Morphology, Part 4: Word-Formation Processes

+ Allomorphy

October 4, 2010

The Master Plan1. Discussion of word-formation processes.

2. Talk about allomorphy.

3. Wednesday: work on some more morphology problem sets.

Word-Formation Processes• So far we’ve discussed:

1. Affixation

• “Concatenation” of an affix and a root/base

• /re-/ + /cycle/ = recycle

• prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes…

2. Compounding

• Concatenation of two or more free morphemes

• baseball, blackboard, light bulb, etc.

3. Back Formations

• Extraction of a word out of a larger word…

Back Formations• Back formations: removal of an (incorrectly perceived) affix to form a new word

• Ex: “edit”

• “editor” perceived as /edit/ + /-er/

• Other examples:

peddle (from peddler) swindle (from swindler)

burgle (from burglar) pea (from pease)

laze (from lazy) liaise (from liaison)

• A “reverse” backformation:

Chinese (from Chinee + /-s/)

A Sipid Story of Requited Love

“It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella...when I saw her...She was a descript person...Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way.”

--from “How I Met My Wife”, by Jack Winter

• Check out more at: http://www.matefl.org/_mgxroot/page_10679.html

• Or consider:

Reduplication• Reduplication: repetition of all or part of the stem

• Indonesian: (total reduplication)

rumah ‘house’ rumahrumah ‘houses’

ibu ‘mother’ ibuibu ‘mothers’

lalat ‘fly’ lalatlalat ‘flies’

• Tagalog: (partial reduplication)

bili ‘buy’ bibili ‘will buy’

kain ‘eat’ kakain ‘will eat’

pasok ‘enter’ papasok ‘will enter’

Reduplication in English?• There are a few examples of reduplication in English.

• Can you think of any?

• Individual words/phrases: “bling bling”, “very very”, “teeny weeny”…

• There is also one reduplicative process in English…

• schm- reduplication:

fancy schmancy

tired schmired

football schmootball

Nobel Prize schmobel prize

...etc.

Internal Change• A (slightly) more common word-formation process in English is internal change.

• = changing sounds inside a root creates a new word.

• Also known as alternations

sing ~ sang present/past

drive ~ drove present/past

foot ~ feet singular/plural

mouse ~ mice singular/plural

import ~ import noun/verb

present ~ present noun/verb

By the way...• Some internal change processes have (limited) productivity in English

• What’s the past tense of “sing”?

sang sung

• ring?

rang rung

• bring?

brang? brung?

brought? brought?

Internal Change Quick Write• 72 total responses.

1. Did you bive? Yes, I….

• bave (1); bove (1)

2. Did you vake? Yes, I…

• voke (5)

3. Did you slike? Yes, I…

• sloke (4); slike (1)

4. Did you neak? Yes, I…

• nuck (2); neak (2); noke (1)

Internal Change Quick Write5. Did you mide? Yes, I…

• mode (13); mid (4); mide (1); mit (1)

6. Did you strink? Yes, I…

• strunk (16); strank (10); stronk (3)

7. Did you lun? Yes, I…

• lan (9); lone (2)

• Internal changes are made for the new forms to the extent that they resemble phonologically similar forms already in the language. (ride, drink, run)

Roots and Patterns• An extreme form of “internal change” is found in Semitic languages, like Arabic and Hebrew

• “Root and pattern morphology”

• Arabic: /k-t-b/ root “write”

kitaab ‘a book’ kutub ‘books’alkitaab ‘the book’ kaatib ‘author’maktab ‘office’ maktaba ‘library’kataba ‘to write’ kattaba ‘to make write’kaataba ‘to correspond’ ?uktaba ‘to dictate’ifkataba ’to make a copy’ kutubii ‘bookseller’kuttaab ‘Koranic school’ miktaab ‘typewriter’

Just So You Know• Note: if a word does not change form when you’d expect a particular inflectional affix to attach to it…

• It is said to be formed with a null morpheme.

• (also called a zero morpheme)

• Examples:

• moose (singular) moose (plural)

• sheep (singular) sheep (plural)

• hit (present tense V) hit (past tense V)

Conversion• Conversion = usage of an existing word in a new lexical category.

• English makes use of this process a lot.

• Examples:

• to butter to nail (N V)

• a report a call (V N)

• to right (a wrong) to total (a car) (A V)

Awkwardizations?• Football Announcer-ese:

• “Sanders defensed the pass.” (noun to verb)

• “Urlacher lost weakside contain.” (verb to noun)

• Corporate speak?

• During Hurricane Katrina:

• "We heard that there was a gentleman who was stuck in his boat just downstream from us so we are efforting to help rescue agencies to find him".

Conversion

• Just to be clear:

• Conversion is a type of derivation

• A null morpheme is a type of inflection

Suppletion• Suppletion occurs when inflected forms of a word have different roots.

• In English, this is rare:

• go ~ went

• be ~ were

• compare with: walk ~ walked; cook ~ cooked

• Portuguese:

• ir “to go” comer “to eat”

• vou “I go” como “I eat”

• fui “I went” comi “I ate”

• ia “I was going” comia “I was eating”

Child Verb Morphology• Patterns like the following are frequently found in child language acquisition:

Present Past

Stage 1: go went

Stage 2: go goed

Stage 3: go went

• What’s going on here?

• What is the child doing, as a language learner?

Clipping• Clipping = shortening of an existing word.

• demo from “demonstration”

• condo from “condominium”

• fax from “facsimile”

• deli from “delicatessen”

• lab from “laboratory”

• blog from “web log”

• taxicab from “taximeter cabriolet”

• (cabriolet = horse-drawn carriage)

Blends• Blending = melding together parts of two different words.

• brunch from breakfast and lunch

• smog from smoke and fog

• spam from spiced and ham

• telethon from television and marathon

• chortle from chuckle and snort

• motel from motor and hotel

• chillax from chill and relax

• bankster from banker and gangster

• bricked from brilliant and wicked

The Remainders• Coinage

• = completely making a new word up.

• Example: nylon, vaseline, xerox, (dog), (chap)

• Eponyms

• = naming words after people

• ex: boycott, sandwich, jumbo, crapper, sideburns

• Acronyms

• Creating a word out of an abbreviation.

• ex: scuba, radar, laser

Last but not least• Sometimes an affix changes form, depending on what kind of root it attaches to.

• Consider English /in-/

• combines with adjectives to form adjectives

• means “the opposite of”

• Examples:

/in-/ + accurate = inaccurate

/in-/ + tolerant = intolerant

/in-/ + direct = indirect

Allomorphy• What’s going on in these cases?

/in-/ + legible = illegible

/in-/ + regular= irregular

/in-/ + legal = illegal

• There are two new forms of the affix: /il-/ and /ir-/

• These are called allomorphs.

• Allomorphs = “different forms”

Allomorphy• What’s going on here?

/in-/ + probable = improbable

/in-/ + mobile = immobile

/in-/ + possible = impossible

• /in-/ changes to /im-/ before both /p/ and /m/.

• /p/ and /m/ are both produced with the lips.

To explain patterns like this, we’re going to need to know something about how we actually produce the sounds of English.

We have to study Phonetics!

Allomorphy• Another English example:

a dog an owl

a noise an orange

a strawberry an apple

• Here’s another:

• walked invited

• sprayed needed

• stopped hated

• fired landed

• What’s the pattern?

Allomorphy• One last pattern:

• cats matches

• judges dogs

• chairs passes

• When do we add an extra syllable?

• How does the pattern compare to the formation of third person singular verbs?

• waits, loves, shows, finds…

• watches, hatches, kisses, spazzes…

• The pattern is based entirely on the sounds involved;

• not on the meaning of the morphemes.

Allomorphy• Italian Quick Write

• Finally: Morphology homework due on Friday!