lesson
you've learned about morphemes
which are a meaningful group of sounds
we've also looked at two types of morphemes in English
The root and the affix
There are two types of affixes
Prefixes and suffixes
Prefixes are added to the beginning of a word
and suffixes are added to the end
Again, there are two types of suffixes
Grammatical and derivational
Grammatical Affixes do not change the class of a word
Derivational suffixes, on the other hand, do change the word's class
Finally, all the different words that can be created
by adding affixes to a root
are called a word family
Mastering word families is one of the keys to English fluenct
Well, that's it folks
Have a great day!
