Transcript Some Questions about Morphology

Some Questions about
Morphology
What is a morpheme?
The smallest linguistic unit of
meaning
 Can not be analyzed further
 ept, mit, luke, ceive are problematic
examples yet they are morphemes

What is a derivational
morpheme?

Adding a morpheme to a root to give a
new word…often results in change in
syntactic category
What is an inflectional
morpheme?

Bound grammatical morphemes that
are affixed to a word
Can you write down the eight
inflectional morphemes in
English
-s, -ed, -ing, -en, -s, ’s, -er, -est
 This makes English a very poorly
inflected language but highly analytic
language
 Historical reason was the shift in
word stress

What is a free morpheme?

Constitute words themselves; can
stand on their own
Which is a more productive
morpheme…un or able
able is more productive because it can
be added to any verb but un has
limitations
 Often there is a lexical gap:
 Unsad and ept

What is an infix?

An affix inserted in the middle of the
word.
Word Formation
What is a compound
Joining two or more words to form a
new word
 Meaning may not always be inferred
from the two morphemes and must be
stored separately in the brain
 flatfoot, egghead

What is a back-formation?
words that came into existence from
elimination of some affix…often this
is done by mistake
 editor, hawker, stoker, hawker are all
examples of back formations
 My daughter’s example of razor
 Some examples such as donation just
show a normal morphological process

What is an acronym?
Words derived from initials
 Question: when do you use an
article?
 FBI, CIA, CDC
 NAFTA, AIDS, OPEC
 But…UGA, KSU, IBM, NBC

What is the OED?

Oxford English Dictionary
Who was Dr. Samuel Johnson?

Lexicographer; published Dictionary
of the English Language in 1755
Two additional concepts
Idioms
 Metaphors
