Morphology, Part 3: Word-Formation Processes

October 1, 2012

Some Announcements• #1: There will be no office hours this afternoon.

• Set up an appointment with me, if you need to chat.

• #2: The Morphology homework will be due on Wednesday of next week.

• I will probably post the homework to the course web page on Wednesday afternoon.

• Note that I have posted the practice exercises (and answers) from last Friday’s class, for reference’s sake.

• Let’s walk through the last two sets of problems…

The Class System• In English, there are two types of derivational affixes:

1. Class 1 (or Level 1)

• Often cause phonological (sound) changes in the root

• Also cause more profound semantic (meaning) changes to the root

• Can combine with bound roots, too.

• Ex: -ity, -y, -ion

• For instance:

• Electric electricity; stupid stupidity

• democrat democracy; nation

The Class System• Class 2 (or Level 2)

• Don’t cause phonological (sound) changes in root.

• Less of a semantic (meaning) effect, too.

• Ex: -ness, -less, -er, -ish

• Normally, Class 1 affixes attach to the root before Class 2 affixes.

• relational -ion (1), -al (1)

• divisiveness -ive (1), -ness (2)

• *fearlessity -less (2), -ity (1)

• fearlessness -less (2), -ness (2)

Productivity• Productivity = the extent to which a word-formation rule can be applied to new morphemes, to form new words

• Class 2 affixes tend to be more productive than Class 1 affixes.

• -ness vs. -ity

• both attach to: adjectives

• both form: nouns

• both mean: the quality of the adjective

blindness stupidity

happiness validity

goodness complexity

Productiveness• -ness is very productive, so it can expand its reach to other words:

• stupidness, validness, complexness

• The same is not true of -ity:

• *blindity, *happity, *goodity

• -ness is so productive, it can also be affixed to new words:

truthy + -ness truthiness

chair + -ness chairness

productive + -ness productiveness

Finiteness

• Note that “finitude” is the (awkward?) alternative.

• Another (formerly?) productive affix: -age

• wordage, sleepage, etc.

Unproductivity• -able is another very productive morpheme:

• make-fun-of-able

• Other morphemes are not so lucky:

• -th: warm + -th = warmth

wide + -th = width

deep + -th = depth

cool + -th = *coolth

• -en: moist + -en = moisten

red + -en = redden

cute + -en = ?cuten

abstract + -en = *abstracten

An Intermediate Case• -ify attaches to adjectives to form verbs

• just + -ify = justify

pure + -ify = purify

• quick + -ify = ?quickify

smart + -ify = ?smartify

• An anecdotal case

busy + -ify = busify

ugly + -ify = uglify

• -ify has limited productivity

Blocking• Productivity can sometimes be limited by the existence of other words

• intelligent + -ness = *intelligentness

• “intelligence” gets in the way

• it blocks intelligentness from existence

• true + -ness = *trueness (truth)

• inhabit + -er= *inhabiter (inhabitant)

• guide + -er = *guider (guide)

• In other cases, a new word gets created anyway:

• pride + -ful = prideful (proud)

Content and Function Words• One last distinction: there are both content and function words.

• Content words =

• have some semantic content (meaning)

• nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

• ex: politics, baseball, socks, green, create

• Function words =

• specify grammatical relations

• have little or no semantic content

• prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions

Content and Function Words• Content words are an “open class”--

• we can add new members anytime we want.

• Function words are a “closed class”--

• it’s not easy (or possible?) to add new members.

• When was the last time you heard a new pronoun? Or new preposition?

• (thoughts on the quick write?)

• Our minds also process function words differently from content words.

• For instance, how many ‘F’s are in the following passage?…

Check This Out

FINISHED FILES ARE THE

RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC

STUDY COMBINED WITH THE

EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

You might want to read through it again.

More Word Formation Processes• So far, we’ve only looked at one type of word-formation

process: affixation

• = concatenating morphemes in a row

• Prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation…

• There are many different ways to make new words without concatenating morphemes together.

• compounding

• internal change

• reduplication

• blending, etc.

Compounding• In compounding, two or more free morphemes combine to make a new word

• Ex: baseball, blackboard, lightbulb, podcast

• Compounding is very common in the world’s languages.

• German is particularly fond of compounding:

Donaudampfschiffahrtgesellschaft

Donau “danube”

Dampf “steam”

Schiff “ship”

Fahrt “excursion”

Gesellschaft “company”

Compounding Tests• Stress Shifts

blackbird vs. black bird

lightbulb vs. light bulb

• Adverbs can’t modify compound nouns:

*extremely gentleman vs. extremely gentle man

*the very White House vs. the very white house

• Note: it’s also possible to form verb and adjective compounds:

• Verbs: dropkick, spoonfeed, whitewash…

• Adjectives: nationwide, redhot…

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”, “a little somethin’ somethin’”…

• 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?