Transcript General Morphology Thoughts

Morphology, Part 2
September 27, 2010
Mr. Burns Quick Write
• First off: a note on paying attention.
• Is it realistic to portray Mr. Burns as having a dictionary
inside his head?
Interesting Thoughts
Interesting Thoughts
The Last Word
In Our Last Episode
• Words and morphemes (meaningful “word parts”)
• Word-formation rules
• Free and bound morphemes
• Simple and complex words
• Affixes and roots
Cranberry Morphemes
• Cranberry morphemes are bound root morphemes.
• They have no independent meaning.
• They also have no parts of speech
• Some more examples:
• Also: the liberation of cran?
• perceive, receive, deceive
• -ceive?
• infer, refer, defer
• -fer?
• commit, permit, submit
• -mit?
Conjugation
• In many languages verbs are conjugated by adding affixes
specifying person and number to a bound root form.
• Italian: parlare “to speak”
Singular
Plural
1st
Io parlo “I speak”
Noi parliamo “We speak”
2nd
Tu parli “You speak”Voi parlate “Y’all speak”
3rd
Lui parla “He speaks”
Loro parlano “They speak”
Lei parla “She speaks”
• Note: the root form /parl-/ never appears on its own,
without an ending.
Bases (or Stems)
• Once an affix has attached to a root morpheme, it forms
a base…
• to which other affixes may attach.
• Example:
• boy (root) + -ish (suffix) = boyish
• Round two:
• boyish (base) + -ness (suffix) = boyishness
• Another example: black (root) + -en = blacken
• Round two: blacken (base) + -ed = blackened
• In some linguistic circles, bases are called stems.
Lexical Categories
•
Important: we know that word-building takes place in
stages because specific affixes are particular about what
kinds of words they can attach to.
•
A quick and dirty review of lexical categories (parts of
speech):
1. Nouns
•
=people, places, things
•
dog, cat, bike, person, planet, ball, etc.
2. Verbs
•
=actions, sensations, states
•
run, kick, scratch, scream, bite, walk, be, have, etc.
Lexical Categories, reviewed
3. Adjectives
•
= properties or qualities
•
happy, sad, angry, funny, clear, fuzzy, ugly, etc.
4. Prepositions
•
spatial relationships (= pre + position)
•
to, for, of, with, out, in, above, below, etc.
5. Adverbs
•
•
= properties or qualities of verbs and adjectives
•
often, seldom, rarely, purely, frequently, etc.
We’ll talk about these again when we get to syntax…
Picky, Picky
• Affixes generally attach to a base with a particular lexical
category.
• Examples:
• verb = [re-] + verb
• recycle = [re-] + cycle
• adjective = [in-] + adjective
(“to do again”)
reuse = [re-] + use
(“opposite of”)
• insecure = [in-] + secure
• incomplete = [in-] + complete
• noun = [ex-] + noun
(“former”)
• ex-wife = [ex-] + wife
• ex-president = [ex-] + president
Tricky Picky
• Other affixes attach to a base of a particular lexical
category…
• And create a word of a different lexical category.
• noun = verb + [-er]
• sweeper = sweep + [-er]
teacher = teach + [-er]
• verb = adjective + [-en]
• blacken = black + [-en]
freshen = fresh + [-en]
• adjective = verb + [-able]
• desirable = desire + [-able]
• squeezable = squeeze + [-able]
Quiz Time
•
Which affixes are being attached in the following
sets of words?
•
Which lexical categories do those affixes attach to?
•
Which lexical categories are formed by adding the
affix?
1. uncertain, unhappy, untrue
2. exactly, profoundly, deeply
3. moralize, vandalize, sermonize
4. deconstruct, decode, derail
Layers of Words
• Words that are formed through the addition of multiple
affixes have a layered, or hierarchical structure.
• One (ugly) way to represent this structure is through
bracket notation:
• [root]
[construct]
• [[affix] + [root]]
[[re-] + [construct]]
• [[base] + [affix]]
[[[re-] + [construct]] + [-ion]]
• WORD
reconstruction
(=base)
Tree Structures
• In this class, we’ll primarily stick with tree diagrams to
represent word structure.
• (because they look better and are easier to read)
re
construct
ion
un
desire
• Tree terminology: branches
• nodes: where two branches meet
• nodes represent constituents of the word
able
Building the Perfect Beasts
• To accurately capture all of the facts of word formation…
• tree structures should represent the lexical categories
of all constituents at each node in the tree.
Noun
Adj
Verb
Adj
Aff
Verb
Aff
Aff
Verb
Aff
[re-]
[construct]
[-ion]
[un-] [desire] [-able]
Test Case
• What should the tree diagram for “reassignment” look like?
3. reassignment
Noun
2. reassign
Verb
Aff
Verb
Aff
[re-]
[assign]
[-ment]
1. assign
Another Test Case
• How about the tree diagram for “miscategorization”?
4. miscategorization
Noun
3. miscategorize
Verb
2. categorize
Verb
*miscategory
Aff
Noun
[mis-] [category]
Aff
Aff
[-ize]
[-ation] 1. category
Ambiguity
• Some complex words can have more than one
interpretation
• Different derivations can result in different interpretations
• Example: “unlockable”
Note: [un-] can
attach to both
adjectives and verbs
[-able] attaches to
verbs and creatives
adjectives
Unlockable, part 1
Adj
Adj
Aff
Verb
Aff
[un-]
[lock]
[-able]
• = not able to be locked
Unlockable, part 2
Adj
Verb
Aff
Verb
Aff
[un-]
[lock]
[-able]
• = able to be unlocked
Inflections vs. Derivations
•
1.
Linguists draw another distinction among affixes:
Inflectional affixes:
• mark grammatical properties
• (person, number, gender, tense, aspect)
• don’t change other aspects of meaning
• are required by rules of sentence structure
• create a new “word form”
2. Derivational affixes:
• change meaning
• create a new word
• (typically) have clear semantic content
• may change the lexical category of the word
Inflectional Affixes
•
There are precisely eight inflectional affixes in English:
1. -s
3rd person
wait --> waits
2. -ing
progressive
wait --> waiting
3. -ed
past tense
wait --> waited
4. -en
past participle
eat --> eaten
5. -s
plural
card --> cards
6. -’s
possessive
dad --> dad’s
7. -er
comparative
tall --> taller
8. -est
superlative
weak --> weakest
•
All of these are suffixes.
Inflectional Affixes
• Other languages can have a lot more inflectional affixes.
• Examples from French: parler “to speak”
• 1st person, plural: parlons
“We speak”
• 2nd person, plural: parlez
“You guys speak”
• Past tense:
• 1st person, singular: parlais
“I spoke”
• 1st person, plural: parlions
“We spoke”
• 2nd person, plural: parliez
“You guys spoke”
• Plus many, many more.
• Note: Volapük. (http://www.visi.com/~dean/volverb.html)
Derivational Affixes
• In contrast to inflectional affixes, derivational affixes:
• Create new words when they’re attached to roots
• Examples:
• re-
cycle --> recycle
• de-
code --> decode
• -y
fish --> fishy
• -ize
vandal --> vandalize
• Also: English has far more derivational affixes than
inflectional affixes.
• For fairness’ sake: http://www.visi.com/~dean/volword.html