IntroductionToMorphology

Basics of Morphology

January 27, 2012

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What is Morphology?

Definition: Morphology is a field of linguistics focused on the study of the forms and formation of words in a language.

J. W. von Goethe coined it early in the 19th century in a biological context.

In Greek ‘morph’ = ‘shape’, ‘form’ ‘logos’ = ‘study’ Morphology deals with the internal structure of words.

Word = a unit of language that carries a meaning and consists of one or more morphemes (dog vs raindrop) Lexeme = a different form of the same word (cat vs cats, reach vs reached) Though most people never formally study morphology, it is something native speakers understand intuitively.

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Morphology Words may be defined as simple or complex. Simple words cannot be broken down into parts, while complex words have sub-components.

These are referred to as morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest linguistic elements capable of having a meaning or grammatical function.

Re-act-iv-at-ion Free morphemes are morphemes which can occur as independent words, e.g. clock, sick, study Bound morphemes only occur when combined with other morphemes to form a word, e.g. –ly, non-, -ed. These are most commonly prefixes and suffixes.

NB! Morphemes are not syllables. E.g. clouds (2m, 1s), flower (1m, 2s)

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Morphology Free morphemes can be further classified into content words and function words. Content words are parts of speech which impart content, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, etc.

Function words are words which function as part of a language’s syntax, such as conjunctions, articles, prepositions, pronouns, modals, auxiliaries.

PRACTICE Divide the following words into morphemes. Also indicate whether the morphemes are free or bound.

Replaces, tourists, poisonous, childishness, grandmother, elephant, activity, displeasure, electric

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Morphology Cranberry morphemes (unique morphemes) are bound morphemes which occur in only one word in a language, e.g. cranberry, affable, inept, unkempt These are relics of words which have died out in other uses.

PRACTICE Which are the content words and which are the function words in the following sentence?

I repeated the story of the cat more slowly than before, and then they might have understood it.

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Morphology Morphemes can be divided according to their function: 1) Derivational morphemes – these change the meaning or lexical category of the words to which they attach, e.g. multi-, -ation 2) Inflectional morphemes – these serve a purely grammatical function, e.g. –ed, -’s, -s In all languages, there are many derivational affixes but only a limited number of inflectional affixes.

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Morphology Inflectional morphemes: 1) do not change the meaning or part of speech, just add extra grammatical information, e.g. shoe / shoe-s 2) very productive 3) occur at the margin of a word, after any derivational morphemes, e.g. act-iv-iti-es 4) not listed in the dictionary 5) in English, only suffixes

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Morphology Derivational morphemes: 1) create new words, listed in the dictionary, e.g. happy vs happi-ness 2) change the part of speech or the meaning of the word, e.g. (part of speech): judg-ment (V – N), symbol-ize (N – V), happily (Adj – Adv) (meaning): dis-comfort, ex-boy-friend 3) usually not very productive, e.g. dislike, but not dishate 4) occur before inflectional suffixes 5) in English, these can be both prefixes and suffixes

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Morphology Affixes are bound morphemes which have one or more identifiable semantic or grammatical functions and which occur in more than one word in the language.

The element to which an affix is attached is called its base.

Prefixes are affixes pronounced before base; suffixes are affixes pronounced after base.

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Morphology

graceful gracefully gracefulness ungraceful ungracefully ungracefulness

GRACE disgrace graceless disgraceful gracelessly disgracefully gracelessness disgracefulness

gracious graciously graciousness ungracious ungraciously ungraciousness

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Morphology A morpheme may display allomorphy, i.e. it may have more than one form. Each of these forms is called an allomorph (variant in pronunciation). E.g. in English the past tense morpheme that we spell –ed has various morphs. Also the plural morpheme has three allomorphs and the negative prefix in- (im-, il-, ir-).

Also consider these examples: re-ceive / re-cept-ion, a / an, em-prison / en-danger, duke / duch-ess.

If the allomorphs of a morpheme are phonologically unrelated, we speak of suppletion, e.g. be/am/is/was, good / better, one / first

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Morphology PRACTICE What are the inflectional morphemes in the following phrases? it is snowing the newest model cowardly behaviour the teacher’s book he jumped over the fence off the beaten track Give the morphemic structure of the following words, indicating whether the affixes are derivational (D) or inflectional (I).

Reattainable, writer, writings, hopefully, writes, deafened, dishonest

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Morphology Compounds are a special class of word combinations in which multiple words together form one compound with a meaning different from that of its constituents, e.g. screwdriver, bathroom.

Types of compounds: 1) endocentric compounds – in these the final element is a head and the other element provides additional information about the head.

E.g. coffee table, blackbird, seasick (AB is an instance of B) 2) exocentric compounds – in these the head is not in the compound.

E.g. redskin, handout, pickpocket (AB is neither an A nor a B) 3) copulative compounds – in these both words are heads.

E.g. singer-songwriter, bittersweet, deaf-mute (AB is an A and a B) PRACTICE State whether these compounds are endocentric, exocentric or copulative: wheelchair, hunchback, apple tree, loudmouth, author-publisher, bigfoot TLÜ Haapsalu Kolledž, Lihula mnt. 12, Haapsalu 90507; Tel: 472 0240; e-post: kolledz@hk.tlu.ee; http://www.hk.tlu.ee

Morphology PRACTICE Analyse the following words: Followed, capitalism, into, happily, lessons Answer these questions: 1) Is the word a content or function word?

2) Is the word simple or complex?

3) Identify its stem and affixes. If it has a suffix, is it inflectional or derivational?

4) What part of speech does the word belong to?

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Morphology EXAMPLE I don’t understand its meaning.

1) It’s a content word.

2) It’s a complex word 3) Mean + ing (stem + suffix) - -ing is derivational.

4) It’s a countable noun.

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Bibliography Aronoff, M. & K. Fudeman. What is Morphology? http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/S ample_chapter/9780631203186/Aronoff_sample%20chapter_What %20is%20morphology.pdf Morphology (linguistics) in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphology_%28linguistics%29 McIntyre, A. English Morphology http://www.punksinscience.org/kleanthes/courses/UCY04F/PLA/morpholog y.intro.pdf

TLÜ Haapsalu Kolledž, Lihula mnt. 12, Haapsalu 90507; Tel: 472 0240; e-post: kolledz@hk.tlu.ee; http://www.hk.tlu.ee