MORPHOLOGY = morph ology morph-: form -ology: science of morphology (n): the science of (word) forms

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MORPHOLOGY morph ologymorph- form-ology
science ofmorphology (n) the science of (word)
forms
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Content Words and Function Words

• Content Words Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.
  Also called open-class words.
• v have lexical content.
• v additions are possible
• Function words auxiliaries, conjunctions,
  pronouns, prepositions, articles.
• v do not have lexical content
• v additions are not possible
• v purely required by the rules of syntax.
• It is raining outside today
• v Function words are the glue that hold the
  sentence together.

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Morphemes The minimal units of meaning

• The smallest element in the language which carry
  meaning the smallest meaningful element in
  language.

What is the meaning of un- in these examples?
What is the meaning of phon- in these examples?
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Morphology

• Words have internal structure, which is
  rule-governed. Uneaten, unadmired, and
  ungrammatical are words in English, but eatenun,
  admiredun, and grammaticalun (to mean not
  eaten, not admired, not grammatical) are
  not, because we form a negative meaning of a word
  not by suffixing un- but by prefixing it.
• The study of the internal structure of words, and
  of the rules by which words are formed, is
  morphology.
• Morphological knowlesge is part of our
  unconscious knowledge of langugage.
• A word form can contain one or more morphemes

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Morphology

• The meaning of a morpheme must be constant.
• v the agentive morpheme er singer, player,
  carrier
• v two different morphemes may be represented by
  the same sound agentive vs. comparative
• v The same sound may occur in another word and
  cannot represent a morpheme at all finger
• DISCRETENESS OF LANGUAGE
• In all languages, sound units combine to form
  morphemes, morphemes combine to form words, and
  words combine to form larger unitsphrases and
  sentences.
• Discreteness is an important part of linguistic
  creativity.
• to write writable DVD , a rewritable DVD ,
  unrewritable DVD
• You know the meanings of all these words by
  virtue of your knowledge of the discrete
  morphemes write, re-, -able, and un-, and the
  rules for their combination.

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Morphology

• Free morphemes
• v Morphemes that can stand by themselves.
• v Ex desire, gentle, of, man etc.
• v Morphemes that constitute words by
  themselves.
• Bound morphemes
• v Morphemes that cannot stand by themselves.
• v Affixes like pre-, un- , -ish, -er etc.
• v Bound morphemes are divided into two groups
• a) Prefixes occur before words
• b) Suffixes occur after words
• c) Infixes morphemes inserted between other
  morpehmes
• Many languages have prefixes and suffixes, but
  languages may differ in how they deploy these
  morphemes. A morpheme that is a prefix in one
  language may be a suffix in another and vice
  versa.

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Morphology
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Morphology

• An example of a language with infixes is the
  language is Bontoc, spoken in Philippines

Circumfixes Morphemes that are attached to both
at the beginning and end of a root. Chickasaw, a
langauge spoken in Oklahoma
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Roots and Stems

• Morphologically complex words consist of a
  morpheme root and one or more affixes.
• The root word is the primary lexical unit of a
  word, and of a word family , which carries the
  most significant aspects of semantic content and
  cannot be reduced into smaller constituents.
• Some examples of English roots are paint in
  painter, read in reread, ceive in conceive, and
  ling in linguist.
• A root may or may not stand alone as a word
  (paint and read do ceive and ling dont).
• In languages that have circumfixes, the root is
  the form around which the circumfix attaches, for
  example, the Chickasaw root chokm in ikchokmo
  (he isnt good).
• In infixing languages the root is the form into
  which the infix is inserted for example, fikas
  in the Bontoc word fumikas (to be strong).
• Arabic

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Roots and Stems

• Morphologically complex words consist of a
  morpheme root and one or more affixes.
• The root word is the primary lexical unit of a
  word, and of a word family , which carries the
  most significant aspects of semantic content and
  cannot be reduced into smaller constituents.
• Some examples of English roots are paint in
  painter, read in reread, ceive in conceive, and
  ling in linguist.
• A root may or may not stand alone as a word
  (paint and read do ceive and ling dont).
• In languages that have circumfixes, the root is
  the form around which the circumfix attaches, for
  example, the Chickasaw root chokm in ikchokmo
  (he isnt good).
• In infixing languages the root is the form into
  which the infix is inserted for example, fikas
  in the Bontoc word fumikas (to be strong).
• Arabic

What is the root of this word family?
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Roots and Stems

• Morphologically complex words consist of a
  morpheme root and one or more affixes.
• The root word is the primary lexical unit of a
  word, and of a word family , which carries the
  most significant aspects of semantic content and
  cannot be reduced into smaller constituents.
• Some examples of English roots are paint in
  painter, read in reread, ceive in conceive, and
  ling in linguist.
• A root may or may not stand alone as a word
  (paint and read do ceive and ling dont).
• In languages that have circumfixes, the root is
  the form around which the circumfix attaches, for
  example, the Chickasaw root chokm in ikchokmo
  (he isnt good).
• In infixing languages the root is the form into
  which the infix is inserted for example, fikas
  in the Bontoc word fumikas (to be strong).
• Arabic

What is the root of this word family?
ktb
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Roots and Stems

• Stems

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Bound Roots

• Bound roots do not occur in isolation and they
  acquire meaning only in combination with other
  morphemes.
• For example, words of Latin origin such as
  receive, conceive, perceive, and deceive share a
  common root, ceive
• The words remit, permit, commit, submit,
  transmit, and admit share the root mit.
• For the original Latin speakers, the morphemes
  corresponding to ceive and mit had clear
  meanings, but for modern English speakers,
  Latinate morphemes such as ceive and mit have no
  independent meaning. Their meaning depends on the
  entire word in which they occur.
• The morpheme huckle, when joined with berry, has
  the meaning of a berry that is small, round, and
  purplish blue luke when combined with warm has
  the meaning somewhat. Both these morphemes and
  others like them (cran, boysen) are bound
  morphemes that convey meaning only in
  combination.

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Derivational Morphology

• Derive tion derivation
• Derivational derivational
• v When derivational morphemes are added to a
  base, a new word with a new meaning is derived.
• v pure ify to make pure
• v purify ation purification the process of
  making pure
• v This is a creative process.
• If we invent an adjective, pouzy, to describe the
  effect of static electricity on hair, you will
  immediately
• understand the sentences Walking on that carpet
  really pouzified my hair and The best method of
• pouzification is to rub a balloon on your head.
• v Derivational morphemes have clear semantic
  content.
• v When a derivational morpheme is added to a
  base, it adds meaning.
• v The derived word may also be of a different
  grammatical class than the original word, as
  shown by suffixes such as -able and ly.
• desire (n) able desirable(adj)
• dark(adj) en darken (verb)

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Derivational Morphology
Other examples

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Inflectional Morphology

• v Function words like to, it, and be are free
  morphemes. Many languages, including English,
  also have bound morphemes that have a strictly
  grammatical function. They mark properties such
  as tense, number, person and so forth.
• v They never change the grammatical category of
  the stems they are attached.

v Represent relationships between different parts
of sentence.
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Inflectional Morphology

• English has 8 bound inflectional suffixes.

v In a word, inflectional morphemes follow
derivational morphemes v Inflectional morphemes
are productive they can attach every appropriate
base. (the inflectional plural morphemes s vs.
the derivational ize)
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Inflectional Morphology

• Languages differ with respect to the use of
  inflectional morphemes.
• Some languages have a rich number of inflectional
  morphemes than others.

In the Romance languages (languages descended
from Latin), the verb has different inflectional
endings depending on the subject of the sentence.
The verb is inflected to agree in person and
number with the subject, as illustrated by the
Italian verb parlare meaningto speak
Russian Russian has a system of inflectional
morphology that indicates the nouns grammatical
relation.
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Inflectional Morphology

• v Case Marking
• The grammatical relation of a noun in a sentence
  is called the case of the noun.
• When case is marked by inflectiona morphemes, the
  process is referred to as case morphology.
• v Reduplication
• inflecting a word through the repetition of part
  or all of the word
• savali he travels, savavali they travel.
• The Samoan Language
• orang person, orang orang people.
• The Malay Language

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The Hierarchical Structure of Words
Words have internal structure
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The Hierarchical Structure of Words
Further morphological operations can apply to
this stem
unsystematical
unsystematically
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The Hierarchical Structure of Words

• Tree diagrams make explicit the way speakers
  represent the internal structure of the
  morphologically complex words in their language.
• Our mental representation of words is
  hierarchical as well as linear, and this is shown
  by tree diagrams.
• v Inflectional morphemes are equally well
  represented.

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The Hierarchical Structure of Words

• Imagine you are inside a room and you want some
  privacy
• And you find out that the door is unlockable.
  How would you feel?
• unlockable not able to be locked
• Now imagine you are inside a locked room trying
  to get out.
• And you find out that the door is unlockable.
  How would you feel?
• unlockable able to be unlocked

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Rule Productivity

• Remember we have noted that some word formation
  processes, inflection in particular, are
  productive.
• Among derivational morphemes, some affixes are
  also productive and some are less productive than
  others.
• The derivaional suffix able fully productive.
• The suffix un- not fully productive.
• unbrave, unsad, unobvious
• v This morpheme appears to be productive
  mostly with adjectives that are derived from
  verbs, such as unenlightened, unsimplified,
  uncharacterized, unauthorized, undistinguished,
  and so on.
• v most acceptable un- words have polysyllabic
  bases, and while we have unfit, uncool, and
  unclean, many of the unacceptable -un forms have
  monosyllabic stems such as unbig, ungreat,
  unred, unsad, unsmall, untall.

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Exceptions and Suppletions

• The morphological process that forms plural from
  singular nouns does not apply to words like
  child, man, foot, and mouse. These words are
  exceptions to the English inflectional rule of
  plural formation.
• Similarly, verbs like go, sing, bring, run, and
  know are exceptions to the inflectional rule for
  producing past tense verbs in English.
• Irregular, or suppletive, forms are treated
  separately in the grammar.
• One cannot use the regular rules of inflectional
  morphology to add affixes to words that are
  exceptions like child/children, but must replace
  the uninflected form with another word.
• For regular words, only the singular form need be
  specifically stored in the lexicon. But this
  cant be so with suppletive exceptions.
• When a new word enters the language, the regular
  inflectional rules generally apply.
• Childrens language also provide evidence that
  regular rules exist cf. the wug test.

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• Morphemes with no phonological shape
• The past tense of the verb hit, as in the
  sentence Yesterday you hit the ball, and the
  plural of the noun sheep, as in The sheep are in
  the meadow
• Some morphemes seem to have no phonological shape
  at all.
• Zero Derivation
• Conversion, also called zero derivation, is a
  kind of word formation specifically, it is the
  creation of a word from an existing word without
  any change in form. Conversion is more productive
  in some languages than in others in English, it
  is a fairly productive process.
• access, host, chair.

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Lexical Gaps

• Possible but non-existing words in a language.
• Dictionaries contain thousands of words, but it
  is never possible to list all the words of the
  language.
• There are always gaps in the lexiconwords not
  present but that could be added.
• Note that the sequence of sounds must be in
  keeping with the constraints of the language.
  bnick is not a gap because no word in English
  can begin with a bn.
• Other gaps result when possible combinations of
  morphemes never come into use.
• curiouser, linguisticism, and antiquify
• unsystem and needlessity

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Other Morphological Processes

• Backformation
• A new word that enters the language because of a
  misconcieved morphological analysis.
• Ex hamburger - hamburger /hamburger
• Ex peddler peddleer
• Compounding
• Combining two words to form a new one.

Some more recent examples are Facebook, Youtube
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Compounding

• When the two words are in the same grammatical
  category, the compound will also be in this
  category
• noun noun noun, fighterbomber, paper clip,
  elevator-operator, landlord, mailman
• adjective adjective adjective, icy-cold,
  red-hot, worldly wise.
• the rightmost word in a compound is the head of
  the compound. The head is the part of a word or
  phrase that determines its broad meaning and
  grammatical category.
• noun adjective adjective, as in headstrong
• verb noun noun, as in pickpocket.
• However, compounds formed with a preposition are
  in the category of the nonprepositional part of
  the compound, such as (to) overtake or (the)
  sundown.
• It is difficult to state an upper word limit to
  compounding
• three-time loser,
• four-dimensional space-time,
• sergeant-at-arms,
• mother-in-law

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Compounding

• When the two words are in the same grammatical
  category, the compound will also be in this
  category
• noun noun noun, fighterbomber, paper clip,
  elevator-operator, landlord, mailman
• adjective adjective adjective, icy-cold,
  red-hot, worldly wise.
• the rightmost word in a compound is the head of
  the compound. The head is the part of a word or
  phrase that determines its broad meaning and
  grammatical category.
• noun adjective adjective, as in headstrong
• verb noun noun, as in pickpocket.
• However, compounds formed with a preposition are
  in the category of the nonprepositional part of
  the compound, such as (to) overtake or (the)
  sundown.
• It is difficult to state an upper word limit to
  compounding
• three-time loser,
• four-dimensional space-time,
• sergeant-at-arms,
• mother-in-law

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Compounding

• Like derived words, compounds have internal
  structure.

• The meaning of a compound is not always the
  meaning of the sum of its parts
• Ex blackboard
• Meaning relations between the parts of a
  compound may not be consistent.
• . A jumping bean, a falling star a magnifying
  glass, a looking glass, laughing gas.
• Vegetarian -- humanatarian

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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

• Suppose you didnt know English and were a
  linguist from the planet Zorx wishing to analyze
  the language.

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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

• Suppose you didnt know English and were a
  linguist from the planet Zorx wishing to analyze
  the language.
• How would you discover the morphemes of English?
• How would you determine whether a word in that
  language had one, two, or more morphemes?

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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

• Suppose you didnt know English and were a
  linguist from the planet Zorx wishing to analyze
  the language.
• How would you discover the morphemes of English?
• How would you determine whether a word in that
  language had one, two, or more morphemes?

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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

• Suppose you didnt know English and were a
  linguist from the planet Zorx wishing to analyze
  the language.
• How would you discover the morphemes of English?
• How would you determine whether a word in that
  language had one, two, or more morphemes?

To determine what the morphemes are in such a
list, the first thing a field linguist would do
is to see if some forms mean the same thing in
different words, that is, to look for recurring
forms.
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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

ugly occurs in ugly, uglier, and ugliest, all of
which include the meaning very unattractive.
-er occurs in prettier and taller, adding the
meaning more to the adjectives to which it is
attached.
-est adds the meaning most.
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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

ugly occurs in ugly, uglier, and ugliest, all of
which include the meaning very unattractive.
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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

ugly occurs in ugly, uglier, and ugliest, all of
which include the meaning very unattractive.
-er occurs in prettier and taller, adding the
meaning more to the adjectives to which it is
attached.
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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

ugly occurs in ugly, uglier, and ugliest, all of
which include the meaning very unattractive.
-er occurs in prettier and taller, adding the
meaning more to the adjectives to which it is
attached.
-est adds the meaning most.
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Identifying Morphemes of a Language
ugly occurs in ugly, uglier, and ugliest, all of
which include the meaning very unattractive.
-er occurs in prettier and taller, adding the
meaning more to the adjectives to which it is
attached.
-est adds the meaning most.
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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

• Assume you investigated further data and saw the
  following examples
• Player a person who plays
• Singer person who sings
• Carrier a person/thing that carries
• murderer a person who murders

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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

• Assume you investigated further data and saw the
  following examples
• Player a person who plays
• Singer person who sings
• Carrier a person/thing that carries
• murderer a person who murders

And finally you found the following
examples member somebody that belongs to a
group or organization number a word or sign
that represents exact quantity Butter a solid
yellow food made from milk or cream
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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

• THE PANU LANGUAGE

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Identifying Morphemes of a Language

• Here is a more challenging example.
• Look for repetitions and near repetitions of the
  same word parts, taking your cues from the
  meanings given.
• Michoacan Aztec, a language of Mexico

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Exercise