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Morphology
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Morphology is the part of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words. Words are made up of morphemes, which are either free or bound. The word Wurigaid ‘weariness’, for example, consists of two morphemes. The first one is a free morpheme because it can act as a word by itself (namely wurich ‘weary’). The morpheme -aid, however, is bound because it cannot act as an independent word.

Morphology often serves the purpose of creating new words (like Wurigaid, on the basis of wurich). This is called word formation [chapter 1]. Inflection is another function of morphology [chapter 2]. In ’n oolden Mon ’an old man’, the word oolden is just an inflected form of the adjective oold. One wouldn’t expect to find a separate lemma oolden in a dictionary, for instance.

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Languages develop over time. That implies, for example, that there is no solid diachronical distinction between syntax and morphology. Yesterday’s syntax can be today’s morphology, for example Bäidens Bäidene ‘child’s children’ can become Bäidensbäidene.

There is no absolute distinction between free morphemes (words) and bound morphemes (affixes) either. The word Anstalt only occurs in the construction Anstalt moakje ‘to get ready’. This implies that Anstalt is in itself meaningless and context-dependent, although it is generally considered a word.

Also, there is no absolute distinction between word formation and inflection. In the construction wät Flugges (‘something beautiful’) the fossilised genitive ending has become an instance of Construction Dependent Morphology (see [1.3]).

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