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IA901 2012 Session ThreeNeologisms and word class

Morphology : the study of word structure

Morphology and phonology

Play spelling game to start?1A word about your assignment

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4TUTORIALS

Please email me to book a tutorial when you have chosen an essay question (but dont rush your essay choice).

Feel free to book a tutorial if you are having difficulty choosing a question.

I will happy to continue to respond to questions by email and see you for tutorials, but the support that I can offer will be constrained by time. I cant be particularly helpful if you send me questions on the 2nd of December!

5A word about readingWhen reading texts on this module, ask yourself:

is it useful to me as a teacher?is it useful to me as a postgraduate student?

6A word about readingDiscuss what you read!

7A word about readingWhich parts of the chapter on Morphology are most relevant to you as a teacher?

8 NeologismsMorphology and word class

9NeologismWord classMeaningClues that helped you decideagflationavoisionbabycinobirtherbromancecelanthropyclickjackingfantabulous10NeologismWord classMeaningClues that helped you decideagflationavoisionbabycinobirtherbromancecelanthropyclickjackingfantabulousfablesslashedmetrosexualscarewaretextspeakwags11NeologismWord classCommentsagflationnounavoisionnounbabycinonounbirthernounbromancenouncelanthropynounclickjackingnounfantabulousadjectivefablessadjectivelashedadjectivemetrosexualadjective / nounscarewarenountextspeaknoun (not verbyet)wagsplural noun12NeologismWord classCommentsagflationnoun-ion? inflation? agriculture? avoisionnoun-ion? avoid? evasion?babycinonounis ino an English affix? baby + capucchino?birthernoun-er? very difficult to guess from just birthbromancenoun-ance? brother + romancecelanthropynoun-opy? celebrity + philanthropyclickjackingnoun-ing? click + hijack?fantabulousadjective-ous? fantastic + fabulousfablessadjective-less? fab from fabricationlashedadjective-ed? on the lashmetrosexualadjective / noun-ual? metro + sexualscarewarenoun-ware? software? scare?textspeaknoun (not verbyet)derivation in literature (thinkspeak 1984)wagsplural nounwives and girlfriends could it be singular?13 Introduction to MorphologyWhat is a word?

What is a morpheme?

What is morphology?

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cat/kt/

16In 90 seconds, list as many words as you can think of which contain the three letters C-A-T together.

Now tick the words on your list that are related in meaning to

17From Collins Cobuild Essential English Dictionary (1998):

catcatscatcallcattycattiercattiest

And what about: catlike, catfish, catnap, catnip, catwalk

Or: cats eyes, cat food, catkin, cat-o-nine-tails

Or even: a game of cat and mouse

18How can we define a word?

Do the hyphens in cat-o-nine-tails make it just one word?

Some people might write cat food as two words, some as one? Whos right?

In spoken English, in the statement weve run out of cat food, will we hear a boundary between cat and food? What about when cat food appears in an exchange like No, not dog food. I need cat food!? Should this affect its status?

Would it help a learner to think of a game of cat and mouse as one word?

19Are the following terms helpful in our quest to define a word?

orthographic

phonological

lexeme / lexical item

listeme

grammatical word

What do you understand by each of these terms?

Did anyone use the term morpheme to help explain any of the above?

20What do you think of Katambas definition of a word as the smallest unit that syntax manipulates?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

That a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife is a universally acknowledged truth.

It is a truth lysaluniverse acdknowledge, that a single man in possioness of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

It is a truth d universe acknowledge al, that a single man in ion possess of a good fortune must be in ly want of a wife.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice21

Pinker, S. (1999) Words and Rules : The Ingredients of Language. Phoenix, pp.24-51

MORPHOLOGY : THE STUDY OF WORD STRUCTURE

catcatscatcatlikeuncatlikecatcattycattilyuncattilycatcat + scatcat + likeun + cat + likecatcatt + ycatt + i+ lyun + catt + I + ly a) Morphemes are smaller units than words.b) Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning in written English.

Which definition seems more useful to you?

23MORPHOLOGY : THE STUDY OF WORD STRUCTURE

catcatscatcatlikeuncatlikecatcattycattilyuncattilycatcat + scatcat + likeun + cat + likecatcatt + ycatt + i+ lyun + catt + I + ly A MORPHEME is that part of a word which is endowed with psychological autonomy and is for the very same reason not further divisible

(in Aronoff, M. 1994. Morphology by itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. MIT Press)

24TYPES OF MORPHEME

Morphemes can be FREE or BOUND

CATS 2 morphemes (morphs)

cat = FREE s = BOUND

25MORPHEMES and WORD FORMATION

Heres something interesting (maybe):

fox, dog, sheep 3 FREE MORPHEMES

But consider the plural forms:

2 foxes, 2 dogs, 2 sheep

-es and -s in foxes and dogs are BOUND MORPHEMES. They both denote that these are plural nouns. es and s are therefore ALLOMORPHS.

Is it helpful to think of the plural form of SHEEP having a ZERO MORPH?

26LEXICAL and FUNCTIONAL MORPHEMES

So far, weve seen that cat, dog, sheep, and fox are all LEXICAL MORPHEMES. s and es are FUNCTIONAL MORPHEMES

sheepdogs

sheepdogsheepdogssheepish

Now we see DERIVATION in action. Here, word-formation is changing meaning or class:

sheep to sheepdog changes meaning the affix ish changes word classthe affix s in sheepdogs is functional

The affixation of -s to dog and sheepdog exemplify INFLECTION.27SIMPLE AND CUMULATIVE EXPONENCE

-s and es have SIMPLE EXPONENCE at the end of nouns. The morph realises a single morpho-syntactic feature (plural)

But consider the following:

-s in The fox wants to eat the sheep. The dog wants to protect the sheep. The sheep wants everyone to leave it alone.

What features are realised by s in this examples?

The s has CUMULATIVE EXPONENCE. It realises THREE featureswhat are they?

(third person, present tense, singular)

28Morphology and phonology

29What allomorphs are used in English to make nouns plural?

-s-esinternal change (apophony)-en-ren-a -e-i-ii-x-ces?-ora?enough?

dogsfoxesmicesheepoxen-childrenmedia antennaesyllabiradiiplateauxappendicescorporaHow are the mophs s and es pronounced?

How are the mophs s and es pronounced?

beesdogscribswaysbunsbellsbusesjudgesfoxesbadgeswatchesmazessocksbitsstepsproofspathsmyths

Which vowels are which? What do they notice about them?32In English verbs, what are the roles of the morph ed?-ed has four roles. It forms:

- the past tense- the perfect participle- the passive participle- verbal adjectivesBut how many different ways is ed pronounced?

enjoyedplayedlovedrubbed

kickedpunchedhoppedsmasheddecidedproceededtweetedpatted

Which vowels are which? What do they notice about them?34Affixes and word stress

Wheres the stress in semi-circle, personality, refugee, mountaineer, Portuguese, cigarette, picturesque?

Wheres the stress in unpleasant, marketing, comfortable, anchorage, refusal, widen, wonderful, birdlike, powerless, hurriedly, punishment, happiness, poisonous, glorify, otherwise, funny, childish?

Wheres the stress in magnet and magnetic, advantage and advantageous, photograph and photography, proverb and proverbial, climate and climatic, perfect and perfection, injury and injurious, tranquil and tranquillity, reflex and reflexive?

Difficulties for the learner

36Scott Thornbury (2005) Unovering Grammar : How to Help Grammar Emerge. MacMillan, p.18

One researcher, for example, found that learners pass through a stage when they tend to attach the ending ing to action verbs, irrespective of tense. They seem to be using ing simply to mark the presence of a verb: I going work by bus; I eating every day Burger King, etc. Clumsy as this may seem, it marks an important step from using purely lexical means to using more grammatical ones. At first the -ing ending is applied indiscriminately to all verbs. But over time, the learners in the study started to restrict the use of ing to certain contexts, and mainly as a marker of pastness: Yesterday I no working. Other favoured contexts for ing were in subordinate clauses (He the man who I talking him) and verbal complements, ie constructions where one verb follows another, eg I want working and I can doing any job.

Why ing? The researcher hypothesized that, of all the possible word endings in English, -ing is the most easily identified: it is a whole syllable and it is phonetically simple and regular. As grammaring processes start to emerge, -ing is a convenient tool for flagging verbiness, or, more specifically, action. At first, all verbs are flagged. Then the learner starts to discriminate between varying degrees of distance: present and past. The later use of ing in the more relatively specialised contexts of pastness, subordinate clauses and verbal complements suggests learners are aware of the more grammaticized nature of these contexts and nee dto flag them accordingly. Not yet aware of how these specialized meanings are signalled, they use the all purpose ing, as if to say here be grammar. Compositionality

In morphology, we can work out the meaning of words we havent met before. However, we need to be careful. Whats the meaning of the following words:

- Seeker, writer, driver, cooker, looker?

Noncompositional words are therefore problematic. Consider the unfortunate wording of this sign in a Chinese hotel:

The lift is being fixed for next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.

Conversion

Because conversion is common in English (nouns become verbs and vice versa), syntactic make-up may not reflect syntactic category, e.g. hoover, upmarket

Difficulties for the teacher

39Below are examples from essays by international students in response to a question about the differences between choosing a subject for undergraduate study, and choosing a subject for postgraduate study:

An interest subject give them more power to improve themselves.Some of us think no interest, no power, which means they cant study hard in a no-interesting major.Some people have responsibilities to socialty.It may not be too much to say that postgraduate students purposes are job.A lot of prospective undergraduate students may tend to be based on their own interests to think about their studying fields.The following example will be clear this.That is a common phenomena for the Chinese student, when they are in an important timepoint in their life.A subject field for undergraduate study provides easily opportunities for people to get well-paid jobs.For the postgraduate students, no thing cant more important than their interesting for the subject.Some parents believe that if their relatives have a well-educated and a good career job, they probably want to this case for their children.

To what extent can analysis of morphological features of English help these students? Difficulties for everyone

41Option 1Option 2Preferred plural form?cowboyscowsboycowgirlscowsgirlbreakfastsbreaksfastchristmaseschristsmasbusinessesbusiesnessgirl from Ipanemasgirls from Ipanemamother-in-lawsmothers-in-lawgin and tonicsgins and tonictablespoonfulstablespoonsfulwork of artsworks of arthole in onesholes in onepasserbyspassersbygovernor-generalsgovernors-generalPOWsPOWFor Pinker, there is no correct answer how people pluralize an expression depends on how they tacitly analyse it: as a word or as a phraseillogicalillegalillicitirrationalirrevocableirregularimproperimpureimpartialimprudentimpartialunlovableunlikableunrealisticunrulyunrenewableunpopularunparalleledCan phonology help us to explain the morphological features of English at work in these examples? blackberryblueberrystrawberryraspberrygooseberry

cranberry huckleberrymulberry

How can we classify the morphemes from which these words are formed? How helpful is this classification?

To what extent is knowledge of etymology necessary?

Next week : CorporaNeologisms and word class

Morphology : the study of word structure

Morphology and phonology

Play spelling game to start?47

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