Transcript LING507 Linguistics The Nature of Language

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ING507 Linguistics
The Nature of Language
LECTURE 7: MORPHOLOGY
Morphology
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Bambification

The mental conversion of flesh and blood living creatures into
cartoon characters possessing bourgeois Judeo-Christian attitudes
and morals.
(Coupland, 1991)

What is a word anyway?

Is it easy to define the concept word? Is the word easily
identifiable?
Morphology (cont’d)
What is Morphology?

Morph (form) + ology (science of): the science of word forms

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and the
rules by which words are formed.

Morphology is a field of linguistics that is concerned with the forms
and formation of words in a language.
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Morphology (cont’d)

In many languages, what appear to be single forms actually turn
out to contain a large number of “word-like” elements.

nitakupenda
(Swahili, spoken throughout East Africa)
‘I will love you.’

Is the Swahili form a single word? If it is a “word”, then it seems to
have a number of elements which are separate “words” in English.

ni-ta-ku-penda
I-will-you-love
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This Swahili “word” is rather different from what we think of as an
English “word”. A better way of looking at linguistic forms in different
languages would be to use the notion of “elements”, not words!
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Morphemes

What we described as “elements” in the form of a linguistic
message are technically known as morphemes.
What is a morpheme?

A morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.
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The police reopened the investigation.
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How many morphemes does the word reopened have?
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It has three morphemes. One unit of meaning is open, the other one
is re- (meaning “again”) and a minimal unit of grammatical
function is -ed (indicating past tense).

How many morphemes does the word tourists have?
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Morphemes (cont’d)
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There is one minimal unit of meaning tour, another minimal unit of
meaning -ist (marking “person who does something”), and a
minimal unit of grammatical function -s (indicating plural).
Free and Bound Morphemes
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Morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words are called
free morphemes.


tour, open, stay, cat, mouse, if, I… (they can stand alone)
What are some examples of free morphemes in English?
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Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

table, money, go, swim, old, smart, fast, often, yesterday
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Morphemes (cont’d)

Bound Morphemes cannot stand alone. They are typically
attached to another form. Affixes are bound morphemes.


re- , un-, -ist , -ed , -s… (they can’t stand by themselves)
When free morphemes are used with bound morphemes, the basic
word form involved is technically known as the stem.

un-dress-ed
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un
dress
ed
prefix (bound)
stem (free)
suffix (bound)
care-less-ness

care
less
ed
stem (free)
suffix (bound)
suffix ( bound )
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Lexical and Functional Morphemes
Free morphemes fall into two categories:

Lexical morphemes are nouns, adjectives and verbs which carry the
content of message we convey. They are called open class of
words, since we can add new lexical morphemes to the language.


sad, follow, tiger, break, long, look, man  lexical morphemes
Functional morphemes are the functional words in the language
such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns. They are
called closed class of words, since we almost never add new
functional morphemes to the language.
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and, in, the, but, on, near, above  functional morphemes
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Derivetional and Inflectional
Morphemes
Bound Morphemes can also be divided into two types:

Derivational morphemes are used to derive new words in the
language and are often used to make words of a different
grammatical category from the stem.
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good (adjective)  good + ness (noun)
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care (noun)  care + less (adjective)

create (verb)  creat + ive (adjective)

quiet (adjctive)  quiet + ly (adverb)
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happy (adjective)  un + happy (adjective)

do (verb)  re + do (verb)
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Derivetional and Inflectional
Morphemes (cont’d)

Inflectional morphemes are not used to produce new words in
English, but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function
of a word.
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Plural, possessive, tense, comparative/superlative markers are Inf. M.
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-s
third person singular present
She wait-s at home.
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-ed
past tense
She wait-ed at home.
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-ing
progresive
She is eat-ing the donut.

-en
past participle
She has eat-en the donut.
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-s
plural
She ate the donut-s.
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-’s
possessive
Sarah’s hair is short.
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-er
comparative
Sarah has short-er hair than Sue.
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-est
superlative
Sarah has the short-est hair.
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Derivetional and Inflectional
Morphemes (cont’d)

Q1: Do inflectional morphemes changes the grammatical category
of a word?
A1:
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Q2: Do derivational morphemes change the grammatical category
of a word?
A2:
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Q3: Are the bound morphemes -er in the words teacher and
younger identical?

teach + er 
/
young + er 
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Morphological Description
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Whenever there is a derivational suffix and inflectional suffix
attached to the same word, they always appear in the order below.
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teach + er + s  stem + derivational + inflectional

Boston + ian + s
Can you find the free morphemes (i.e. lexical and functional) and
bound morphemes (derivational and inflectional) in the sentence
below?
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The girl’s wildness shocked the teachers.
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Morphological Description (cont’d)
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The (functional), girl (lexical), ‘s (inflectional), wild (lexical), ness
(derivational), shock (lexical), -ed (inflectional), the (functional),
teach (lexical), -er (derivational), -s (inflectional).
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A useful way to remember all these different types of morphemes:
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Problems in Morphological
Description
Unidentifiable or inseperable elements:

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The inflectional morpheme -s is added to cat and we get the plural
cats. What is the inflectional morpheme in the words such as:

a sheep  sheep

a man  men, a woman  women

go  went

Legal  Is it he same morpheme as in national?
Solution : A full description of English morphology will have to take into
account both historical influences and the effect of borrowed
elements.
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Legal  borrowed from the Latin form of legalis (of the law)
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Law  borrowed into old English from old Norse
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Morphemes and Allomorphs

Just like phonemes (e.g. /p/) have allophones (e.g. [pʰ] and [p]),
morphemes have variants called allomorphs.
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Past Tense in English / past tense morpheme / /?
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Verbs that end in a voiced sound – /d/: agree-d, drag-ged, play-ed
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Verbs that end in a voiceless sound - /t/: work-ed, miss-ed, tape-d
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Verbs that end in an alveolar stop - /əd/: load-ed, estimate-ed, visit-ed
What is the plural formation rule in English?
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Morphemes and Allomorphs
(cont’d)
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Plural Form (inflection): plural morpheme /z/ allomorphs {z, s, əz}
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Nouns that end in a voiced sound  /z/: flag-s, game-s, car-s
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Nouns that end in a voiceless sound  /s/: map-s, bank-s, shirt-s
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Nouns that end in a sibilant sound  /əz/: glass-es, watch-es
The English sibilants are /s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ/. Sibilants are sounds that are
produced by bringing the tip, or blade, of the tongue near the roof
of the mouth and air is pushed past the tongue to make a hissing
sound.
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