faculty.psau.edu.sa · Web view2- Morphology is a branch of linguistics which preoccupies itself with word formation rules, which in turn determine the organization of the internal

MORPHOLOGY

This is a level of language analysis which deals with the internal arrangement of words and their inflections. It seeks to analyze, describe and classify meaningful grammatical units and how these units (morphemes) are organized in the process of word formation. 2- Morphology is a branch of linguistics which preoccupies itself with word formation rules, which in turn determine the organization of the internal structures of words into minimal meaningful units of grammatical analysis. Morphology can either be inflectional or derivational.

The major word formation process is affixation. This occurs through prefixation, infixation and suffixation depending on where the morphemal element is introduced into the structure of a word. Other word formation processes include compounding, clipping, acronymy, reduplication, blending, conversion, nounce formation, internal change and neologism

The grammatical hierarchy on which syntactic rules are tenable starts from the level of morpheme, through word, phrase and clause up to the sentential levels in an ascending order such that the category on top subsumes the one below it. This idea is represented in the following diagram.

S one or more

Clause one or more

phrase one or more

word one or more

M one or more

Morphology is simply the study of word forms in (English) language. It is concerned with the use of morphemes to form words. This entails that morphology is the linguistic investigation of the combination of morphemes. Morphemes, on the other hand, are the “minimal units of grammatical analysis, the units of lowest rank out of which words, the units of next ‘higher’ rank are composed”

Morphology and syntax . 7th Sem. Supplementary material . Dr. Hassan Aldaw Page 1

In other words, a morpheme, the level of which is the smallest on the grammatical rank scale, is a minimal linguistic element with a unit of meaning. It is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. A morpheme cannot be further divided into smaller grammatical (meaningful) components and it can function as any of the following elements in the structure of a word.

BASE – independence

PREFIX – irrevocable

INFIX – (in Arabic)

SUFFIX – commander

ENDING (suffix) – disappointments

Morpheme, morphs and allomorphs

A morph is the exponent of a morpheme, relating to the morpheme as an abstraction, with a morpheme itself being its realization (e.g. boys/bats with {s} being a morph in each). An allomorph is a family of morph, deriving from the fact that in English, certain morphemes or morphs change their nature from one word environment to the other. Allomorphs relate to the phonological aspects of grammatical analysis. For instance, the following are the allomorphic realizations of the {s} morpheme:

/s/ as in bats

/z/ as in toys

/iz/ as in bosses

Free and bound Morphemes

There are two major types of morphemes: free and bound. The free morpheme, also known as the base or the root, is a word. It is independent in terms of meaning and form; it can stand on its own. Examples are school, man, stand, cup, etc. A bound morpheme, on the other hand, cannot stand on its own as it is subordinate to the free morpheme. Bound morphemes are the affixes which are either prefixes, infixes or suffixes.


Prefixes

prefixes are bound morphemes ‘affixed’ to the beginning of words to change the meaning (usually but not always)

il – legal dis – courage mis – understand re – rewrite co – education *en-large (A V) be- witch (N V) (change)

Infixes are those inserted into the middle of words. They are found in languages such as Arabic in which two vowels are added to a consonantal root for some grammatical contrast e.g.

kitab – book root (book)

katib – writer

katab – wrote k i t a b

Kutub – books

kutib – has been written infixes

Suffixes are bound morphemes that are added to the word endings (e.g. goodness, beautiful, correction, walked, modernize,

Circumfix:

These are syllables that sometimes act as prefixes and other times as suffixes

(en+large – wid(e)+ en)

the following morphemes end nouns: – ity, – age, – ist, – hood, – ship, – ness, – er, – or, – ment, – tion, – sion, – ster, – ry, – ice, as in ability, drainage, journalist, brotherhood, kinship, kindness, driver, survivor, judgment, correction, revision, trickster, jewelry and cowardice.

Bound morphemes can be sub-divided into inflectional and derivational

morphemes. They are also called inflectional and derivational affixes. Inflectional


morphemes are those affixes that do no change word classes. They indicate

negation, diminution, number gender and tense and they are usually suffixes.

Examples of inflectional morphemes are the underlined morphemes: (booklet,

boy/boys, box/boxes, lioness, princess, walk/walked, beat/beaten, sing singing etc).

Derivational morphemes change words classes as new words classes or new parts

of speech are ‘derived’ through them. Examples of derivations are the underlined

morphemes (e.g. beauty/beautiful, good/goodness, play/player, strong/strongly).

Other types of morphemes include; Full morphemes which are elements that will

later be identified as content words. Empty morphemes are those which are

identified as grammatical words. Additive morphemes are affixes which are added

to the free morphemes. Replacive morphemes replace other morphemes (manager/

manageress, man/men, emperor/empress) while zero morphemes are ‘unseen’

morphemes (e.g. fish, sheep, as singular and plural nouns). The following schema

summarizes the various types of morphemes and their relationships:

morphems

Free Bound

Full empty derivational inflectional

replicative additive zero replicative additive zero

Complex Derivations

Since derivation can apply more than once, it is possible to create multiple levels of word structure.

Act = V Verb +ive = Adj. Act + ive = active Adj. + ate = Verb Active + ate = activate Verb + ion = Noun Activate + ion = activation


Bracketing:

[[[[act] V ive]Adj ate]V ion]N

treeing

N

V

Adj

V Aff Aff Aff

Act ive ate ion

Look at the analysis of (un-happy-ness) ?Which analysis is ungrammatical?

The prefix un- combines freely with adjectives, but not with nouns Therefore, analysis (a) is more plausible than analysis (b).Another example:

unhealthy/ unhealthy health + y *un + health un +healthy *unhealth + y


(a) N

Adj

Aff Adj Aff

un happy ness

(b) N

Adj

Aff Adj Aff

un happy ness

Constraints on Derivation

Derivation does not apply freely to the members of a given category:

i- The suffix (-ant) combines with Latinate but not with native bases:

Latinate NativeDefendant *fightantServant *teachant

ii- The suffix (-en) combines with monosyllabic obstruent-final base adjectives:

whiten *abstracten (disyllabic)quicken *bluen (non-obstruent-final)

Class 1 derivational affixes

Class 1 affixes normally trigger changes in segments of the base.

They usually also affect the assignment of stress.part-ial final consonant of the base changes from /t/ to /∫/prodúct-ive stress shifts to second syllable (cf. próduct)public-ity final consonant of the base changes from /k/ to /s/, and stress shifts to second syllable (públic vs. publícity)

Class 2 derivational affixes

In contrast, class 2 affixes tend to be phonologically neutral, having no effect on the segmental makeup of the base or the stress assignment.

prompt-ness no change triggered hair-less no change triggered hope-ful no change triggered self-ish no change triggered

Inflection vs. DerivationInflection and derivation are both marked by affixation, so, the distinction between the two processes can be subtle.-It is not always clear which function a particular affix has.-Three criteria help distinguish between inflectional and derivational affixes.


1- Category Change

The output of inflection:

[[book ]N s ]N [[work ] V ed ] V

There is no change in either the category of the base or the type of meaning it denotes. (another form of the word)

2- The output of derivation

[[govern ]V ment]N [[king ]N dom ] N

There is a change in the category of the base and/or the type of meaning it denotes. (another word)

3- Order

The derivational affix must be closer to the root than the inflectional affix. This means that the former combines with the base before the latter.

Productivity

The distribution of inflectional affixes is considerably freer than that of the derivational affixes.

-ize vs. plural -s

modern-ize (cf. *new-ize)


N

N

N Aff Aff

*neighbour s hood

N

N

N Aff Aff

Neighbour hood s

legalize (cf. *lawful-ize)However, the suffix -s can combine with almost any noun that allows a plural form.CompoundingCompounding involves the combination of two or more words. The elements making up the compound are free forms.

Noun + Noun Adjective + Noun Campsite bluebird Bookcase greenhouse

In English, the rightmost morpheme determines the category of the entire compound. This morpheme is called the head.

N V Adj

Adj N N V N Adj

green house spoon feed nation wide

English compounds are primarily right-headed.

i. N+N > N (e.g. dogfood)

ii. V+N > N (e.g. jump suit)

iii. N+V > V (e.g. spoon feed)

iv. N+A > A (e.g. machine washable)

The combined forms can be with a hyphen or without it. Three types of compounds are identifiable: solid, hyphenated or two-word forms.

Solid compounds are classroom, grandchild, graveyard, hyphenated compounds are court-martial, frame-up, half-truth

Two-word compounds are; funny bone, gold plate, white house etc. Compounds may be nouns such as carry-over, stronghold, off day, father-in-law, or adjectives such as off-guard, first-rate, run-of-the-mill chicken-


hearted, or adverbs such as offhand, inside out, non-stop or verbs such as gainsay, leapfrog, jump-start etc.

Conversion

Conversion is the process of forming a new word from an existing word merely by changing the grammatical class of the latter word. Conversion may or may not involve the change of stress patterns. The same word assumes different classes in conversion.

Examples of conversion include:man (n), man (v), pencil (n), pencil (v), work (n), work (v), empty (v), empty (adj), graduate (n), graduate (v), graduate (adj).

Stress placementA base can undergo a change in the placement of stress to reflect a change in its category.

Verb Nounpresént présentsubjéct súbjectcontést contest

Back FormationBack formation is the process of shortening longer words by removing the suffixes. Back forms derive from bi-syllabic or poly-syllabic words, especially agentive nouns, subsequently turned to the base forms. Examples of back forms are drive (from driver), office (from officer) assemble (from semblance), debt (from debtor) revise (from revision), convert (from converter), etc.


BlendingTwo words are brought together to form a new word. It is a process that involves collapsing one form into the other.

transistor (transfer + resistor), telecast (television + broadcast) motel (motor + hotel), forex (foreign + exchange), computeracy (computer + literacy), brunch (breakfast + lunch).

In forming blends, either affixes or syllables of the words are removed to make the two words ‘agreeable’.

Clipping:Clipping is the process of word shortening to the effect that words retain their original meanings. It is different from abbreviation, that a clip is not periodized as abbreviated forms are. Clipping is done essentially by removing initial and/or final syllables. An interesting example of clipping is in the word ‘advertisement’ which is clipped as ‘advert’ and again clipped as ‘ad’.

Clipping arises from the tendency to economize words. Examples of clips are bus (omnibus), piano (pianoforte), flu (influenza), fridge (refrigerator), exam (examination), memo (memorandum), phone (telephone). Names; Tim (Timothy), Abdu (Abdullah) etc.

Reduplication

Reduplication is the process of repetition of words, a form of compounding. Reduplication is either partial or total. In partial reduplication, the two forms are slightly different from each other as only a letter or two changes.

Examples of partial reduplication are shilly-shally, criss-cross, dilly-dally, hubble-bubble, zigzag, riff-raff, tit-tat, rag-tag, tick-tock, hocus-pocus, chit-chat, etc. In total reduplication, the same form is repeated. Examples of


total reduplicatives are not many, some of which include goody-goody, jaw-jaw, eye-eye, bye-bye, etc.Acronymy/abbronymyAcronymy is the process of word formation in which words are formed from the initial letters of phrases. This is also referred to as abbronymy, a blend of abbreviation and acronymy, by Odebunmi based on “the discovery that the two terms are difficult to tell from each other”. Acronyms/abbronyms are either simple or complex. They are simple when they are easily determinable from the phrases they represent. (SARS, UNESCO, FAO)

AIDS ----------------------------------- LASER ----------------------------------- UNICEIF ----------------------------------- UNFIL ----------------------------------- SARS -----------------------------------

Nounce:

This is a morphological process by which a language user deliberately invents or accidentally uses a particular word in a particular context. If a speaker does not remember an exact word that can really express his thought, he coins an alternative word, known as “nounce form”. In writing, nounce forms or coined words are always enclosed in inverted commas to indicate their specific or special use.

For example, David Crystal once wrote that a student who was having problems with linguistics said he was ‘linguistified’ to express how confounding the course was to him.

Also, a particular lecturer was fond of putting a full stop after everything he wrote on the chalkboard. A student who wanted to explain his lecturer’s mannerism to his friend, falling short of words, said that his lecturer was ‘full stopmatic’!


Internal change Internal change is a process that substitutes one non-morphemic

segment for another:sing/sang foot/feetdrive/ drove man/ mensit/ sat foot/ feet write/wrote goose/ geese

Internal change should not be confused by infixing for the following reasons:

1- English does not have a root *sng, (produce words in a musical tone).

Or *ft (part of body)- English does not have roots which contain consonants

only.

2- English does not have a morpheme i meaning ‘present’ or a

morpheme a meaning ‘past’ in the sing/sang case.

3- English does not have a morpheme oo meaning ‘singular’ or a morpheme

ee meaning ‘plural’ in the foot/feet and tooth/teeth case.

Suppletion

Suppletion is a morphological process whereby a root morpheme is replaced by a phonologically unrelated form in order to indicate a grammatical contrast.

Basic form Suppletive formI mebe weregood wellgo went


Neologism

Neologism is the process in which old words are made to assume new

senses because of relative semantic contiguity. In neologism, existed words

are invested with new meanings. For example,

Pyrrhic victory, waterloo and marathon, the meanings of which are originally

historical.

Pyrrhus was the king of Epirus who had embarked on a number of military

campaigns against Rome, Siciliy and Asculum. He almost met his doom at

the battle of Asculum in which he lost a substantial number of men and his

ego was deflated, though he routed the Roman army. Victory attained at a

very high cost thus becomes known as Pyrrhic victory.

Waterloo was the name of the village in which the famous French

conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated; hence, to meet one’s

waterloo is to meet one’s downfall. Marathon originally means a distant

town where a Roman soldier ran to; hence, a long distance race on foot. By

neologism, it is now any activity which consumes energy over a long period

(e.g. marathon lecture).

BorrowingBorrowing involves taking lexical items from one language to another. Borrowed words are known as loan words which are made to adapt to the phonological structure, more or less, of the borrower (English) language. English has many loan words from all languages. Examples include restaurant (French), mosquito (Spanish) mammoth (Russian), alcohol (Arabic), tea (Chinese) just to mention a few.Cranberry morphemesAnd even more theoretical problems…

“berry” = a free morpheme


“blueberry” = a compound (A+N) “cranberry” = ?+ N

What is “cran-”? Other examples are; “Raspberry”? “Boysenberry”? “Huckleberry”?

*Measured to blueberry, waxberry and elderberry these words are [N+N] compounds as well.

Cliticization

A clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level.

Clitics may belong to a grammatical category, though they are commonly pronouns, determiners, or verbs. Clitics may be written as independent words or separated by special characters (e.g., apostrophe).

There are a number of different clitics depending on their position in relation to the word that they are connected to.

Proclitic

A proclitic appears before its host.English: an apple (a, an, the) French: Je t'aime. "I you-love." = "I love you."

EncliticAn enclitic appears after its host. I’m hereMesocliticA mesoclitic appears between the stem of the host and other affixes.EndocliticThe endoclitic splits apart the root and is inserted between the two pieces. One common approach is to treat clitics as words that: they cannot appear alone, they can only form an accentual unit in combination with their host.

An affix syntactically and phonologically attaches to a base morpheme such as a verb, to form a new word. English enclitics include:


The abbreviated forms of be and auxiliary verbs :

’m in I’m - ’re in you’re ’s in she’s ’ll in they’ll - ‘ve in they’ve The genitive-’s: The Queen’s crown

The negative marker n’t as in couldn’t etc. is often thought to be a clitic developed from the lexical item ‘not’. In English, clitics must be unstressed, but not as a full word can be stressed.

I have not done it yet. I’ve not done it yet. I haven’t done it yet.

A stressed word cannot be changed into a clitic:

I don’t know who she is.

(*I don't know who she’s.)

Have you done it? — Yes, I have. (*Yes, I’ve.)

He’s not a fool. — He is a fool! (*He’s a fool!)

The plural suffix : In English, the most common plural suffix is -s, as in cats,

where the -s turns a singular cat into more than one.

The clitic genitive (’s) differs essentially from the suffix plural (s)

in that:

1-A clitic belongs to a certain lexical category and a suffix does not

2- While the suffix plural (s) fuses itself semantically, syntactically and phonologically into its host. The genitive (’s) is much looser.

Cats /s/ dogs /z/ (allomorphs)

The flies fly – the fly flies (S/V agreement – plural- s)


The cats tail. The cat tails (meaning is affected)

As for Clitics

The cat’s tail The dog’s tail Phonologically both /s/

Syntactically no agreement

Semantically- if the genitive (s) is moved to any other component in the

sentence as in:

The cat’s tail - The cat tail’s

(still one cat and one tail) MORPHEMIC ANALYSIS AND SEGMENTATION

1- Morphemic analysis is the description of morphemic components of words. It accounts for the configuration of morphemic elements. A word is always made up of one or more morphemes, it is pertinent to reiterate that root is the core of that word. When the root of a word is identified, then, the stem and other affixes are determined.

2- The stem is the part of a word (root + one affixes) . In ‘bearable’ for instance, ‘bear’ is the root. But when we say ‘unbearable’, ‘bearable’ is the stem. In foolishness, fool is the root, foolish is the stem (base) and ‘ness’ is the suffix.

3- Morphemic analysis also involves segmentation of morphemes into their appropriate components. Examples.

Simplification = simpl(e) + if (y) + ication (f+b+b)

Ungratefulness= un+grateful+ness (b+f+b)

Dislocations= dis+locat(e) + ion + s (b+f+b+b)

Fathers-in-law father+s+in+law (f+b+f+f)

Segmentability segment+able+ity (f+b+b)

Travelled travel+ed (f+b)

Incomprehensible in+comprehen(d) +(s)ible (b+f+b)


It is important to note that a root is a root because it can function as an independent meaningful unit. If it loses meaning, it is no longer root. For instance, words like receive, deceive, achieve, conceive may superficially suggest two morphemes, each. But they are just single roots because the second syllables have no meanings.

Bound roots (i.e. roots that cannot occur independently) such as “horr” (→ horrify), “ept” (→ inept), “salv” (→ salvation)?

N

B Af

salv ation

“B” stands for Bound Root

Box analysis (boxing)

centre N

centre al A

centre al ize V

de centre al ize V

de centre al ize ation N

Unti de centre al ize ation N

unti de centre al ize ation s N

Bracket analysis (bracketing)

[[unti [de [[[centr]N al]A iz]v] vation] N s] N


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faculty.psau.edu.sa · Web view2- Morphology is a branch of linguistics which preoccupies itself with word formation rules, which in turn determine the organization of the internal