How Does Morphology (part 1) Work?

Words can change shape, just like blocks can be rearranged to make new shapes.

Imagine you have a set of building blocks: red ones say “cat,” blue ones say “dogs,” and green ones say “running.” Each block is a word, and together they make sentences. Now, think about how you can take one block and twist it or turn it into another kind of block, that’s like morphology.

Sometimes, words can become longer by adding little pieces to them. It's like putting stickers on your blocks. For example:

• “run” becomes “runs” when you add an s sticker.
• “cat” becomes “cats” with an s sticker too.

These stickers are suffixes, they go on the end of words, just like stickers go on the top of blocks.

You can also take a word and twist it in other ways. Like turning “play” into “playing,” by adding ing. That’s another kind of sticker, a suffix, but one that changes how the word feels when you say it.

So, just like building blocks can be rearranged to make new shapes, words can change shape too, and that's what morphology is all about! Words can change shape, just like blocks can be rearranged to make new shapes.

Imagine you have a set of building blocks: red ones say “cat,” blue ones say “dogs,” and green ones say “running.” Each block is a word, and together they make sentences. Now, think about how you can take one block and twist it or turn it into another kind of block, that’s like morphology.