Transcript Outline
Morphology
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Basic concepts and terms
Derivational processes
Inflection
Problems in morphological description
Interaction between morphology and
phonology
Collocations
Basic Concepts and Terms
I.
II.
Morphology: the study of forms
Morpheme: the smallest meaningful units of language
A. Free morpheme: can occur by itself
1.
2.
lexical morpheme: It’s possible to add new words
functional morpheme: New words are rarely added
B. Bound morpheme: must attach to free morpheme
1.
2.
derivational morpheme: capable of making new words
inflectional morpheme: indicates the grammatical aspect
III. Stem (root, base) e.g. teach
IV. Affix
1.
2.
3.
Prefix e.g. unhappy
Infix e.g. Absogoddamlutely
Suffix e.g. happiness
Free Morpheme
I.
Definition: can occur by itself, not attached to other
morphemes
II. Examples: girl, teach, book, class, etc.
III. Two kinds
A. lexical morpheme (open class)
1. definition: has lexical meaning; new examples
can be freely added
2. examples: N, Verb, Adj, Adv (content words)
B. functional morpheme (closed class)
1. definition: new examples are rarely added (but
not impossible to add)
2. examples: Pro, Prep, Conj, Art. (function words)
Bound Morpheme
I. Derivational morpheme
A. may change syntactic class
B. to form new words
C. examples: -able, un-, re-, etc.
II. Inflectional morpheme
A. Different forms of the same word
B. Not change syntactic class
C. Only 8 kinds in English: -’s, -s (plural nouns), -ing, ed/-en, -est, -er, -s (S-V agreement)
II. Derivational Processes:
a method to get new words
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
I.
J.
K.
L.
Derivation (Derivational affixation)
Compounding: combine two or more morphemes to form new
words
Reduplication: full or partial repetition of a morpheme
Blending: parts of the words that are combined are deleted
Clipping: part of a word has been clipped off
Acronyms: abbreviate a longer term by taking the initial letters
Back formation: A word (usually a noun) is reduced to form
another word of a different type (usually a verb)
Extension of word formation rules: Part of a word is treated as a
morpheme though it’s not
Functional shift (Conversion): A change in the part of speech
Proper names Common words
Onomatopoeia: words imitate sounds in nature
Borrowing: The taking over of words from other languages
III. Inflection; Function words
Definition: adds some grammatical functions related to
Syntax, but does not create new words.
A list of Function words in English (see Nash 65)
All the inflectional morphemes in English are suffixes.
Basic word structure in English:
(DER) Base (DER) (INFL)
e.g. ..
Plant er
s
im Polite
IV. Problems in Morphological
Description:
For example:
Noun ADJ
Law (English)
Legal (Old Norse) due to historical influence
Mouth (English)
Oral (Latin)
The above examples aren’t suitable for people
to analyze by using morphological rules
More examples:
Sheep
Sheep (plural form)
Read
Read (past tense)
V. Interaction Between
Morphology and Phonology
A. Past tense in English
1. ends with +V
/d/
2. ends with -V
/t/
3. ends with alveolar stop
Ex: agreed, dragged
Ex: worked, missed
/id/ Ex: load, estimated
B. Plural form
1. ends with +V
/z/
2. ends with -V
/s/
3. ends with +sibilant
/iz/
Ex: flags, games
Ex: maps, banks
Ex: glasses, watches
*Morphophonemic Rules: The rules that determine the
pronunciation of the regular past tense and plural morphemes
are called morphophonemic rules because morphology adds
the suffix to the root, and the phonology controls the
pronunciation of the morpheme.
C. Negative (Nash 51)
VI. Collocation
Definition:
There are combinations of words which are stored
together as whole units in the brain, sometimes like big
words. A speaker calls up the units as a whole form from
memory, just as he calls up individual words.
Examples:
Salt and Pepper
Knife and Fork
Bread and Butter
Do business
Do harm
Make a mistake