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What is morphology?
•The study of internal structure of words
•The rules for combining morphemes into words
What do you know when you know a word?
“bagonize”“to wait anxiously for your bag at the airport
carousel”• Pairing sounds with meaning• Information in our mental dictionary (lexicon) for
each word:• Pronunciation—[bægәnayz]• Meaning
• Grammatical category (noun, verb, adjective , adverb, preposition etc.)– He bagonized for a long time.– *The bagonize is gone
What is a morpheme?
• The smallest meaningful unit of language
• It cannot be further analyzed into smaller meaningful parts
• It has a relatively stable meaning
Examples:TalkTalks = talk + sTalked = talk + edTalking = talk + ing
TeachTeachers = teach + er + sTeaches = teach + esTeaching = teach + ing
Different types of morphemes
Types of morphemes: Free morphemes: Mouse car book man girl
Bound morphemes:
re- in remove
-ive in active
-ous in famous
pre- in premature
Root/stem: the basic or the core form in a word with more than one morpheme
demoralize
de + moral + ize
Moral is a root/stem
Affixes: bound morphemes that are not a root/stem
Prefixes: affixes that precede a root de- in demoralize in- in incurable
Isthmus Zapotec, a language spoken in Mexico:zigi “chin” kazigi “chins”
zike “shoulder” kazike“shoulder”
diaga “ear” kadiaga “ears”ka + zigi
ka- (a prefix)
Suffixes: affixes that follow a root
-ize in demoralize
-ed in walked
Turkish:
dur “to stop” durak “stopping place”
bat “to sink” batak “sinking place” (swamp)
dur + ak
-ak (a suffix)
Infixes: affixes inserted inside the root
Tagalog, one of the languages spoken in the Phillipines:– basa “to read” bumasa “Read!”– tawag “to call” tumawag “Call!”– sulat “to write” sumulat “Write!”
Circumfixes (discontinuous) : affixes placed around the root
Inflectional: affixes that mark general grammatical meanings (plural, tense, gender, comparison)
Derivational: affixes that often change category (part of speech)
Content and function morphemes
Content morphemes:
• express informational content
• Independent of the grammatical system of a language
• Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
Cups, red, jump, slowly
•
• Open-class morphemes– New morphemes can be easily added to this
class
Nuke, dork, jerk,
Function morphemes
• express syntactic relationships between elements in a sentence
Prepositions: on, in, at, with, fromPronouns: he, she, her, him, myArticles: the, a, anConjunctions: and, but, because, unless
Jumped off a wallJohn and MaryThey love their catsJohn likes a womanJohn like a womanJohn likes woman
• Closed-class morphemes—essentially closed to new members
Lewis carroll’s “Jabberwocky”
‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Inflectional morphology: Creates the forms of the same wordGenerally productiveGenerally regularProvides grammatical information (person, number,
gender, case, tense)
Talk remove blog
Talks removes blogs
Talked removed blogged
Talking removing blogging
Talk eat go am
Talks eats goes is
Talked ate went was
Talked eaten gone been
Talking eating going being
Derivational affixes: Creates new words but retain the syntactic category-hood added to a noun creates a noun child, childhoodwoman, womanhoodpriest, priesthood
-ster added to a noun creates a noun
gang, gangster
prank, prankster
Derivational affixes change lexical (syntactic) category change:
solid solidify adjective verbgovern government verb nounsublime sublimity adjective nounfame famous noun adjective
Some derivational affixes in English: -ive added to a verb to give an adjective act active
sedate sedativere- added to a verb to give a verb
move removedo redo
-al added to a noun to give an adjectiveuniverse universalinstitution institutional
-en added to an adjective to make a verb
red reddenlight lightendark darken
de- added to a verb to make verb
moralize demoralize
toxify detoxify
Irregular: ate and gone are irregular forms—some relation to the basic sounds of the root.
Suppletion: a special kind of irregularity—no relation between the root and the irregular form
Went and am, is, was
Good, better, best
Bad worse
Person: Present tense: Person Singular Plural1 ‘I eat’ ‘We eat’2 ‘you (sg.) eat’ ‘you
(pl.) eat’3 ‘he, she eats’ ‘they
eat’
Number:
Nepali:
manche ‘man’ mancheharu ‘men’
keta ‘boy’ ketaharu‘boys’
Gender:Spanish:un amigo americano ‘An American friend
(male)’una amiga americana ‘an American friend
(female)”
Nepali:
ramro keta
beautiful boy
“a beautiful boy”
ramri keti
beautiful girl
“a beautiful girl”
Case:Indicates noun’s relation to verbs (subject, direct
object, indirect object)John gave Mary his sister’s old bicycle. jonle merilai uskodidiko purano saikal diyo
ramle harilai kitab diyo
ram-sub hari-obj book gave
Ram gave a book to Hari.
guma ‘man’
singular plural
subject guma guman
possessive guman gumena
indirect object guman gumum
direct object guman guman
Tense: usle bhat khanchaHe-subj rice eat-third person present tense‘He eats rice.’ usle bhat khayo
eat-third person past tense‘He ate rice.’
usle bhat khanecha
eat-third person future tense
‘He will eat rice.’
Hierarchy of morphemes in the formation of words:• Words are constructed hierarchically• One affix is attached to the root first• Derivational morphemes attach before inflectional
ones• *highesness• highnesses
unusable
unlockable
uncontrollably
recyclable
multigenerationally
How do we identify the lexical categories of words?
Three criteria:
• Morphological
• Syntactic
• Meaning
Morphological criterion:
What inflectional affixes can a word take?
Noun?
boy boy + s -s ‘plural’
diamond + s
disappears + s -s ‘third person singular’
*beautifuls
Syntactic criterion:
the boy
a boy
my boy
My beautiful boy
*my beautiful
*my quickly
Meaning criterion:
Person, place or thing
Verbs?
Morphological criterion:
jump + ing
jump + s
*desking
Syntactic criterion:
will jump
may jump
Jump!
*may desk *Desk!
Meaning criterion:
Names an action
Adjectives?
Morphological criterion?
tall + er
tall + est
*jumpest *deskest *desker
Syntactic criterion:
very tall
more/most beautiful
*very desk *very jump
Meaning criterion:
Describes a noun
Adverbs?
garbage category?
Morphological criterion:
fast + er fast + est
Syntactic criterion:Movement
He thought about the project carefully.Carefully he thought about the project.He carefully thought about the project.
Types of morphological systems
• Isolating morphology:– Words are single morphemes
– No derivational and inflectional morphology
– Chinese and Vietnamese are good examples
• Agglutinating morphologyWords have bound morphemes Words can be easily broken into distinct morphemes
• Inflectional morphology
• Words consist of several morphemes
• Words cannot be segmented easily into distinct morphemes
• Latin, Sanskrit, and Greek
Word-formation processes
Compounding
Olive oil
credit card
French history teacher
Government document shredder
Compounds:Newar :jaki-curice dustrice flour kala-bhatawife husband‘couple’
Reduplication:
dhecula dhedhecula
‘to lean’ ‘to stagger’
ko‘crow’koki ‘crow and similar other things’
la ‘water’ lali ‘water and similar other things’
ho ‘hole’ hohi
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