Morphological Analysis Clues to the meaning of an unknown word may also be found in the word itself. In the case of morphologically complex words (i.e., words consisting of a base and one or more derivational affixes), the meaning can be worked out by analysing the meanings of parts that the word consists of. The meaning of the word homeless, for example, can be worked out by analysing it into its separate morphemes as home and -less. Given that the meaning of the base (i.e., home meaning “a place to live”) and that of the suffix (i.e., –less meaning “without”) are known it should not be so very difficult for a learner who was unfamiliar with the word before to figure out that it refers to someone with nowhere to live. Although this strategy can be very effective in guessing word meaning if used in combination with contextual guessing, research reports indicate limited use of this strategy by second language learners. In Harley and Hart (2000), referred to earlier, the strategy of morphological analysis was one of the least popular of the discovery strategies used to learn new L2 words. In Kanatlar (1995), word analysis was the sixth most frequent strategy out of ten strategies used for guessing words from context. In Schmitt (1997), analysis of roots and affixes was used by only 15% of the learners surveyed even though the learners found the strategy generally helpful for discovery purposes. The perceived usefulness of the strategy increased from 52% to 79% as the learners progressed to higher grades although there was not any significant increase in the frequency of use.
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