Post on 13-Jan-2016
Chapter 3Lexical & Grammatical Morphology
Morphology
Lane 333
Lexicon & Grammar
‘actors’: grammatical word form of the LEXEME ACTOR
Consider morphemes in ‘act-or-s’
Each morpheme functions differently ‘-s’ reflects the category of NUMBER (plural) ‘-or’ changes verb into noun (performer of the
action)
Inflectional Morphology Inflection (grammatical morphology): the process
that builds word-forms of countless lexemes & it builds up paradigms of lexemes
never change the category of the word they are attached to (-s, -ing, -ed)
don’t change the meaning
they are only bound morphemes grammatical morphemes follow lexical
morphemes & come only after the stem
Inflectional suffixes of English 1. -s 3rd per.sg. present waits2. -ed past tense waited3. -ing progressive waiting4. -en past participle eaten5. -s plural chairs6. -’s possessive girl’s7. -er comparative faster8. -est superlative fastest
Derivational morphology
Derivation (Lexical morphology): the process of building up new words by adding morphemes (derivational) that change the meaning, or part of speech of a word
may change the category of the word they are attached to (-ful in ‘beatiful’, -ish in ‘warmish’)
change the meaning either bound or free produce lexemes
Exercise
3.3 Which morphemes are lexical & which are grammatical?
sparkler benighted detective tympani
speeding straightest platypus partly
threaded oxen disharmony ghastlier
horsebox embolden two-handed servant
Exercise3.5 Can you segment these words?
linguist utilize arrogant alacrity
terrify location mechanic democrat
Bound Lexical morphemes
the bits left over are ‘Bound Lexical morphemes’; e.g ‘lingu’
they don’t belong to any lexical category hard to specify their precise dictionary
meaning ‘bovine’ : ‘bov’ bound lexical morpheme (to
do with cattle)
Bound Lexical morphemes
Almost all bound lexical morphemes are of Greek, or Latin origin
used to create words for special purposes (scientific, technological)
Cranberry morphemes: have no other function but to distinguish different types of whatever is indicated by some other morpheme in the word; e.g. (raspberry, cranberry, bilberry)
no meaning except type of berry