MORPHOLOGY

Morphology

The study of internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed

Morphology: the word of language

Important part of our linguistic knowledge

Word

“A unit of expression which has universal intuitive recognition by native speaker, in both spoken and written language”

(Crystal)“The smallest of linguistic unit which can

occur on its own in speech or writing”

(Richard & Schmidt)

Conti….

“A unit of meaning”

(Finch)“A minimal free form”

(Bloomfield)

Content words

Noun, verbs, adjectives and adverbsDenote concept such as objects, action,

attributes and ideasOpen class words

Function words

Grammatical functionConjunctions, preposition, articles,

pronouns, Articles indicate definite or indefinite nounPreposition indicate relationship or

possessionClosed-class

Morpheme

“the minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function”.

The minimal grammatical linguistic unit- is thus an arbitrary union of a sound and meaning that cannot be further analysed.

Every word in every language is composed of one or more morphemes.

boy  (one syllable)

 desire, lady,

boy + ish

desire + able

boy + ish + ness

 desire + able + ity

gentle + man + li +ness

 un + desire + able +ity un + gentle + man + li+ness anti +dis + establish +ment+ari + an + ism

 

lexical (child, teach)

free functional (and, the)

Morphemes

bound inflectional (re,ness)

derivational (‘s, -ed)

Bound Morphemes

Cannot normally stand alone or typically attached to another form

All affixes (prefixes and suffixes) in English

Prefix

Bound morphemes which occur only before other morphemes. Examples: un- (uncover, undo) dis- (displeased, disconnect), pre- (predetermine, prejudge)

Suffixes

Bound morphemes which occur  following other morphemes. Examples: -er (singer, performer) -ist (typist, pianist) -ly (manly, friendly)

Infixes

Bound morphemes which are inserted  into other morphemes. Example:             fikas "strong"             fumikas "to be strong"                (Bontoc Language)

Free Morphemes

Can stand by themselves as a single word Example:    girl, system, desire, hope, act, phone, happy..  

Set of separate English word form such as basic noun, adjectives, verbs, etc.

Rules of word formation

Knowledge of individual morphemes, their pronunciation and their meaning and the knowledge of the rules for combining morphemes into complex words.

V+ify→verbV+ify→+ify+ication→noun

The form that result from addition of a derivational morpheme is called a derived word

Derivational MorphologyDerivational morphemes derive a new word

by being attached to root morphemes or stems

They can be both suffixes and prefixes in  English. Examples:    beautiful, exactly, unhappy, impossible, recover

Change of Meaning  Examples: un+do (the opposite meaning of ‘do’) sing+er ( deriving a new word with the meaning of a person who sings). 

The Hierarchical Structure of Words

A word is not a simple sequence of morphemes. It has an internal structure.

Hierarchical structure is an essential property of human language.

Word Coinage

Invention of totally new termsWords are used usually without capital

letters e.g,Kleenex, Xerox, etc

Compound

Joining of two words together to form third

Involves two nouns (frequently)

Book+case=bookcase

Wall+paper=wallpaper

Lambs+wool=lambswool

Acronyms

Words derived from the initial s of several words

Random Access Memory

Video Cassette Recorder

Some Commonly Used Acronyms

CDRadarLaser

ATMPINGB

Compact Disk

Radio Detecting and Ranging

Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation

Automatic teller machine

Personal identification number

Giga Byte

Back-formation

Specified reduction processWord of one type is reduced to form a

word of another type (usually N → V)

Continued…….

Television ………TeleviseDonation………...DonateEmotion………… EmoteEditor …………... Edit

Clipping

Abbreviation of longer words may become lexicalised

Blends

Smog

Motel

Broast

Brunch

Grammatical Morphemes

Have not any clear lexical meaning

have only clear sense in a sentence , e.g. to , it and etc

Inflectional Morphemes

Inflectional morphemes signal grammatical information such as number (plural), tense, possession and so on. They are thus often called bound grammatical morphemes 

They are only found in suffixes in  English.  Examples:  boys,  Mary’s , walked 

Inflectional Morphemes

Inflectional morphemes signal grammatical information such as number (plural), tense, possession and so on. They are thus often called bound grammatical morphemes 

They are only found in suffixes in  English.  Examples:  boys,  Mary’s , walked 

Conti….

No change of Meaning  Examples:       walk vs. walks                          toy vs. toys 

Never change the syntactic category of the words or morpheme to they which they are attached.

They are always attached to completed words Examples:          walk vs. walked or walks (V--> V) 

Conti….

In English, inflectional morphemes typically follow derivational morphemes

 Examples:unlikelihood,  unlikelihoods   (not  *unlikeslihood)

English Inflectional Morphemes

-s     third person singular present             

She waits at home. -ed   past tense 

She waited at home. -ing  progressive                                     

She is eating the donut.-en   past participle                                 

Mary has eaten the donuts.

-s     plural                                              

She ate the donuts.-’s    possessive                 

          Disa's hair is short.-er    comparative                  

             Disa has shorter hair than Karin.-est  superlative                                      

Disa has the shortest hair.

Morph

Phonological realization of a morpheme Allomorphs and variantsThe appearance of one morph over

another

Morphological analysis

Speaker of a language have the knowledge to perceive the component morphemes and morphological rules for their combination