Get Morpheme Sort

The ordering of morphemes within a word follows well-documented cross-linguistic tendencies (Baker, 1985; Bybee, 1985; Greenberg, 1963). For instance, derivational morphemes (e.g., English -er deriving nouns from verbs) are ordered closer to the root than inflectional morphemes (e.g., English plural -s).

For example, if students are given the list of words: ping, pat, ring, sing, mat, and fat they could organize them by sound because they either end in -ing and -at. The words used can be word from a book, vocabulary words, words of the week, and so much more. Word sorts can either be open sorts or closed sorts.

There are three types of sorts that correspond to the three layers of English orthography: alphabet, pattern, and meaning.

WORD SORT is a morphological analysis strategy that helps students learn unfamiliar words by breaking down words into morphemes (roots, prefixes, and suffixes). It is used before or after reading a text. This strategy can be used to help students categorize, classify, and infer meaning of vocabulary words.

Bound morphemes are morphemes that cannot stand alone and only occur as parts of words. ... Derivational morphemes are the prefixes or suffixes added to a word to give the word a new meaning. ... Base morphemes, also known as base words, are free morphemes that can stand alone and give the word its meaning.

The words "and," "but," "or," "after," "that," "the," and "she" are examples of grammatical/functional morphemes. These morphemes contain functional words like pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and determiners.

For example the word banana is one morpheme while the word uneventfulness contains four morphemes: un- event -ful and -ness. The meaning can be lexical (for example, banana) or grammatical (for example, the plural morpheme -s on nouns such as bananas).