morphology - the zapotec language · pdf file · 2004-07-21tagalog has infixes...

English 401 Course Packet

Morphology

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Morphology Introduction What is a word? A sound string with an associated meaning? There are two large classes of words: Two kinds of words: open class/content words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.

closed class/function words: conjunctions, most prepositions, determiners, articles, pronouns.

Only words are assigned these categories. But, are words the smallest units with a meaning in a language? No. Words can often be broken down into smaller units. How many units in the following words? inexcusable deconstructionist antidisestablishmentarianism Some words cannot: Some words are atomic (cannot be subdivided into meaningful units): man, dog, boy, cat, Kalamazoo, fax. Words can be composed of smaller meaning units. wug wugs wug's blick blicked blicking blicks automobile, deoxyribonucleic acid, histamine decarboxylase, dihydrogen monoxide. Morphology is the system of how words are put together, how morphemes combine to make words. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of a language, not words. So all of the following are single morphemes: man, dog, boy, cat, Kalamazoo, fax, -s, -'s, -ed, -ing, -s, auto-, mobile, de-, oxy-, ribo-, nucle-, -ic, acid, etc. Morphemes that can occur as independent words are said to be free morphemes: boy, cat, Kalamazoo. Others that must be attached to another morpheme and cannot stand alone, such as, -s, -ing, -ic, de-, etc. are called bound morphemes. Prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes that attach to beginning or ending of a root or stem respectively. In English we have lots of examples of prefixes and suffixes. What are some?

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A root is the "main" part of a word that has a lexical category, N, V, Adj, assigned to it and to which prefixes and affixes attach. man, dog, Kalamazoo and fax are all roots. A stem is composed of at least one root and one or more additional morphemes. In English, most roots are free, but some are bound. That is, they cannot stand on their own, but only occur in combined form: unkempt, inept, vengeance, salvation (cf. unloved, immobile, disturbance, termination) These roots do not occur on their own (are not free). Note that in other languages, all (or most) roots may be bound or conversely elements that are bound morphemes in English may be expressed with free morphemes in other languages. Roots are often free but they do not have to be. There are bound roots. Hare (Athabaskan language spoken in Canada's Northwest Territories). Body part morphemes must always be combined with a possessor morpheme from O'Grady et al. (2001): Without a possessor With a possessor *fí 'head' sefí 'my head' *bé 'belly' nebé 'your belly' *dzé 'heart' /edzé 'someone's heart/a heart' The converse is true also. In English, the past tense marker, -ed, is a bound morpheme while in Thai the past morpheme is a free word (from O'Grady et al. (2001)): Boon thaan khaaw lEEw. Boon eat rice past 'Boon ate rice.' Infix: the affix goes in the middle of the root: Tagalog has infixes which mark a completed event on a verb: root Infixed form takbuh 'run' t-um-akbuh 'ran' lakad 'walk' l-um-akad 'walked' pili/ 'choose' p-in-ili/ 'chose' English has a class of infixes, what are they?

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A circumfix essentially consists of both a prefix and a suffix that together combine with a root. The prefix and suffix together have a meaning. Below is an example of a circumfix in Ancient Greek that indicates a perfective tense 'to have X-ed.' Bound Root Circumfixed Form lu- 'loose' le-lu-k- 'have loosed' paideu- 'train, educate' pe-pai-deu-k- 'have trained, have educated' ko:lu- 'hinder, prevent' ke-ko:lu-k- 'have hindered, have prevented' There are no circumfixes in English. The Ancient Greek example shows another interesting morphological phenomenon: reduplication.

The prefix portion of the perfective circumfix is derived via reduplication. It is not consistent across words but varies from stem to stem. All of the prefixes in these stems presented above can be considered allomorphs of a reduplicative prefix. Reduplication is the repetition of a word or some piece of a word. In the Greek example, the first consonant is repeated and the vowel [e] is inserted between the two instances of the consonant. Other examples of reduplication (from O'Grady et al. (2001)): Turkish c Ùabuk 'quickly' c Ùabuk c Ùabuk 'very quickly' javasÙ 'slowly' javas Ù javas Ù 'very slowly' iji 'well' iji iji 'very well' gyzel 'beautifully' gyzel gyzel 'very beautifully' Indonesian oraN 'man' oraN oraN 'all sorts of men' anak 'child' anak anak 'all sorts of children' maNga 'mango' maNga maNga 'all sorts of mangoes' Chomorro (spoken in the Mariana islands and Guam) Type 1: adda 'mimic' aadda 'mimicker' kanno 'eat' kakanno 'eater' tuge 'write' tutuge 'writer' Type 2: nalang 'hungry' nalalang 'very hungry' dankolo 'big' dankololo 'very big' metgot 'strong' metgogot 'very strong' bunita 'pretty' bunitata 'very pretty'

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Samoan: manao 'he wishes' mananao 'they wish'

matua 'he is old' matutua 'they are old'

malosi 'he is strong' malolosi 'they are strong'

punou 'he bends' punonou 'they bend'

atamaki 'he is wise' atamamaki 'they are wise'

savali 'he travels' __________ 'they travel'

laga 'he weaves' __________ 'they weave'

_________ 'he sings' pepese 'they sing'

Does English have reduplication?

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Bound Roots Freed ==== A tale of love ========================= by Jack Winter/The New Yorker 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 for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it since I was traveling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do. Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or a sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion. So I decided not to risk it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of. I was plussed. It was concerting to see that she was communicado, and it nerved me that she was interested in a pareil like me, sight seen. Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt capacitated--as if this were something I was great shakes at--and forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number of times. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings. Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. Wanting to make only called-for remarks, I started talking about the hors d'oeuvres, trying to abuse her of the notion that I was sipid, and perhaps even bunk a few myths about myself. She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory character who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.

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"Jabberwocky" from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. "And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

Upon reading the poem, Alice makes the following observation about the poem "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are!"

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Lexical Categories Lexical categories are classes of lexical items (words and roots) that share certain grammatical properties (morphological and syntactic properties). For example, verbs (V) inflect for tense in English. It is unclear how many different lexical categories should be recognized. Some words like not or only each seem to have their own unique properties and are not easily grouped with any other words. We will focus on three broad classes, verbs (V), nouns (N) and adjectives (A) and will have occasion to mention a few other classes, such as prepositions (P) and conjunctions (Conj).

As you might have noticed, the classification of words into lexical categories is somewhat similar to the traditional notion of parts of speech and uses many of the same terms. You are encouraged to compare the two notions if you understand the high school introduction to parts of speech well, but it has to be stressed that there are important differences. While parts-of-speech classification relies heavily on meaning-based definitions (e.g., "a noun is a person, place or thing"), classification into lexical categories relies solely on the morphological and syntactic properties of a word. Psychologically, it seems that lexical categories (not parts of speech type labels) are used. Since prescriptive grammar and usage rules rely on part of speech, however, this can lead to conflicts between what is psychologically natural and prescriptive rules. We have already seen some instances of this with respect to nominative pronouns.

I will try to keep the notions distinct to help you focus on the approach we will be

using in this class though I may occasionally slip up and use the terms interchangeably. But unless otherwise explicitly stated, note that I am only intending lexical categories. Again, if it helps you, you might also just refer to the abbreviations, V, N, A and use the formal criteria given below as a way to apply these labels. Morphological and Syntactic Frames Below, I list various environments where Vs, Ns, and As may be used respectively. The idea in each case is that if you fill in the blanks below with only one word, that word must be of the category type listed. Note that it is rather difficult to come up with simple environments where all Vs or Ns or As can go. This is for several reasons. One, there is great diversity within each category, with each lexical item having its own unique meaning and often having idiosyncratic morphological and syntactic properties. So, for example, not all verbs form their past tenses by adding –ed. Second, there can be quite a bit of overlap. That is, words of different categories may be able to accidentally fill the same gaps. For example, the ______ N is a common environment for As as in the tasty food, but, as we have seen, other items, namely Ns can fill this gap as well: the dog food. It is for this reason that we will not use the above environment, although surely people (children especially) do use this environment to identify new As. Instead, we will look for other, more restrictive environments.

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In addition, because of this complexity, it is important to note that negative evidence is not very informative. That means that if a word fails to go in one of our environments listed below, we cannot automatically conclude that it does not belong to the category being tested. If a word passes a given test (preferably a set of tests) then we can conclude that it has the category tested for. If it fails, we cannot conclude anything on that basis alone. We need additional tests showing, for example, that a word belongs to a different lexical category. To put it another way, a word will hopefully only pass our tests if it belongs to the correct category, but it could fail for any number of reasons, not being of the correct category is only one of them. Verb (V) Tests

____-ed (Past) HAVE ____-en (perfect) BE ____-ing (progressive) ____-s (3rd Person Singular Present)

____-able (combines with verbs to give adjectives) ____-er (makes verbs into nouns)

The 3rd singular present suffix –s for verbs is particularly nice since it applies quite broadly and has only 4 irregular verbs (is, has, does, says) which all still contain the –s. The BE ____-ing construction is also quite general and there aren't any irregular verb forms associated with it. Note that irregular past tense verb forms do still tell us that a word is a verb; we just have to be able to recognize the irregular forms. The only sub-type of verb these tests fail to identify are modal auxiliaries, which perhaps should be treated quite distinctly anyway. There are nine prototypical ones and a few marginal ones. The prototypical ones are will, would, can, could, shall, should, may, might and must. Modal auxiliaries go in the following environment: Modal Auxiliary: I/you/he ______ not go. Noun (N) Tests: Two _____-s (plural) (for count nouns) What kind of ________ (for count/mass nouns) What type of ________ (for count/mass nouns) The kind of _______ (for count/mass nouns) The type of _______ (for count/mass nouns)

Which _______ (for count nouns) He/she/it seems/looks/sounds like_________ (mass nouns/proper nouns) They seem/look/sound like__________ (count nouns)

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Adjective (A) Tests: Morphological Tests: ____-er (comparative) ____-est (superlative) ____-ness (combines with adjectives to produce nouns) un-____ (combines with adjectives to make adjectives) Distributional Tests: very + _______________ This is the very _______ book I was telling you about. more/most + _______________ (than you are) This is my most ______ book. He/she/it/N seems _______________ . He/she/it/ looks _______________. How __________ (is the book)?

Note that many items traditionally labeled manner adverbs can fit in these frames as well, for example, how quickly, more quickly, very quickly. They do not fit in other environments however, *quickliness, *seems quickly, *looks quickly. Clearly, the adverbs are derived from the adjectives and have inherited many properties from them. In fact, it is not clear that manner adverbs should be distinguished from adjectives at all. The adverb category is a catch-all and does not have any unifying properties to distinguish it from other categories. Finally, there is a lot of overlap between traditional adjectives and adverbs, for example fast, hard, well can modify both Ns and Vs. So, if we end up lumping these together, I am not immediately unhappy. Conjunction: Can test all categories. N and __________ V and __________ A and ___________ P and ___________

Take a word whose category you are certain of and conjoin it with the word you want to test. If the conjunction is ok, that means they have the same category. A caveat: make sure you are conjoining two words, not a word and a phrase (which could mislead you). To avoid this problem, it is best to try both orders, N1 and N2 and N2 and N1, for example. A Cautionary Note When you are applying a test, be sure that the word you are testing is the one in fact you intend to be testing. Words with completely different meanings and/or category membership sometimes sound identical; these are homophones ("sound-alike" words). For example, there is a verb rock, as in I rocked the baby till it fell asleep, and a noun rock, as in She threw a rock into the pond. These two words are not related by any word-

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formation processes, nor do they have similar meanings; that the words are pronounced alike is simply coincidental. Sometimes the differences are much more subtle. For example, chicken can easily be used as a mass noun or a count noun (see mass vs. count noun handout). Also, outside of an utterance, you can never be sure what the category of a word is. So, is love a noun or a verb? It can be either. Which it is at any given moment depends on the context it is used in. Thus, you want to test the word in a particular context and be careful not to accidentally slip over into a different use/meaning. What is the lexical category of each of the following underlined words? He didn't hammer his point home. I hit my thumb with a hammer. I have been outed as a Star Trek fan by the guest speaker. He threw the garbage out. The first out in the inning was made by the first baseman. Additional Practice Exercises Identify the lexical categories of the italicized words in the following sentences:

A. That questionable call cost him the game. B. He is unlikely to succeed. C. The powerful are not always the most famous. D. For lunch, he eats the same thing everyday: an open-faced turkey sandwich.

E. Tomorrow, which is the first day of the month, is when I get paid. F. He might wonder where you've been.

G. Pop-culture's unrelenting erosion of traditional American values is undermining the U.S.'s moral authority in international affairs.

H. Pop-culture is relentlessly eroding traditional American values, which undermines the U.S.'s moral authority in international affairs.

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Flawed question raises PSAT scores

Thursday, May 15, 2003 Posted: 10:10 AM EDT (1410 GMT)

(AP) -- The nation's largest testing company has increased the PSAT scores of nearly 500,000 high school juniors after the company concluded it was wrong about the correct answer to a grammar question posed on the exam last October.

Students were asked if anything was grammatically wrong with the following sentence:

"Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured."

The correct choice on the multiple choice exam was originally listed as "no error" by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey, which administers the PSAT and SAT for the College Board. The PSAT is aimed at helping juniors prepare for the SAT college entrance exam in their senior year.

Maryland high school journalism teacher Kevin Keegan spotted the botched question in late January.

He informed ETS that the sentence was incorrect because the pronoun in the sentence -- "her" -- was used improperly. Keegan said the pronoun refers to an adjective instead of a noun, as it should.

The ETS said a committee of experts signed off on the question, which was posed on the exam given October 15 to 1.8 million juniors.

In letters and telephone calls, Keegan persevered.

From experience, he knew that the loss of one or two points on the PSAT could disqualify a junior from becoming a National Merit commended student or a National Merit semifinalist. National Merit academic honors are determined by PSAT scores.

"I have taught dozens of kids over the years who have missed those two cutoffs by one point or one question," he said.

Based on a review by three experts, ETS this month informed Keegan and the students that the sentence would not be counted in the scoring. As a result, the scores of 480,000 students will rise.

Lee Jones, a College Board vice president, said the National Merit Scholarship Program has also agreed to adjust its limits.

"He was persistent in his point and we appreciate that," Jones said of Keegan. "And, he turned out to be correct."

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/05/15/psat.question.ap/index.html

In the controversial sentence given in bold above, is Toni Morrison's an adjective by the criteria we have discussed in class? Apply each test and note the results. If Toni Morrison's is not an adjective what might it be?

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http://www.cnn.com/interactive_legal.html


Count vs. Mass Nouns As the names imply, count nouns generally refer to things that can be counted, mass nouns to entities that cannot. Examples from English: count: car pea mass: water paper grape toe corn skin hypothesis building bread blood dog penny cheese light tree book wheat dirt noun hammer money meat Do note though that these assignments can vary from language to language. For example, while bread is a mass noun in English, in Zapotec, the word for 'bread,' ettaxtila is a count noun and is better translated as 'a small loaf of bread.' Some ways of telling count nouns from mass nouns in English: 1. Count nouns occur naturally in plural form. When plural it simply indicates that the speaker is referring to more than one of the object in question, two dogs. In contrast, mass nouns, if they allow plurals, are interpreted quite differently. It usually implies more than one kind of the noun in question: They have many different cheeses at the delicatessen. This is interpreted as 'they have many different kinds of cheese at the deli.' It does not mean that they necessarily have many blocks of cheese at the deli. In contrast, two dogs indicates exactly two canines, but does not mean that they are necessarily different types (breeds). It could refer to two German shepherds. 2. In order to count mass nouns in a fashion similar to count nouns above, a classifier phrase must be used 'a piece/bit/grain/drop/loaf… of Mass Noun': a drop of water 3 kernels of corn 2 blocks of cheese several loafs of bread a grain of sand 2 dashes of salt a glass of milk 2 pieces of meat a spec of dust 4 sheets of paper a ton of dirt 3 pounds of rice 3. Count nouns (except proper names) must occur with an article, the, a, etc., or in the plural. Mass nouns occur naturally without these: *a bucket of pea a bucket of peas a bucket of corn *a bag of peanut a bag of peanuts a bag of sugar *Dog is a mammal. Dogs are mammals. Cheese is a dairy product.

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4. Mass nouns occur naturally in a phrase like 'I want some _______'. Count nouns, if they can occur here, generally must occur in the plural: I want some water/milk/mud/corn/snow/meat/time etc. vs. I want some beans. *bean I want some friends. *friend I want some phone calls. *phone call 5. Mass nouns can be questioned by how much _________, count nouns by how many ______________. How much dirt do you need? How many dogs do you own? *how much dog 6. Mass nouns take singular agreement with the verb whereas count nouns appear in either the singular or plural. This is particularly a helpful diagnostic when a count noun has an irregular plural. Consider the following: mass nouns: Water comprises 80% of our body weight. Sugar tastes sweet. Smog is a leading cause of asthma. plural count nouns: Geese fly south for the winter. *flies Mice like the taste of cheese. *likes People are strange. *is Sheep are raised for their wool. *is Their identification as plural nouns is supported by the fact that they can take numbers like count nouns: 2 people three blind mice 3 geese two sheep Lastly note that some count and mass nouns are homophones. For example, chicken.

count noun: chicken animal mass noun: chicken meat of the animal count mass number test Three chickens are in the yard. --- classifier --- He ate three pieces of chicken. article He bought a bucket of chickens to raise. He ate a bucket of chicken. some I want some chickens (as pets). I want some chicken to eat. how much How many chickens did you raise? How much chicken did you eat? agreement Chickens are domestic animals. Chicken is tasty.

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Proper Nouns (adapted from Hurford 1994)

• Proper nouns can be composed of one or more words and serve to identify some

particular individual entity. For example, dog alone does not refer to any individual dog, but Fido does.

• Proper nouns can stand on their own as a whole noun phrase (to be discussed later) and can thus serve as subjects, direct objects or indirect objects.

• Proper nouns are always definite. • Proper names can be modified by non-restrictive relative clauses, but not by

restrictive relative clauses: John, who I had met before, ignored me. (non-restrictive) John that I had met before ignored me. (restrictive)

• They do not typically require an article or to be in the plural. They can contain an article as part of the name or a plural, but they behave as part of the name, and are not visible to the external syntax. For example,

Herman Wouk's The Winds of War is too long. (cf.) *Herman Wouk's the novel is too long. On the next The X-Files. (cf.) *On the next the episode. Twenty-nine Palms is in California. (cf.) Twenty-nine palms line my driveway. *Twenty-nine palms lines my driveway.

• For our purposes, one of the most important groups of proper names will be those used as the names for words and phrases in meta-linguistic discourse (using language to talk about language). Again, note how these proper nouns differ from the normal usage of these words:

What is the definite article in English? The. Is black an adjective or noun? -s, the plural suffix, has three allomorphs. Tacos is an example of a plural count noun in English. The road that I don't know where it goes provides an example of a relative clause containing a resumptive pronoun in English.

• Note that it is usually pretty easy to turn proper nouns into common nouns: How many Sallys are there in class? For each of the past three Januaries, I have traveled to Mexico. There are twenty-six thes up to this point in the handout. The Childs are coming over for dinner. Which that is the demonstrative in that sentence? That essay may be considered sexist. It has 143 mans in it, but only 2 womans.

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Intransitive versus Transitive Verbs (adapted from Hurford 1994)

Intransitive verbs are verbs that take only a subject, but not an object (direct or indirect). Examples include arrive, blink, come, dive, go, jump, sleep, sneeze and snore. Transitive verbs take objects. Examples include hit, see, kiss, hear, know, arrange, believe, put off, postpone, include, make, give, keep and burn. Some transitive verbs allow their objects to be omitted and appear to be intransitive, but they behave differently from true intransitive verbs. For example, John smokes is understood as John smokes a pipe or John smokes cigarettes. Brenda drinks too much we understand the omitted object alcohol. These are transitive verbs. With genuine intransitives, no implicit object is understood. So, while in answer to John is eating, I can ask What is John eating?, but I cannot ask of John is sleeping, *What is John sleeping? Some verbs do come in both transitive and intransitive varieties such as jump, dance, hum and sing. Also consider break, drop, sink, and turn.

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Inflectional Morphology English affixes (a cover term for prefixes, suffixes and other kinds of "fixes") fall into two main categories: derivational and inflectional.

derivational affixes

In some sense, derive new words from old ones.

inflectional affixes

Does not create a new word

Often change the lexical category (part of speech) of the word. For example, happy Adj happiness Noun.

Does not change the lexical category of a word. For example, cat and cats are both nouns, and walk and walks are both verbs.

Occur before inflectional morphemes: Darwinisms not *Darwinsism

Occur after derivational morphemes: kingdoms not *kingsdom

Not dependent on the external syntax. For example, the following environment requires a noun: What kind of _____. That is, the blank must be filled by a noun, such as man, dog, calculation, establishment, worker, etc. Although the last 3 nouns contain suffixes (-ion, -ment, -er) which make these words into nouns, the environment does not require any specific suffix be present, or any suffix at all for man and dog.

Very dependent on the external syntax. That is dependent on other words in a sentence: 1. I walk. You walk, but He walks 2. one cat but two cats These environments require that the verbs in 1 and the nouns in 2 have certain forms (usually realized as a suffix).

Inflectional morphemes mark categories like number (singular vs. plural), gender (masculine vs. feminine vs. neuter vs.…), case (nominative vs. accusative (subjects vs. objects)), tense (present, past, future) and aspect (repeated actions, states, progressive etc.), voice (active, passive, middle), and mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, etc.)

Case-marking is a change in a noun (say through affixation) to indicate the grammatical function of the noun, whether it is the subject, direct object, indirect object, and possibly other functions as well. In English, this is only overtly seen in the pronouns, I (subject), me (object), my (possessor). In other languages, the nouns are overtly marked. Sanskrit, for example, has 8 cases (the case suffixes are in bold):

devas 'god' nominative (subject) devam 'god' accusative (direct object) deva 'O god' vocative (direct address) devena 'with god' instrumental/comitative deva:ya 'to/for god' dative (indirect object/benefactive) deva:t 'from god' ablative devasya 'god's/of god' genitive (possessor) deve 'at/in/on god' locative

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Latin Nominative Accusative Genitive 'lizard' (masculine) lacertus lacertum lacerti 'fly' (feminine) mosca moscam moscae Lacertus moscam cepit. Moscam lacertus cepit. Lacertus cepit moscam. Moscam lacertus cepit. Cepit lacertus moscam. Cepit moscam lacertus.

'The lizard caught the fly.' Lacertus moscam cepit. 'The lizard caught the fly.' Lacertum mosca cepit. 'The fly caught the lizard.' cauda lacerti = lacerti cauda 'lizard's tail' equ-us can-em vid-et. horse-NOM.SG dog-ACC.SG see-PRES-3.SG “The horse sees the dog.”

can-em equ-us vid-et dog-ACC.SG horse-NOM.SG see-PRES.3SG “The horse sees the dog.”

Since equus “horse” is in the nominative case (NOM), we know that it has to be the subject of the sentence. Since canem “dog” is in the accusative (ACC), we know that it has to be the direct object. Note that English only overtly shows case distinctions with pronouns:

Nominative Accusative Genitive I me my

you you your he him his she her her it it its

we us our you you your they them their

Note that not even all of the pronouns have distinct forms in all cases. For example, you is both nominative and accusative and it is also identical in the nominative and accusative. Similarly, her is both accusative and genitive. Examples from English: I went to the store. Nominative Sally thinks he is crazy. He saw me there. Accusative Bill took it with him. He stole my book. Genitive This photo of his mom is old.

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English has relatively few inflectional morphemes. English has only 7 types of inflectional morphemes. The productive variants (that can be productively attached to new words are given below): Inflectional Types Morpheme Example Use plural -s 1 cat, 2 cats, Pets make us happy. 3rd singular present tense -s I sleep, you sleep, he sleeps; She knows it. past tense -ed I walk to school. Yesterday, I walked home.present participle (progressive) -ing He is always talking. He tried opening it. past participle -ed He has died. He had lived well. It was lost.comparative -er tall, taller, a happier boy, He walks faster. superlative -est tallest, the happiest boy, He works hardest. This table lists the productive forms of these morphemes, but remember each type may have variants or more than one way that they are realized.

For example, we discussed the fact that the past tense morpheme <–s> has three pronunciations: [-s], [-z], and [-´z], which are phonologically conditioned by the final sound of the word to which they attach. Such phonologically conditioned variants are called allomorphs. Some words have irregular inflection. They do not form their inflected forms via rules involving one of the suffixes listed above but must be memorized, complex roots. Generally new verbs follow the regular inflection defined by rules. Occasionally, a word may be drafted into the irregular ranks via analogy with similar sounding words as is apparently happening with sneak-snuck analogized off of stick-stuck among others. More commonly however, the irregulars are slowly succumbing to the regular pattern, so help-holp-holpen, show-shew-shown becomes helped-helped-helped and show-showed-shown respectively. The irregular forms may contain identifiable, non-productive affixes (the –en past participle), stem internal changes (man-men), fused forms in which root and suffix cannot be clearly separated (has) or suppletion, whereby the inflected form of a word comes from a completely unrelated root (go-went). Irregular plurals and irregular verbs are given in (too much) detail later on.

Recall that different morphemes may have the same phonological shape. We have seen this with –er 'comparative' (happier) versus –er 'agent' (worker). Also, of course, note the three different [-s] morphemes, 3rd singular plural, possessive, and plural. Function of Inflections Most of the uses that the inflectional morphemes are put to are fairly self-explanatory. This is particularly true of the nominal and adjectival inflection. The nominal –s is used to mark plurality, when there is more than one of some entity (or

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really when there is not exactly one of something: He had zero answers right). The –er and –est suffixes are used for degree of comparison with adjectives: He is shorter than I am; This is the widest river in the world. The only real complication with these is that certain adjectives—usually those with more than two syllables—do not take –er and –est but are preceded by more and most to form the comparisons: She is more beautiful than I remember; This is the most complicated problem I have ever tackled. Uses of Verbal Inflection The situation with the verbal inflections is a bit more complicated. Many forms of the verb have multiple uses. The vast majority of verbs come in exactly four forms, following the regular inflectional pattern of English.

-∅ walk convince interpret zero form, unmarked form, root form -s walks convinces interprets 3rd present singular form -ing walking convincing interpreting -ing form -ed walked convinced interpreted -ed form

Many of these forms, however, have multiple functions (from Pinker 1999): Zero verb suffix: present tense (except 3rd singular): I/You/We/They/ open the windows everyday. Bare non-finite form: They may open it. They tried to open it. Imperative: Open it! Subjunctive: They insisted that he listen to what I had to say. They insisted that he open the door. -s only one job: Present tense, third singular: He/she/it/Bill/The man next door opens the windows everyday. -ing suffix: Progressive Participle: He is opening it. He was opening it when he fell. Present Participle: He tried opening the door. Verbal noun (gerund): His incessant opening of the boxes. Nothing is as fun as opening Christmas presents. Verbal Adjective: A quietly-opening door. -ed Past tense: He opened the window yesterday. Perfect Participle: He has finally opened the window. I had opened before you got here. Passive Participle: The door was opened by a ghost. The mail had already been opened. Verbal Adjective: A recently-opened box newly wedded couple, cf. drunken sailor, shrunken head, rotten eggs

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More on Participles

The present participle (underlined) is used in past and present progressive constructions: progressive: BE1 + V–pres. participle He is walking to school. They were watching TV. I am being watched.

The –ing suffix also combines with Vs and Verb Phrases to form gerunds and gerundives. Essentially, the –ing turns the V into a noun and a Verb Phrase into a Noun Phrase. These can then be used where Noun Phrases typically go as subjects, objects and objects of prepositions for example:

Repaving the highway is going to cost the state five million dollars. His wasting of the company's expense account led to his termination. I gave him the beating of his life. I am getting tired of him always canceling his appointment at the last minute.

These two uses can be distinguished by the presence of auxiliary BE in the first and its absence in the second, in addition to the noun-like uses of the gerund. These two uses of –ing were historically distinct: Progressive –ing and nominal (gerund) –ing are from a collapse of two previously distinct morphemes, which is still reflected in modern pronunciation: Sound Changes Old English –inde

(verbal inflectional suffix) Old English –inge/-ynge (verbal noun derivational suffix)

reduction of final /e/ to /´/ -ind´ -iN´ loss of final /´/ -ind -iN reduction of [nd] cluster -in -iN English of about 1400 -in -iN -in more likely in progressive and verbal complements Madonna is singing again. I don't mind listening to Madonna. versus nominal forms: I don't like Madonna's singing. 1 BE means some form of the word BE: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, or been. HAVE indicates some form of have: have, has, had, having and similarly GET equals get, gets, got, getting, or gotten.

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The past participle is used in forming perfects and passives: present perfect: have/has + V–past participle I have spoken to him.

She hasn't eaten anything. past perfect: had + V–past participle She had sewn a flag. The war had been won. passive: BE/GET + V–past participle The horse was ridden. I am faxed daily. I am being watched.

The war had been won. The boy got beaten up.

There is much confusion and misinformation surrounding the passive voice. At least part of this seems to stem from confusing the everyday meaning of passive (i.e. non-assertive) and the grammatical meaning. Grammatically, passive voice in English is formed just as described above. It is also accompanied by the promotion of the active object to subject and the loss of the active subject (or its demotion to a PP). So, consider the corresponding active sentences below:

Passive Active The horse was ridden. The trainer rode the horse. I am faxed daily Someone faxes me everyday. I am being watched (by the FBI) The FBI is watching me. The war had been won. The U.S. had won the war. The boy got beaten up (by the bully). The bully beat up the boy.

These differences are diagrammed below: ACTIVE:

The clown gave a balloon to the child

The child was given a balloon (by the clown). PASSIVE: form of be/get main verb in past participle form Note that for all regular verbs and many irregular verbs, the simple past-tense form and the past participle form are identical: Present Past Past Participle Present Past Past Participle plant planted planted hit hit hit fight fought fought make made made Some irregular verbs do have a distinct past participle: write-wrote-written, show-showed-shown, sing-sang-sung. For all other verbs however, the past and past participle have to be distinguished based on usage, such as if an auxiliary licenses the verb or not.

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Irregular Plurals in English (from Pinker 1999) 7 words have vowel changes:

man-men, woman-women, foot-feet, goose-geese, tooth-teeth, mouse-mice, louse-lice (and words derived from these).

3 take the old Anglo-Saxon –en plural suffix: child-children, ox-oxen, brother-brethren Many names for animals which are frequently hunted, gathered, or farmed are identical in the singular and plural:

• fish, cod, flounder, herring, salmon, shrimp • deer, sheep, swine, antelope, bison, elk, moose • grouse, quail

Voicing of final consonant as discussed in class (some speaker variation on these):

• calf-calves and elf, dwarf, half, hoof, knife, leaf, loaf, self, scarf, sheaf, shelf, thief, wife, wharf, wolf

• mouth-mouths and truth, sheaths, wreath, youth • house-houses

Note this change is not productive in English, the following are all regular:

• birth, booth, earth, faith, growth, hearth, length, month, tenth • belief, brief, chief, proof, reef, safe, spoof, turf • cough, laugh

Latin plurals (many of these are slowly being regularized, i.e. data as a mass noun):

• alumnus-alumni and bacillus, cactus, focus, fungus, locus, nucleus, radius, stimulus

• genus-genera, corpus-corpora • alga-algae and alumna, antenna, formula, larva, nebula, vertebra • addendum-addenda and bacterium, curriculum datum, desideratum, erratum,

maximum, medium, memorandum, millennium, moratorium, ovum, referendum, spectrum, stratum, symposium

• appendix-appendices and index, matrix, vortex Greek plurals:

• analysis-analyses and axis, diagnosis, ellipsis, hypothesis, parenthesis, synopsis, synthesis, thesis

• criterion-criteria and automaton, ganglion, phenomenon Of course, many words of Latin and Greek origin are now completely regular for all:

• apparatus-apparatuses, and bonus, campus • area-areas and arena, dilemma • album-albums and aquarium, forum, stadium

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Irregular Verbs (adapted from Pinker 1999) The vast majority of verbs come in exactly four forms:

-∅ walk convince interpret zero form, unmarked form, root form -s walks convinces interprets 3rd present singular form -ing walking convincing interpreting -ing form -ed walked convinced interpreted -ed form

This exhibits the regular inflectional pattern in English. Children generalize and extend these forms; irregular verbs are slowly succumbing to this pattern; when a person cannot recall an irregular form these endings are called upon to the fill the gap; and newly coined verbs will usually take these forms:

fax spam blog faxes spams blogs faxing spamming blogging faxed spammed blogged

Crucially, note that regular verbs have the following principal parts. Of particular

importance is that past tense and past participial forms are identical.

Present (non-3rd singular) Past Past Participle V-∅ V-ed V-ed (as in have V-ed) walk walked walked (have walked) fax faxed faxed (have faxed)

There are close to 200 irregular verbs in English which do not follow this pattern.

Some make fewer distinctions while many have an additional form, a past participial form that is distinct from the past tense. One irregular verb, be, has 8 forms:

be zero form am 1st singular present is 3rd singular present are non-1st or 3rd singular present was 1st and 3rd singular past were non-1st or 3rd singular past being -ing form, present participle been past participle

No verb has an irregular –ing form. As can be seen, even the most irregular verb in English, be, is regular when it comes to the –ing form. Only 4 verbs are irregular in the 3rd singular present form, and even these are not that irregular. They still contain –s, although they show other changes. These 4 are

is has does [dz] not [duwz] says [sz] not *[sejz]

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Note that does and says are irregular in their pronunciation, although this is not reflected in the spelling. The irregularity here is probably due in part to the fact that these are the four most common verbs in English. Thus, they would tend to be reduced/altered are so common that everyone would be exposed to this irregularity. All other irregular verbs in English are irregular only in the past tense and/or the past participial form, which is why people tend to memorize and drill just the three principal parts listed above instead of also memorizing the –ing form and the 3rd present singular form. These irregulars are largely historical relics with a few recruits analogized along the way. Apart from be, only one other verb has its past tense formed via suppletion in which another root supplants the verb root in the past. That is go and related verbs:

Present2 Past Past Participle go went gone undergo underwent undergone forgo forwent forgone

Sometimes, a difference is made between weak and strong verbs. Weak verbs are the regular verbs and those irregulars that end in –t or –d in the past and whose irregularities came about through phonological interactions with the "weak" –ed past tense suffix. Strong verbs are those whose past and past participle forms are not marked with –ed or some remnant of it, but by vowel changes, such as sing—sang—sung. The "weak" Irregulars These came about through phonological interactions with the regular past tense marker, an affix which can be found throughout all Germanic languages. Final root consonant deletes

Present Past Past Participle have had had make made made

No Change in the Principal Parts Present Past Past Participle Present Past Past Participle fit fit fit beset beset beset hit hit hit bet bet bet knit knit knit let let let quit quit quit set set set shit shit shit upset upset upset 2 In listing principal parts, present should be understood to mean non-3rd singular present tense forms.

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slit slit slit wet wet wet spit spit spit cut cut cut split split split put put put bid bid bid shut shut shut forbid forbid forbid burst burst burst rid rid rid cast cast cast shed shed shed cost cost cost spread spread spread thrust thrust thrust wed wed wed hurt hurt hurt Some of these verbs have other possible past-tense forms, such as irregular bid-bade-bade, forbid-forbade-forbade/forbid-forbad-forbad, spit-spat-spat, the mainly British shit-shat-shat and regular slitted, knitte, fitted, wetted and thrusted. Devoicing Final Consonant

Present Past Past Participle bend bent bent build built built lend lent lent rend rent rent send sent sent spend spent spent

Note that a couple of these—rent and lent—are rather marginal or of very low frequency. Vowel Shortening and Great Vowel Shift Present Past Past Participle Present Past Past Participle keep kept kept read read read creep crept crept speed sped sped leap leapt leapt meet met met sleep slept slept hide hid hid sweep swept swept slide slid slid weep wept wept bite bit bitten feel felt felt light lit lit deal dealt dealt alight alit alit kneel knelt knelt flee fled fled dream dreamt dreamt say said said leave left left hear heard heard bleed bled bled lose lost lost breed bred bred shoot shot shot feed fed fed sell sold sold lead led led tell told told mislead misled misled foretell foretold foretold plead pled pled do did done

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Some of these verbs allow regular past-tense forms: kneeled, dreamed, speeded, lighted and pleaded. The "strong" Irregulars About half the irregular verbs in English are "strong," using vowel changes to signal different verbal forms. This represents a very old pattern in the language dating back at least 5000 years to English's distant ancestral language: Proto-Indo-European. There are various sub-patterns:

Present Past Past Participle rise rose risen arise arose arisen write wrote written ride rode ridden drive drove driven shine shone shone smite smote smitten

Present Past Past Participle Present Past Past Participle find found found wear wore worn bind bound bound bear bore borne grind ground ground swear swore sworn wind wound wound tear tore torn freeze froze frozen take took taken speak spoke spoken mistake mistook mistaken steal stole stolen shake shook shaken weave wove woven wake woken woken break broke broken

Present Past Past Participle get got gotten (got) forget forgot forgotten

Present Past Past Participle come came come become became become fall fell fallen hold held held

Present Past Past Participle Present Past Past Participle blow blew blown draw drew drawn grow grew grown withdraw withdrew withdrawn know knew known fly flew flown throw threw thrown slay slew slain

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Present Past Past Participle eat ate eaten give gave given forgive forgave forgiven bid bade bidden forbid forbade forbidden lie lay lain

Present Past Past Participle Present Past Past Participle ring rang rung cling clung clung sing sang sung fling flung flung spring sprang sprung sling slung slung drink drank drunk sting stung stung shrink shrank shrunk string strung strung sink sank sunk swing swung swung stink stank stunk wring wrung wrung swim swam swum stick stuck stuck begin began begun dig dug dug run ran run spin spun spun hang hung hung win won won sit sat sat strike struck struck spit spat spat sneak snuck snuck

Miscellaneous Irregulars

Present Past Past Participle swell swelled swollen shear sheared shorn show showed shown sow sowed sown sew sewed sewn prove proved proven

Present Past Past Participle beat beat beaten choose chose chosen see saw seen stand stood stood understand understood understood withstand withstood withstood

Not counting related words like get/forget and a few of the more borderline cases, Modern English has roughly 164 irregular verbs, 81 weak and 83 strong. Compared to 325 strong verbs in Old English, this shows that English is slowly becoming regularized.

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Word Structure and Derivation As has been suggested earlier, affixes are generally particular about which lexical category (Part of Speech) they will attach to. A few do seem to attach to more than one category, although here we need to be certain they are in fact the same morpheme with the same meaning, but the vast majority attach to one and only one category of words. This is especially true of the inflectional affixes. For example, plural morphology only attaches to Nouns, -s 3rd person singular present, past tense, and the present and past participles only attach to verbs. Comparative –er and superlative –est only attach to adjectives or adverbs. (Note it is possible that adjectives and certain adverbs (manner adverbs) should essentially be considered the same thing.) This fact is important for a couple of reasons. One, morphology provides evidence about the lexical category of a (new) word. For example, if you have a word that can take –s, -ed, and –ing morphology, then you know you are dealing with a verb, even if you have no idea what the word actually means. This is important for language acquisition. Once you (or a child) can identify the category of a word, then you automatically know all sorts of information about how it can be used. Second, this can tell us what the internal structure of multimorphemic words must be. This is important, since it can guide us to determine the meaning of a complex word which we have not encountered before. So, a word like unselfishness can only be formed in a certain way, because the morphemes only go together in certain ways. To determine the structure of the word, we must first know which class each morpheme can combine with and what the resulting lexical category will be. One way to determine this information is to find simple (i.e. non-morphologically complex) words which the morpheme can combine with. The category of these words tells the category the morpheme combines with. Morph. Combines With What Category Yields What? Monomorphemic

Example un- _________________________ _______________ _______________

self _________________________ _______________ _______________

-ish _________________________ _______________ _______________

-ness _________________________ _______________ _______________

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This information can then be used to provide a morphological tree structure for the word. N A A N | un- self -ish -ness This information in turn could help us understand the meaning of the word. selfish has a unique meaning not derivable from its parts. We know however, that un- combines next with it, contributing the meaning {not}, so {not selfish}=unselfish. Finally, A-ness means the quality of being A. So, {quality of being {not selfish}} is the meaning of unselfishness.

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Verbal Sub-Types There are a number of sub-categories for verbs that depend on the form of the verb. Of particular interest to us will be distinguishing a tensed verb from a non-tensed one. A tensed or finite verb is one that bears a tense marking, either a past or present form. In addition, the modal auxiliaries are always plus tense. The non-tensed forms (non-finite) forms we have encountered so far are the root infinite (bare form) and the participles. This is schematized below:

Verbal Forms Tensed/Finite Non-Tensed/Non-Finite Past Present Modal Root Inf. Past Part. Present Part. robbed robs/rob will rob robbed robbing sang sings/sing would sing sung singing hit hits/hit can hit hit hitting found finds/find could find found finding was/were is/am/are shall be been being had have/has should have had having knew knows/know may know known knowing seemed seems/seem might seem seemed seeming went goes/go must go gone going

… … … … … …

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Word Formation Processes (adapted from O'Grady 2001)

Conversion (Functional Shift) Assigning an existing word to a new syntactic category. V derived from N N derived from V V derived from A ink (a contract) (a building) permit dirty (a shirt) butter (the bread) (an exciting) contest empty (the box) ship (the package) (a new) survey better (the old record) nail (the door shut) (a brief) report right (a wrong) button (the shirt) (an important) call total (a car) N from an A: a green V from a P: down a beer, up the price Back Formation Word formation process in which a new base form is created from an apparently morphologically complex word: burgle < burglar orientation < orientate surveillance < surveil Clipping Abbreviating, shortening a word, without consideration of possible morpheme boundaries. fax facsimile phys-ed physical education poli-sci political science deli delicatessen

Acronyms Made from initials, can be pronounced as a word. NASA, scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). Initialisms Abbreviations that are read as letters: UCLA, CSU, UN, Blending Combining nonmorphemic parts of two already existing terms: brunch: breakfast + lunch spam spiced + ham smog: smoke + fog Eponyms: common nouns from Proper names: sandwich, jumbo, watt, fahrenheit.

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Compounds One way to form new words is through compounding. This is an extremely productive process in English. Two (or more) words can be combined from various lexical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions). Generally the resulting category is a noun, verb or adjective. Examples of preposition compounds are into, onto. In English orthography (spelling) there is no consistent way to indicate a compound. They can be written as a single word, with a hyphen, or with a space between them. Consider the following: oak leaf red-hot wisdom teeth hanger-on club feet shut-in policemen side arms Walkman space-time saber tooth tiger steamboat bigfoot bath towel Examples of Various Categories Combining: Adjective Noun Verb Adjective bittersweet poorhouse highborn Noun headstrong rainbow spoonfeed Verb carryall pickpocket sleepwalk The exact meaning of a compound is not consistently predictable from its parts. For example, while a hot dog vendor is someone who sells hot dogs, a street vendor is not someone who sells streets, but rather, sells on the street. Compounds may become lexicalized as individual words and take on additional meanings. Thus, a wet suit refers to a diver's outfit. As such it is reasonable to ask, "Is your wet suit dry?" Most compounds have a head which determines many properties of the compound:

1. The head determines the lexical category (A, N, V) of the compound. Examples:

N V 3 3 A. N N V | | | | poor house spoon feed

So, poorhouse is an N as is its head, house. Spoonfeed is verb just as its head feed is.

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2. The head specifies the type of thing that the word refers to. Thus, dog food is a type of food (not a type of dog), caveman is a type of man (not a type of cave), sky-blue is a type of blue (not a kind of sky), and wind surf is a type of surfing activity (not a type of wind).

3. The head determines the type of inflectional morphology the compound takes

(including strong and irregular forms) and the inflectional morphology is located on the head element. drop kicked fox hunters spoonfed ox carts *dropped kick *foxes hunter *spoonfeeded *ox carten

In English, compounds are usually head-final. That is, it is the last root of the compound which functions as the head. Other languages differ as to whether they have head-initial or head-final compounds (identify the heads in the following languages): German Gast-hof Wort-bedeutungs-lehre Fern-seher guest inn word meaning theory far seer 'hotel' 'semantics' 'television' Finnish lammas-nahka-turkki elin-keino-tulo-vero-laki sheep skin coat life's eans income tax law 'sheepskin coat' 'income tax law' Macuiltianguis Zapotec beela' cuchi benne' ruya'a cwa yina' meat pig person dances dough chile 'pork' 'dancer' 'dough with dried chiles' Compounds do not always have a head. Some are headless. For example, evergreen is composed of an adverb ever plus an adjective green, yet the resulting compounding is a noun. This violates the first property of headed compounds. It is also not a type of green, but a type of tree, also unexpected considering the second property. Finally, it takes nominal (that is noun) inflectional morphology: evergreens (*evergreenest) unlike property three predicts. Essentially the compound behaves as though it has a silent head word tree: N 3 A N 3 | Adv. A (tree) | | ever green

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As mentioned above, if the head of a compound has strong or irregular forms, so will the compound. In cases where there is no head, the compound usually takes regular inflectional morphology, even if some of its component pieces do have irregular morphology: Walkmans, not *Walkmen, low-lifes, not *low-lives, and Batmans, not *Batmen as in They have made four Batmans (i.e. They have made four Batman movies). There is no real limit to the number of elements that can be combined in a compound, and compounds in theory could produce infinitely long words. teaching assistant review session program Sunday night concert series Compounds, like affixation to roots and stems, have internal structure: N N N N N N N N N | | | | | teaching assistant review session program A teaching assistant review session program is a program to improve the review sessions of teaching assistants. Program is the head of the entire compound, review session is the head of the smaller compound, teaching assistant review session and assistant and session head each of their sub-compounds. How to Distinguish Compound Words from Sequences of Independent Words: For A-N compounds, in particular, the first element is stressed. But in noncompound expressions, the noun is stressed (underline indicates stressed element): greenhouse 'a garden house' green house 'a house painted green' blackboard 'a chalkboard' black board 'a board which is black' wet suit 'a diver's outfit' wet suit 'a suit that is wet' Also, note that the root inside the compound can't do what other free roots can. For example, it cannot be modified nor take appropriate inflectional morphology. So, green in greenhouse, for example, cannot be modified by very nor take the comparative and superlative suffixes, although many independent adjectives can: He lives in a very green house. This is the greenest house I saw. *We have a very greenhouse. *This is the greenesthouse I saw.

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Similarly, spoon in spoonfeed cannot be used in the plural nor be modified by numbers though the independent noun, spoon, can be: I used spoons to feed him. I used one spoon to feed him. *I spoonsfed him the answer. *I one spoonfed him the line. Pinker notes that irregular words can be used as non-head elements of compounds because they are separate words that are wholly stored in the mental lexicon. Regular plurals are not stored but must be put together when we use them. Thus: A monster that eats mice is a mice-eater or a mouse-eater. A monster that eats rats is a rat-eater, but not a *rats-eater. This also accounts for the following interesting pattern with the verb sleepwalk. Trying to put productive verbal morphology on the verb sleep, such as –s and –ing sounds atrocious (even though when not in a compound the verb can take them): He only sleeps 5 hours a night. *He sleepswalks only once a week. I was sleeping when you entered. *I was sleepingwalking when you entered. But, sleptwalked (probably pronounced [slEpwçlkt]) doesn't sound so bad, and in fact 77 instances from a variety of sources turned up in a Google search (accessed November 12, 2002): "I would have said you fell out of bed, only you're on the wrong side." She bit her lip as she considered something. "Alonzo, have you ever sleptwalked before?" "Sleptwalked? No. Never have." "Not even when you used to dream normally?" from an online story at http://www.geocities.com/aislinn0325/sleepwalker.html Da: I've only sleptwalked the first 3 nights of the tour, nut now I've seemed to have calmed down. I've always sleptwalked,...but only on tour when I'm with these... They drive me mad. Transcribed from an interview at http://www.nofimagazine.com/kaitoint.htm What happened: Bryan Randall threw for a touchdown and Lee Suggs ran for another as Virginia Tech sleptwalked its way to a win over the Owls. From a sporting news source: www.collegefootballnews.com/big_east/Temple.htm Admittedly, 30 hits came up for sleepingwalking (which surprises me to no end). But thankfully sleepswalks returned zero results. Sleepingwalking could in theory involve turning sleep into a noun sleeping and compounding, but I admit I am hard pressed to account for this. To me, it sounds awful.

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http://www.geocities.com/aislinn0325/sleepwalker.html

http://www.nofimagazine.com/kaitoint.htm

http://www.collegefootballnews.com/big_east/Temple.htm


Identifying Compounds Practice Consider the underlined sequences in the following sentences. What is the Part of Speech (PoS) of each root? Is the sequence a compound? If it is a compound, what is the part of the speech of the whole sequence? If it is a compound, does it have a head and what is it? Provide at least one piece of evidence that we have explicitly mentioned in class, for example morphological evidence, to support each answer. For Part of Speech information also state if a noun is a mass or count noun and for verbs identify them as being regular or irregular.

A. The blueprint for this building is hung on the wall. B. She has blue eyes. C. He stepped out into the damp London air. D. I need to blow-dry my hair. E. This university study was a real eye-opener.

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morphology - the zapotec language · pdf file · 2004-07-21tagalog has infixes...

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